Our Homeschool Schedule – Preschool & Grade Two

I’m not exactly sure when we “finished grade one” and “started grade two” but I think it’s safe to say that we are officially in our second year homeschooling. It will make those “first day of school” photos hard to take because we just aren’t operating on that kind of rigid schedule.

In some ways it surprises me that we are a little more relaxed with our homeschooling, it goes against my personality in some ways.

Even though we don’t have official first and last days of school our days themselves have become quite routine.

When we started homeschooling last year it was very much like school at home. For some reason I had it in my head that we should finish our school work in the mornings, but half way through the year I realized that didn’t flow with our days very well. I realized my kids play really well together in the mornings and I wanted to take advantage of that instead of taking away from that time.

We will generally have our “school time” Monday-Thursday afternoons, part of the reason we homeschool is for flexibility so this is subject to change but for the average day this is the plan.

Today I thought I’d give a glimpse of how our typical homeschool days run and then in the next couple of weeks I’ll share our preschool and grade two plans (which are super simple, and only involve buying a couple of notebooks and any books I want to purchase instead of borrow from the library, so it’s an extremely cheap curriculum I’ve put together).

Update: You can view our four-year-old preschool plan here!

A TYPICAL HOMESCHOOL DAY

5:30am – 12:00pm FOR ME – I usually wake up around 5:30 and the morning is my time to get my work done. I mainly work on any blogging/online activities during this time. This is also when I eat, help the kids with breakfast, read my Bible or any other books, get ready for the day and get some chores done.

7:00am – 12:00pm FOR THE KIDS – Raeca and Ephraim usually wake up around 7:00 and during this time they eat breakfast, get ready for the day, empty the dishwasher and what this time mainly consists of: free play. They spend the majority of this time playing downstairs our outside making up their own games. I recently started reading Free to Learn for the Instagram book club I’m hosting and it has just been confirming this routine. I try to keep out of their play as much as possible, if scraps occur I try to let them work it out.

12:00pm – 1:00pm – Lunch time! We usually listen to an audiobook or an episode of Adventures in Odyssey during this time.

1:00pm – 3:00pm – This is when we take some time to do some formal-ish “school work”. Like I mentioned, I’ll be sharing our plans for what we all do during this time soon!

3:00 pm- 4:30pm – If we need to run any errands we generally do them during this time. If we need more time we will do them in the morning but I try not to pull from the kids’ free time too much, so if at all possible I try to do them during this time. Since we don’t have air conditioning and it’s been a really hot summer this has also been a good time for us to escape our house and go hang out at the spray park. If we don’t have any errands to run this ends up being more free time for the kids and I either do a things around the house or sneak in a little bit of reading time.

4:30pm – 6:30pm – This is usually supper prep for me, the kids usually play during this time. If it’s been a busy day or super hot day and the kids are really tired I’ll let them watch a show or two while I make supper to help them unwind. Jared gets home at 4:30 and usually needs time to relax after work so if the rest of us are doing our own thing during that time that gives him a chance to regroup after his day (#introvertproblems). Then we all eat supper together.

6:30pm – 8:30pm-ish – Depending on the day we usually have a little bit of family time; play a game or go for a bike ride, or do our own thing. In the summer the kids have been going to bed a bit later and waking up later, which helps our house to cool off a little before they go to bed.

8:30pm – 10:00pm – This is the time when Jared and I get to chill after our days. Since we are both introverts we definitely need a little bit of time together or alone after the kids go to bed, 9/10 this means we pop some popcorn and watch something on Netflix, bonus points if the show can make us laugh.

And there you have it! That is our typical Monday-Thursday here! Jared gets every other Friday off so I don’t plan to do school on those days. The Fridays that he is working we sometimes do school and sometimes not, I just play that by ear.

Right now this kind of daily schedule is working really well for us. I’ve found that both my kids do better with more free play time. If we are out too many days in a row or have a day with a lot of errands they get cranky and just want to stay home.

I’d love for you to comment and let me know what a typical homeschool day looks like for your family!