Organize Your Homeschooling Day
Organize Your Homeschooling Day: Stay On Schedule
Just because you homeschool your children doesn't mean that school should be taken lightly. Having school at different times each day will only facilitate chaos. Instead, have a set time every day that you and your children will sit down for school. Get up early enough so you can get everyone fed and dressed before that time starts, and don't allow yourself to push it back to accomodate other plans. Although you don't have to be rigid about homeschooling, you'll thank yourself for setting a schedule.
Organize Your Homeschooling Day: Pick the Schedule Yourself
Many homeschooling parents make the mistake of letting their kids decide what they will study and when. You'll quickly discover that the freedom to choose is too much for most children, and that you're better off making those decisions yourself. It's also best to start out with the most difficult subject - math, for example - and work up through the subjects that your children enjoy the most and find the easiest. Otherwise, the temptation to put off a difficult or uninteresting subject will be too great at the end of the school day.
Organize Your Homeschooling Day: Monitor the Interruptions
Although it pays off to be flexible in homeschooling, keep a close watch on all interruptions. You can also move something around to accomodate a one-time event, but be diligent about putting things back on schedule. For example, maybe a documentary is coming on Animal Planet about a subject you are studying with your children in science. Take a break to watch the half-hour or hour-long program, but things immediately back on schedule to make up for the time lost.
Organize Your Homeschooling Day: Set Up a Homeschool Room
If it's possible, set up a homeschooling room that can be used exclusively for school. If you continually plan your study time at the kitchen table or in one of the kids' rooms, you'll find that distractions will eat up your time. Further, you'll be depressed when the school day ends and you have to clear the table to get ready to cook dinner.
Organize Your Homeschooling Day: Use a Day Planner
This might seem like a no-brainer, but I know many homeschooling parents who don't use any kind of a date book, day planner or agenda to organize their days. Even a wallet-size calendar is better than nothing. Use your day planner not only to plan each day, but also to record accomplishments. Make notes about concepts with which your children have trouble and brainstorm ways to explain them more thoroughly. At the end of every day, you should have a game plan for the following day, but be sure not to plan your lessons too far in advance. One of the advantages of homeschooling is the ability to move at the pace with which your children understand lessons. If you plan too early, you might find yourself well ahead or behind the original schedule, which will simply be discouraging.
Published by Steve Thompson
Steve is a full-time freelance writer. In addition to the more than 3,000 articles he's written for AC, he has also written articles and other materials for more than 100 happy clients. He enjoys writing abo... View profile
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- Stay on the schedule you set for yourself.
- Keep interruptions to a minimum, and go right back to your schedule when they're over.
- Use a day planner and set up a room exclusively for homeschooling.
5 Comments
Post a CommentThank you for your comments, everyone, and your alternative viewpoints. There's a difference between organization and rigidity, something that I obviously didn't get across in my article. My wife and I are very schedule-oriented, and so are our children, so this type of organization works best for us. However, some families are more flexible. Also, as Pattie points out, letting your child guide you can be beneficial. It just depends on family and personality dynamics. Again, thanks for commenting, and it's nice to see how many parents successfully homeschool their children.
wow. You do have to be orgnaized to homeschool, but I find that allowing the children to guide you is of utmost importance. For my OCD child, letting him decide the order of school work helps as he doesn;t get frustrated and freak out. My oldest can't start off witht eh hardest subject first-- it ruins his whole day! Then the rest of his work just is not up to par. Part of the joy of homeschooling is being able to go off on a tangent and really get into a subject that the children love.... spend more time on it than they would get at a public school....
I should rephrase that. We were allowed to have computers in our own BEDrooms for high school. For junior high, you got an alternative setting. Some did their schoolwork in the breakfast nook, some (including me) did it in a room we designated as the "classroom", and some did it in an extra room we'd added on to the house previously.
Actually, my parents did homeschool us and we had a set schedule for more work. I think part of it, though, was that we're 6 kids and the youngest was born when we'd been homeschooling all of a few months. It's harder to pack up and take kids somewhere when you have that many. We did manage to have a lot of fun doing things, though. I will comment that the kitchen table doesn't necessarily have to be a distracting school setting. My parents kept us at the kitchen table until we started junior high. Then they used separate rooms for each of us. By the time we were in high school (three of us, including myself, have already graduated) we were doing internet school and were allowed to have computers in our rooms for privacy and quiet to work.
Have you ever homeschooled? I have been homeschooling for four years, and the only thing I halfway agree with is monitoring distractions. Many people think that because you are homeschooling you can be flexible and able to take care of thier needs.
In my house, comfort, flexibility, and predictability reign. A schedule? Ha! I would never pass up an impromptu experiment for times tables.