Every schedule planned for a homeschooling family will differ from the next. No two children are alike and so no two homeschooling families are alike. What suits the needs of your friends may not always work out for you. So stick to a homeschool schedule that takes into account all the different aspects that you need to focus on. There are essentially three elements to a homeschool schedule – overall planning, lesson planning and co-curricular activities planning.
Overall Planning
This planning creates a basic framework for what all you want to achieve in a specific school year. Treat this as a general guideline for your lesson planning and a check point for your extra curricular activities. This does not have to go into many details, just the broad goals are good here. Of course if you can put them into writing and refer to them once a month you will know just how far you have come in the school year.
Lesson Planning
This is something no teacher enjoys, but like the knife of a surgeon it is a necessary evil. Here you plan out the day to day lessons that will be covered in the homeschool classroom. You will have to refer to the curriculum to see what needs to be covered and then divide up the school semester accordingly. Now hash it down to a monthly schedule followed by a weekly to do list. The more details you add here, the easier it will be to stick to the original plan.
Co-curricular Activity Planning
The extra activities you plan can again be split up into daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, half yearly, and annual events. Some basic form of physical exercise needs to happen daily, but organized sports can be done about once a week. You can have a weekly field trip to a park and a monthly trip to a museum. A quarterly road trip to the grandparents in a neighboring city can also be a great learning event. As you can see, there is a lot to plan for co-curricular activities as well. Don’t be too hard on yourself if at the end of the year you haven’t been able to do it all. There is always next year!
