A Simple Homeschool Schedule for Parents Who Are Struggling

So… how was the first week of homeschooling? Are you feeling comfortable with your new role as a school teacher yet?

As we move into our 2nd week of self-quarantine here in Hawaii, I know the majority of you are finding this “homeschooling thing” to be a daunting task, especially if you;

1) HAVE a homeschooling schedule already set up by your child’s school;

2) DON’T have a homeschooling schedule set up by your child’s school;

As I mentioned in my article “Homeschooling: Advice for Hawaii Parents Affected by Covid-19 School Closings”, finding the right balance with homeschooling will take a lot of patience, especially if you have more than one child, have children of different ages or attend different schools. I’ve been homeschooling since 2014, and have tried every single program, online course, online school, tutoring and co-op out there – you name it I tried it. Through these experiences, I finally came up with a schedule that was a good fit for my children and our family dynamic in general. We create new schedules every month, only updating any online courses if it has changed. Here’s what a simple homeschool schedule looks like in our family.

Four Days A Week

We only homeschool 4 days a week, Tuesday – Fridays. Mondays we keep for outdoor excursions. For example, we would normally go to the beach, museum, snorkeling, hiking, volunteer duty – anything that takes us outside doing something different. Since we can’t go outdoors now, we try to at the very least drive around the island.

Late Start in the Morning

Our homeschooling begins at 10am to allow the kids enough time to be lazy, wake-up, make their breakfast, clean and get ready for the day without any stress. This also allows mom to have her coffee in the morning and I can get some reading and writing done before schooling begins.

Our Weekdays Are SLAM Focused

Our weekdays look like this and on repeat, starting on Tuesdays;

S – Science / L – Language / A – Arts & Music / M – Math

All this means is our learning for that day is focused only on that topic from 10am – 3pm. We work through workbooks purchased from Barnes & Noble as well as free online Math programs from Khan Academy.

Five Hour Days, Lots of Breaks

I learned that my children can’t stay focused longer than 45 minutes. This means I have to change their activity every hour or if it is a long activity, like cooking or science I have to include time for breaks.

Leverage Online Programs

As my daughter gets older there are certain subjects I cannot teach and this is when I seek tutors or online courses such as outschool.com for help. For example, she needed to study literature so we signed her up for a 6-week course where she read a book a week with other online students. My son needed help with decimals so I hired a tutor through Outschool to help him as well. Both children also take Japanese through verbling.com once week online.

Finally, let’s be honest here. We are all experiencing a worldwide tragedy that will likely change us all – forever. The only thing you should be worrying about is the health and safety of your family. Let homeschooling be a simple addition to your daily quarantined life and you’ll find it’s not so bad after all.

Be kind to yourself and to your kids, they are smarter than you know.