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We homeschool all year round and have 4 terms. I outline our homeschooling plan for the full year. Each month has its own focus. It constructs the basic foundation of our homeschooling and sets up several goals, but at the same time leaves plenty of free room and flexibility for natural-curiosity learning. This gives us many opportunities to venture into other areas of learning without restrictions. I make sure that things can be adapted while taking on the different dynamics within our family and things that we need to deal with daily.
We start our homeschooling year in September. This way we make sure that we send in our “Notice of Intent” letter to the school board on time, before September 1st each year.
The first 3 Terms of our homeschool year is where we focus on a combination of life skills and daily living activities as well as academics.
The 4th Term is when we finish up anything academically that was left over from the first 3 Terms that needs to be completed, but life skills and daily living activities continue. This is also the time we prepare for the following homeschooling year.
For each year we homeschool, I create a simple binder-sized planner. I include everything from what I want to have my child focus on learning for the week, special events, medical appointments, medical conditions, cleaning tasks, chores, groceries… everything! This helps me manage everything and stay on task. I prefer this best because it isn’t easily lost, it can’t accidentally get “deleted” and it is a great source of record keeping along our homeschooling journey.
It is bound with a spiral book binding system so it’s not another bulky binder. It is very basic and plain looking. I like it this way because it is without distractions and I can decorate it with stamps/stickers or add to it any way I like.
It includes:
Yearly Calendar: This is 1 page. I print off a yearly calendar from print-a-calendar.com starting from September to give me a full view of the year ahead.
Weekly Calendar: For these main pages, I created these Weekly Planner Pages to be very basic and simple. I print off 26 pages on one side and then again on the other side for the full 52 weeks to save paper.
I don’t really use Monthly Calendars in my planner, but I do have one on the fridge that is in a reusable plastic sleeve and we use dry erase markers on it instead. I found that with the Monthly Calendar in the planner, there just wasn’t enough room to write everything that I needed, I was wasting time repeating myself (because I would already write it down in the weekly pages), and I didn’t want to use any more paper. Now I just use the yearly and weekly calendars in the planner that I make for myself each year.
I mark all holidays and weekends off. If we do any specific homeschooling things during these times I make sure to write it in so there is a record of it.
I include information about field trips or family outings.
I include days when we need to take a break. Every month there is a “Personal Activities Day.” (PA Day) This is where I take time to review things and make any adjustments within the curriculum.
I record days when we are sick and any days that we have doctor, dentist or therapy appointments, or any family emergency situations.
I create a Main Homeschooling Curriculum Plan for the year. This is an outlined list of our curriculum for what we intend to cover for the year. For each subject or activity of what we are going to do, I break that down into sections for our homeschooling days. I also base and coordinate our activities related to the theme of the holidays of each month. This helps give me an idea of how many activities or lessons we will need to cover each week in order to wrap things up by the end of our 3rd term in May. You can read more about this on our Curriculum page.
Daily Living and Life Skills are the main core focus of our curriculum and we include academics that are "Daily Living and Life Skills" related. When you are ready to apply academics into your homeschooling, some good guidelines to start off with are:
Academic Guidelines:
These are best done in shorter time spans. (About 10 to 20 minutes Maximum).
Focus on no more than 30 minutes of academics per day and when you feel your child is ready for more, build up by adding 10 minute increments.
If you need to adjust with a break in between to help your child refocus, add in a physical activity with movement outdoors (or a different activity indoors) for 10 to 15 minutes and then return to the academics.
If you did several things but missed one thing on the list for that particular day, focus on it the following day. On the days that you find your child is overly distracted or just isn’t “getting it”, try a different approach and adapt as necessary. Sometimes slowing down to create less pressure and backing off for a bit can be much more effective when returning to it again later on with a fresh look and new perspective. Your child might surprise you and breeze through the concepts that seemed to be impossible to them before. There are some situations where you might need to abandon an entire course of action when you find that something just isn’t working and try something new completely. Take time to evaluate and observe your child and see if you can work around what is causing the struggles or frustrations. Don’t be afraid to take a break from it or set it aside and move onto something else in the mean time.
I strongly feel that imperfect progress is better than no progress at all. For this reason, I don’t create any detailed lesson plans. I write things down of things that we have covered or worked on as we go along while keeping in mind of our targeted goal and things that need to be covered each week. I do make a basic and generic schedule for our days. This is helpful to lay out the basics of things we need to fit in and work on in our curriculum so that nothing is left out.
Don’t over-schedule yourself with too many activities or demands. This will cause you and your child feeling overworked, overwhelmed, burnt out or even dreading the idea of the activity completely! It is important not to overdo things. Try to limit yourself to one or at most, two activities at a time. It is important to remember to schedule regular breaks during your homeschooling routine even if you feel that you don’t need to have one. If you or your child is starting to struggle or feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, grumpy etc… it’s time to take a break. Don’t try to rush everything to be done immediately so you can take the rest of the day to do something else. It is always easier to get back into a task after a quick 15 minute breather. A longer day of relaxed and enjoyable learning is always better than a crammed and frustrating short one.
