Homeschool Schedule Ideas with FREE template

I share some practical tips and ideas to organise your homeschool schedule based on your lifestyle and family dynamic. You can also download my free homeschool schedule template below!

Want to structure your day with some homeschool schedule ideas? I share some ideas for different age brackets below.

But first, I want to share a little about where we are at as a family.

I am a huge fan of routine and having structure to our week. And it all comes down to planning. I find that when I don’t plan our week in advance, everything goes to shambles! And I feel disoriented as the week goes on. Anyone else feel this way?

However, we totally have flexible routines. I feel like you have to have flexibility when it comes to having little kids. But the beauty of routine is that we have anchor times throughout our day where my kids know what is happening.

For the families just starting homeschooling and want to know how to structure your day well, I’m going to share what we have learnt has worked best for us during our homeschooling week. And I’m going to share how you can factor in various age groups to your schedule, based on what ages of kids you have.

1. Structuring your day with infants-small children

This is the hardest stage to have the most structure in your day. But it’s the most crucial time to set structure to your homeschooling, because kids are so adaptable at this age.

I currently have a six year old, four year old, 18 month old and I’m pregnant with our fourth child. It has been an interesting year of homeschooling, because there has been a lot of moving parts, from being really sick in my first trimester to dealing with a toddler who just wants me for most of the time. So our days have looked different depending on the season.

There have been some anchor times that have not changed. These anchor times will allow for flexibility throughout the rest of the day, so they are important in adding some predictability to your day.

Here is our homeschool schedule for infants-small children:

• 6.30-7.30am: Wake up time / Breakfast
• 8am: Get ready for the day (get changed, brush teeth, tidy hair)
• 8.30am: Morning chores (for me and my 6 and 4 year old)
• 9am: Morning prayer/devotional
• 9.10am: Literature/writing
• 9.45am: Handwriting
• 10am: Morning tea break/play time
• 10.30am: Maths
• 11am: Science/History/Geography/Physical Education
• 12pm: Lunch
• 12.30pm: Read-a-loud
• 1pm: Quiet independent play time
• 2pm: Free time
• 5.30pm: Dinner
• 6.30pm: Bed time routine
• 7pm: Bed

Structuring your homeschool week with extra-curricular activities/outings

I’ve found that in having little kids, you’ll want to stay home for at least half of the week and organise extra-curricular activities and outings at most, three times a week.

If you have a four day homeschool week, you can always organise outings on your day off and your extra-curricular activities in the afternoons/evenings if you can.

I currently work at my church two days a week, including on our homeschool day off, so my kids go to their grandparents’ house. Because we don’t have that extra day to do what we want, our week is fairly eventless. We have homeschool co-op on Wednesdays, swimming lessons and ballet lessons on Thursdays and that’s as far as it goes for extra curricular activities at this stage.

My advice would be to get your homeschooling done before scheduling anything else for the day. I learnt this the hard way. I would schedule things in the mornings and when we got home, my daughter was too tired to concentrate on her learning and my son would only nap in the car and be extra clingy in the afternoon. So we schedule our day around our homeschooling in the mornings.

Structuring your day with upper Primary School-High School children

Even though I’m not at the stage with just older children between 6 and 18, I have friends who have homeschooled older children and have learned what works for them.

At this stage, extra curricular activities are important, in fact, I would say crucial for their social development and skillset of choice. Mothers with older children often tell me how physically exhausting the little years, but how socially demanding and busy life gets with older children. I can imagine how true that would be!

As children get older, there is less hands-on learning and more independent learning. However, there definitely needs to be an element of one-on-one tutoring type teaching that requires time and intention.

When I was a teacher, I also did one-on-one tutoring with a couple of high school students. I remember how much preparation I needed to do in order to tutor them effectively. I imagine this would be the same for parents with older children.

In the little years, the lessons are often simple and do not take a lot of preparation on our part, but in the older years, there’s time that goes into research and preparation.

With that in mind, I would imagine the homeschool part of the day would take a little longer than in the little years, so I would want to clear the whole day for homeschooling and then leave the late afternoons/evenings for extra curricular activities.

Homeschool Schedule idea for upper Primary/High School aged Children:

• 7-8am: Wake up/Breakfast
• 8.30am: Get ready
• 9am: Chores
• 9.30am: Morning prayer/devotion
• 9.40am: School work
• 11.30am: Lunch break
• 12.30pm: School work
• 2.30pm: Free time
• 4pm onwards: Extra curricular activities
• 6pm: Dinner
• 7pm: Unwind

Homeschooling with the end in mind

Like me, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed when you’ve had a hard week of missed naps, toddler meltdowns, skipped lessons, sickness and so on. It gets easy to miss the end goal in mind.

For us, we homeschool our kids to have more time with them, instill our family and Christian values in a deep and meaningful way and give them more autonomy in what they learn and how they learn!

If we’ve done any of that in one day, then we are winning! I have no doubt that they will grow up and excel in whatever they do, because the overall vision of why we started homeschooling was not ruined by one poorly structured week, but rather, the accumulation of memories made, lessons learned and values instilled.

Are you on the fence about homeschooling?

I share 5 steps in deciding to homeschool here.

Want a free Homeschool Schedule Template?

Download here

I’d love to know what your homeschool schedule looks like? Does it make a difference when you have routine or are you a go-with-the-flow family? Let me know!