Homeschool: How to Schedule Flexibility into Your Homeschool

Here are some tips that are helpful for scheduling flexibility into your homeschool:

• Set a specific time of day for school to be done that works best for you and your children. Mornings are best for our family. This leaves most afternoons free for other pursuits. Guard this time and refuse to schedule any appointments or outside the house activities during this time. As your kids get older and can be left home for short periods alone and can work on their own, you can schedule medical/dental appointments during this time for yourself if you are comfortable doing that, and school will go on in your absence.

• Take a good hard look at your typical schedule of extra-curricular activities. How many music, dance or other lessons and sports activities are you ferrying your children too? Are you involved in church activities outside of Sunday? Do you need to set some boundaries here and say no to a few things during this season of homeschooling? Too many demands on Mom and the kids outside of the home make for cranky uptight family members.

• Leave two to three afternoons out of your week free if possible and do not schedule outside activities these days. This affords you time to work on projects and chores around the house that tend to get neglected.

• Try to schedule your time out of the house so that you can take care of two or three errands while you are out to save gas and time. For instance, while the kids are at soccer practice, make a run to the grocery store if it is in the same general direction. This saves you from going out another time later.

• When you lay out your curriculum schedule, be sure to schedule in about one floating day a month that has no school work assigned. If your child becomes sick, or you have unexpected company or some other thing that comes up that requires cancellation of school, just rearrange the schedule to use that day. If you don't need to use the floating days, just go ahead and work through them. Then when you do need to take time off the kids will be that much further ahead in their studies.

• Don't be a slave to the curriculum. The curriculum is supposed to be your servant. If there are parts that you think your child has mastered and the curriculum is doing tons of review on that, skip it. If you child is having trouble, stop and go over the trouble spots until they get it. Don't worry about "getting behind".

• Try a different schedule for the school year if it will work for you. Instead of the traditional 9 month school year, we school 11 months out of the year, taking every Friday off. This works well for us. It gives me one full day a week to do other things and the kids don't get so burned out with school work by the end of the week.

• Teach your kids to work with a list. I print out a list of school assignments they are expected to complete each week. It's up to them to get it done by the end of Thursday. If not, then they get to work on Friday or Saturday. They value having Friday off, so they get their work done. By making a list, I don't have to nag them all morning.

These are all the tips on scheduling flexibility I can come up with today. If I think of others I'll add another post later. I hope these will be helpful to you.

Do you have a blog with homeschooling tips? If so, add your link below so others can benefit from it too! Don't forget to add a link back to my blog if you link your's here. Thanks!