Our Daily Homeschool Rhythm

We originally tried to stick to a schedule but it just wasn’t working for us. I’m homeschooling a third-grader and now have two busy toddlers so our day needed flexibility and the ability to adjust where needed without feeling overwhelmed or stressed. If we didn’t get to it today, no worries! We have truly learned to pivot in our homeschool journey and hence we developed a daily rhythm.

Here’s how our rhythm goes:

Our school day starts anywhere from 7 am to 9 am. It really just depends on my little one and her morning mood. There are times she wakes up and jumps right into her warm-up or there are times I have to coach her and say it’s time to start the school day.

I am fortunate enough to where my husband works from home and makes sure we can get in a solid 2 hours of one on one †ime. This is when we focus on Language Arts and Math. Depending on the material those subjects can last anywhere from 10 mins each to about 30 minutes each. If we’re doing a writing workshop that day, it can take up a whole hour!

At some point, we squeeze in a snack break because no one likes to work and be hungry, and depending on the time we’ll do a quick activity or break for free play. It’s usually the latter.

We have free play and lunch. Lunch is when I’ll try to squeeze in some read-aloud time. We have been terrible with reading aloud this year although we all enjoy it, including my toddlers.

At 1 pm my husband breaks for lunch and takes the toddlers down for a nap. Now, this is where we get flexible. Sometimes we only have 45 minutes and sometimes we have 2 hours and 45 minutes. It just depends on how long my toddler naps.

The good news is, we do Language Arts and Math in the mornings and that gets done every day. History is done 2 days out of the week and Science the other 3 days. Science and History are the subjects we leave as flexible because those are the ones that get done during nap time.

We get the heavy stuff out of the way first and then if there are videos or a fun craft we are still able to do them if the toddlers wake up. The toddlers enjoy the videos and crafts as well, sometimes.

We always end our day by 3! Usually, we are done by 2:30 but we are for sure done by 3. If we didn’t get to it today, that is okay! Fridays typically are lighter days for workload so I also leave that day for anything we need to “catch-up” on. If we still don’t get to it, it goes to next week.

I learned very quickly in our homeschool journey to go with the flow and not be a prisoner †o time because there is always time.

We loop in geography and unit studies to keep things interesting and for either of us not to get stuck in a rut. I do this every 2 weeks or so.

We have some fun things we’re going to start looping in such as cursive writing, typing, and an artist unit study in the new year so stay tuned for more on that!

If you want to learn a little more about our third-grade curriculum choices, you can view them here. If you want to learn a little more about how to get started homeschooling then you can read it here.

As always, let me know if you have any questions!

love & light,

Jalesa