In regards to your scheduling, don’t let your curriculum become a concrete focus of your schedule or push too hard to complete all of a weeks work in one day.
I do not divide our day into specific timed segments for subjects. Time segments are restricting in terms of learning and can interrupt the learning process, especially if he is completely engaged in the current activity. However, if there is something that he needs to work on or if he is doing something he isn’t enjoying, we stop and put it away for another day and move on to something else. I will re-introduce it again another day when I feel he is ready. The longest time I will have him work on something that he isn’t enjoying at all is 10 to 15 minutes maximum. This helps reduce upset and behavioural issues. We do take breaks in between our homeschooling which helps reduce stress. After the break is done there are many times where he is interested in the activity again and we do complete it. If your child is enjoying learning and doing what they are doing something that they are passionate about and have interest in it and would like to continue, then let them! Don’t cut their learning experience short and make the mistake of limiting their time by rushing them through the activity to focus or move on to something that they have less interest in simply to follow a schedule to learn something else that they might not have interest in at that moment. You can always do that at another time and go back to it.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to under-schedule your homeschooling routine. You will be able to determine how many extra experiences your child will be able to learn from at their own time and pace. If you feel that there is more that could be added to your schedule, you can add anything you need from extracurricular and social activities within reason of what makes the most sense in the realities of your lifestyle. A variety of hands on learning experiences, extracurricular activities and socialization are vital to the success of homeschooling and this will give your child (and yourself) different opportunities to interact with others in your local community. This will help you focus having your homeschooling a priority in your life. When you have more time to commit to other things at home, your homeschooling will become far more enjoyable.
A simple and helpful way to keep a good daily schedule and teach your child about the basics of time management is by creating a one-page chart which shows a checklist of their daily tasks that need to be done in picture form accompanied by the word. Clip-art images or photo images can be used to keep the chart colourful and appealing. This can include things such as getting dressed; eating breakfast; brushing teeth; making the bed; tidying up etc… of course you can build up on this to add other things that can be included into your homeschooling schedule. When the task has been done, the child can engage in placing a sticker beside it or colour in the box or Velcro tape it to the other side if it is laminated. This can be posted in the bedroom or living room. This way they can consult the list as they work and check off items as they go along their day. If they haven’t finished their list you can remind them to take a look again and see what task that has been assigned needs to still be done.
By following these practices, I have found quick and efficient ways to organize our homeschooling schedule in a way that works productively for us and hopefully some of these suggestions and tips will be helpful to you!
A Typical Day of What Our Homeschooling is like:
We all wake up at our own pace. If we need rest, we sleep. Sometimes we have days where we wake up earlier than other days, but unless we have an appointment where we need to physically be somewhere, our wake up time varies and we have a very calm and relaxed approach to the start of our day. It is a proven fact that a person that is well rested and feels well will learn and be more productive through the day. It also helps keep my child calm which helps a great deal and makes for a good day! This will make your homeschooling a smooth and enjoyable experience.
When we wake up, my child will start off independently by watching educational videos that contain rhymes, poems, sing-along songs and stories. I will start to prepare breakfast and while he is eating, I will pick out his work for the day (if I haven’t done it the night before) and present it on our “homeschooling table”. Our homeschooling table is a light-weight fold out table that can easily be put away. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to "stay" at the table to do the work, however, that is where it starts - and we go from there.
Our homeschooling schedule is not specific time-slot based. It is based and focused on what work we need to do for that day rather than a set amount of how many minutes. Some things take longer than others.
When it is time to do work, I sit with my child (where ever we end up) and assist and direct until he is done. Especially at the beginning, it is very important to be there to make sure that things are being done correctly and to guide him through the work which after time, he will be able to do things independently.
After we have done some work (usually at the halfway mark of what needs to be done for the day), it is time to take a break.
He has the options to do water play, play-dough, play with toys, do a craft, or play with an educational app on the tablet or the computer. Once he has a few minutes of that, we come back to finish any work that needs to be done and take another break if needed. This is repeated until all of the work for the day has been completed.
Then we will have lunch and we are generally done with our homeschooling for the day or if there is more work to do, we will continue to finish it after lunch. Once the work is done, the table gets folded up and put away. Then it is playtime or we will head on outside (weather permitting).
Daily Living and Life Skills, Safety and Communication Skills are focused on every day. This is the main focus of our curriculum - not academics.
Any academics that are included in our homeschooling are "Daily Living and Life Skills" related.
There are a few weeks when we do a full Monday to Friday of homeschooling however, we generally homeschool 4 days a week (with either a Monday or a Friday off) and we do no “formal/academic” homeschooling on weekends - unless he requests to do so.
If for some reason we have had a hard week such as an illness, or a family emergency, or anything that is out of our control which comes up and we were unable to get the work done that was meant to be finished, we will then take some time to focus on it when things have calmed down.
Our days off are strictly dedicated to working on maintaining positive daily living and healthy life skills, doing family things together to build memorable moments, forming strong relationships with family members and friends, and expanding his learning with fun and creative activities or field trips.