I belong to a few homeschooling groups on Facebook and I see A LOT of posts about schedules. I just googled homeschool + schedule and the same thing comes up… lots of hits.
I have mixed feelings about the schedule. Or maybe it is related to finding the perfect schedule. I don’t think there is one and maybe by trying so hard to schedule schooling in, we are missing some opportunities.
So what do we do here? How do Jack and I make sure we do what we need to do?
Some things are scheduled in. These are things that involve other people. For me, this has to do with my online meetings. And these change on a daily and weekly basis. For Jack, he attends some online classes, mainly for coding and grammar. And some of these also change on a weekly basis. And then we both have our Kung Fu classes, which are every second evening during the current shut-down (Gyms are currently closed due to Covid shut-downs in the Montreal area).
Two months in and we are finding that the easiest way to keep track of our scheduled events is really by sharing our google calendars. This is our upcoming week. Jack is red, mine is blue, shared activities are yellow. Since my schedule changes all the time, this way it is always up to date.
And what about the other stuff? It is sprinkled throughout our days.
- Something Math-y everyday
- Handwriting everyday, alternating French and English
- Reading – we do this together but separate. He reads his book next to me reading articles and books for work.
- Reading also happens when you aren’t sure what else to do and Mommy is in a meeting, in French and English (this happens a lot :))
- Social studies and Math workbooks, alternating days (and sometimes not)
- Science once a week at least. Often on the weekend.
- Minecraft projects – During the day, Minecraft should generally be connected to Social Studies or to writing or Science. (also happens a lot )
- Art, movement, “home ec” aka chores, sprinkled in there too. And when doing these, there is usually a backdrop of social studies or other subjects via podcasts.
During breakfast, we talk about our day and use dry erase markers on the mirrors near us to create a list of activities to tick-off because sometimes that helps us keep focus. But sometimes one of the activities takes the whole day. That is ok, too.
Bottom line on scheduling
So some things are scheduled because others are relying on us but everything else is very flexible. We keep our goal in mind by having those touch base conversations at breakfast and we trust that we will do what we need to do.
