Scheduling a Homeschooling Day
Now that you’re homeschooling, you and your children don’t HAVE to get up at the crack of dawn. It’s been proven that many older kids shouldn’t have to start school too early in the day as they don’t start being really aware of things until around 10 AM. For many children, 9 AM is a great time to get up and start their day. Other kids feel better if they’re up by 7 AM. You now have the freedom to follow the internal clock of your children.
How to start the day with home scheduling?
Start the day when they’re more alert, awake, and less grumpy.
Make sure that they have a decent breakfast. People think much better when their blood sugar isn’t low. That doesn’t mean fill them up with tons of sugar. Many times something like fruit, cheese, and an English muffin is perfect along with juice and milk. You want them to have a well-balanced meal.
By the time they’ve finished with breakfast, they should be more awake and ready to begin their lessons. A good way to balance their lessons is by starting them off with something they love doing. When they complete this subject, let them take a bit of a stretching break. This is a great time for bathroom visits and getting something to drink.
Next, tackle one of the less favorite subjects. Those have to be done, too, whether all of you hate it or not. You’ll probably be hard-pressed to find someone that actually finds geography fascinating, but it’s typically a required course in the most school curriculum. So you and your kids both do your best to make it as non-boring as possible. However, if geography is your children’s most detested subject, mid-morning is the perfect time to throw it in. They’re wide awake now and energized from the fun they had with one of their favorite subjects. Take advantage of it.
Depending on how long it takes to do those first two classes, it may be close to lunchtime by the end of the second class. If not, let them have a few minutes of free time for reading, listening to music, or whatever they want to do. Following lunch, it’s time for another favorite subject. The reason you want to put these subjects later in the afternoon is that this will keep your children alert willingly. Afternoon hours bring about tiredness and sleepiness that their boring subjects can play on and put them to sleep. If they’re totally disinterested in a subject, you can bet they’re not going to retain much of it.
Try to get most of the work done during school hours so that you won’t be assigning homework very often. You can also choose what days and hours that you want to do homeschooling according to the schedule that works best for you. That’s one of the many great things about homeschooling.