Finding the best homeschool routine is not easy. Each of us has different needs and lifestyle. My routine may not look anything like your routine and that’s o.k.
Why? Because each homeschool family is unique.
For a homeschool routine to work well for our family, you need to pay attention to your family rhythms.
Routines will come more naturally and are much easier to follow than schedules. A good homeschool routine follows your family natural rhythm. You can’t force a homeschool routine but you can gently weave your learning time into your daily life.
I am not an early bird and neither are my kids. A homeschool schedule starting at 8 am would be unrealistic and unnatural to us.
We were able to get so much done on the first day. No, we didn’t do everything we had planned to. That’s the beauty of following a flexible homeschool routine instead of a schedule. If I had set a fixed schedule I would be feeling miserable for failing on the very first day. Instead, we followed our own natural family rhythm and routine and it did not matter what time we started.
You can peek into our first day back into homeschool video here:
Here is a glimpse of our homeschool routine.
Morning Time:
- Bible
- Prayer
- Character/Habit Training
Our homeschool mornings routine begins with B&B: Bible and breakfast. This is the best way to start our day as a family, putting God first. Starting our days with Bible and prayers, help our children to develop a habit of daily morning devotionals.
We focus on teaching our kids one character trait or habit every 6-8 weeks. This makes a huge difference in our homeschool. Teaching our children the habits of attention and obedience, helped our homeschool to run a lot smoother.
Table Time:
- Math
- Language Arts
- History/Geography
- Science
Our table time begins with math. My kids’ minds are fresh and they are fully awake. We teach Language Arts and Math daily.
Language Arts takes the biggest part of our table time. We do reading, dictation, spelling, handwriting, vocabulary, and grammar daily.
We alternate between History/Geography and Science. Twice a week we do History/Geography and twice a week we do Science.
Reading aloud is a big part of our daily homeschool routine. We leave our reading for last as a nice way to transition from Math or Science into our lunch break and quiet time.
Tea Time:
- Poetry
- Piano Wizard
- Music Appreciation
- Art Appreciation
- Nature Studies
- Foreign Language
This is my kids’ favorite time of the day. During Tea Time we regroup in the living room or dining room for snacks, tea, or hot cocoa.
We have fun listening to poetry, discussing art pictures or creating some art pieces. We also, learn about the life of famous artists, inventors, or composers, and even study Hebrew.
Once a week we go for a nature walk and have tea and cookies on our way back. If we couldn’t finish a read aloud earlier in the day, this is a good opportunity to catch up our reading too. Please note that I don’t teach these every day, only poetry, but for the rest, we use a loop schedule.
Keep in mind that routines should always be refreshed. Each season and each homeschool year may look very different than others. As your family changes, so will your routines change as well.
How is your homeschool routine working for you?
Do you need to tweak yours to fit your family better?
I hope these ideas can help you create your best homeschool routine.
A version of this post was previously published at the Sonlight Blog.
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I have looked through this post 5 or 6 times and I can’t find any kind of link to the schedule. Am I completely missing it? Lol. Help please. This looks like the perfect layout for a schedule for our family!
Thank you for sharing how many hours do you spend in “school” each day?
Hi Christine! Right now, with a 5th grader, a 7th grader and a 8th grader, it’s taking us about 2-3 hours total. Usually 1 1/2 hour reading together then another hour or so for them to do their personal Bible study, Language Arts and Math.