3 Tips for Creating a Personalized Homeschooling Schedule

It's a good idea to have a basic plan but also to be flexible and willing to adapt each week. (Lokana/Shutterstock)

Homeschooling parents far and wide are planning their schedules for next year, and if you ask a dozen parents to describe their schedule, you’ll undoubtedly get a dozen different answers. One of the greatest perks of homeschooling is the freedom to create personalized schedules that are tailor-made to your family’s lifestyle and preferences.

So, let’s get started.

What Is Traditional and Personalized Homeschooling?

Some homeschoolers prefer the traditional public school schedule: August through June. It’s familiar and comforting and one less item to check off your to-do list. It also gives parents and kids a long summer break to relax, play, regroup, and plan for next year.

Also, since you don’t have to follow this schedule to a T, you can tweak it to meet your specific needs. You can take off on a Friday or a Monday for a long weekend here and there, go on a field trip on a Saturday, watch a documentary in the evening, and log those spontaneous cooking lessons with Grandma on Thanksgiving Day as school hours.

However, it can be freeing to create a more comfortable, personalized homeschooling schedule that’s a better fit for your family. For example, some families do four-day weeks, some work for a specified number of weeks, take one week off, then work for several more weeks and so on, and still others homeschool year-round.

Another thing to consider is daily start and stop times. Since you aren’t governed by the school district’s schedule, you can freely choose when to begin and end each day based on your family’s lifestyle, preferences, and temperaments. Want to be the cool, hip homeschool mom? Start your day at 10 a.m. or noon, if you like. You can even work in the evenings to accommodate your teenage night owls.

Plan a Basic Year-At-A-Glance

It’s helpful to sketch out a basic plan for the year. First, mark holidays, birthdays, vacations, medical appointments, volunteer work, and special occasions such as graduations and anniversaries, etc. Then, note school days (see your state’s homeschool law for number of days required), seasonal field trips, unit studies, extracurricular activities, and any required assessments, such as standardized tests.

I always found it helpful to have a year-long calendar marked with school days. That way, I knew where we were in the school year and if we were behind, ahead, or on track.

A simple one-page yearly calendar is all you need. You can even color-code the dates; using a distinct color marker for each of your categories, such as school days, holidays, days off, field trips, and so forth.

Remember, though, that this is only a guide; you can change anything or everything at any time.

Plan Weekly Schedules

Now, let’s talk about weekly schedules.

With your year-at-a-glance as a reference, plan a week’s worth of lessons for each child. At the end of the week, assess how the week went. Ask the kids for their feedback. Do you need to make any changes? If not, I recommend planning two or three weeks ahead. This gives you ample time to borrow library books, research helpful websites, and gather any other supplies you might need. You can always go back and make any necessary changes, especially if your kids weren’t able to complete all the work, need to review, or worked ahead.

It’s important to note here that your weekly schedules don’t have to look the same each week. Yes, that’s right! You may want to have a four-day week, then a five-day week plus a field trip on Saturday, and the next week can be four or five days long. Also, you do not have to teach every subject (or every core subject) every day, as long as you comply with your state’s homeschool law.

Remember to add in practical life skills, music lessons, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours, because these all count as school. Also, leave space, perhaps in the afternoons, for interest-led learning. This allows your kids to dig deeper into topics of interest and is a powerful motivator for learning in general. Additionally, it’s a good rule of thumb to plan extra lessons and activities. Enrichment activities such as educational card games, logic and jigsaw puzzles, tangrams, origami, and foreign language games work well. If your kids finish early or you need to attend to an important task, you’ll be assured your kids are engaged in something worthwhile.

Bonus tip: For older kids, design your weekly schedules as a checklist so kids can simply check off each lesson as it’s completed.

The beauty of homeschooling is the great flexibility to make your program your own. The closer your schedule matches your family’s unique lifestyle and needs, the more successful your homeschool will be.