The Organized Homeschool Day

Organization is key for having a successful homeschool routine. If you get too busy with activities outside of the home, you will find yourself overwhelmed. Time away from the home can also lead to clutter because you haven't taken the time to do your housecleaning and organization of the paperwork that homeschool naturally produces.

I sometimes wonder how other homeschooling moms have it together. How do they do it all? I quickly learned it came down to schedule and routine. After 16 years of homeschooling, I can assure you that it's nothing more than that. Your schedule and routine will keep you on track and keep things running smoothly.

Take a look at your current average day. I'm sure that you will see that you do have a routine. Your wake up time, mealtime and bedtime are probably relatively close to the same times every day. Those are part of your routine. You will soon find that the routine is comfortable, almost automatic in your day.

You remember how your baby's routine sleep cycle and awake times brought them security. It's the same thing for toddlers and preschoolers as they begin to live in their routine and know what to expect during the day. Things go much smoother when they know that things are about to change, a different activity, time to eat, leaving to run errands. This sort of thing is much easier when they know the routine and how in a few minutes, it will change.

My children always seem to get hungry around the same time, sleepy at the same time, and crabby if that sleep didn't come. These times began to show a pattern, and this routine I needed to work with, rather than work against in our homeschooling day. What amazed me is that even though they couldn't tell time, their body let them know what "time" it was because of an established routine.

We kept our basic routine the same, sleep and awake times, and mealtime. What I added were our homeschool schedule into this routine. I let the boys have breakfast, then a bit of free time as I cleaned up the breakfast mess and prepare for our first day's lessons. We would work on the same classes at the same time each day, so they knew what to expect from our homeschool day. When they began to show signs of lunch needing to arrive, we would slow the pace down so I could prepare lunch while they had some free time. After lunch, and sometimes during lunch, I would read to them. This would bring them naturally into the next part of our routine, naps.

I have a schedule for the days we have homeschool lessons, and that day of the week that I need to run errands, plan field trips, visits to the library, or do other outside activities that are not part of a typical homeschool day. That enabled me to plan everything else around our homeschool day, which kept us on track and in our routine for four days of the week.

We would also plan the beginning and end of our homeschool year, vacations, holidays and other activities that we wanted to do as a family. It was very important to me that we didn't have to set school aside on those days, so I simply created our homeschool schedule around those days. This eliminated a lot of hassle later, when we wanted to do something else and I had lessons planned for that day.

We also would take time to slow down and do "life lessons" as they arose in our day. If the boys would see a hummingbird, and want to know more about them, we would do a brief study and search on the internet. We would watch videos and then make a hummingbird feeder. It's amazing how hungry they really are to learn, if given the freedom to do so. I still believe very strongly in textbooks and learning that way, but teaching them early to research something they want to learn about is a skill that I think everyone needs to have to succeed in life. It's vital to teach them these skills while they are hungry to learn.

Having a routine and a schedule is very important to your homeschool day, but do not forget that sometimes you need to be flexible to meet the needs of your children or family for that day. You rule your routine and schedule do not let it rule you.