Homeschool Curriculum Schedule

During the course of homeschooling, most families find that the schedule they are using is not always working for them. One of the main reasons is that real life gets in the way. Some homeschoolers use this to their advantage by making real life become the lessons of the day. Everything your children need to learn can be taught this way until they reach the upper level math and sciences and some resourceful homeschoolers figure out ways to teach the upper levels this way as well.

If this unschooling approach is just not for you, there are ways to schedule your children's schoolwork and live with life events as well. One way is to use The Full-Year Notebook System to plan your school year. Life events are taken into account when creating the notebook style planner which is unique and appropriate for each child in the family. (Full-Year Notebook works well for all homeschool teaching models including unschoolers!)

Considering the uniqueness of each of your children is vitally important. Some children need a highly structured environment while others are suffocated by a rigid structure. Children with self-discipline need to know what assignments are to be accomplished each day but have the ability to decide for themselves what time of day each of the tasks needs to be completed. Other children need to be told when to do what and benefit from a schedule where each 10-15 minute block of time is scheduled for the entire day.

Some parents are reluctant to allow different scheduling for each of their children. They cite reasons such as favortism, chaos in the home, and difficulty working with different schedules as reasons that all children in the family should be on the same schedule.

I would like at address each of these concerns. Starting with favortism. It has been my experience that children who are treated exactly the same, even though they are unique and different from each other, are more likely to believe their siblings are being shown favortism simply because the sibling who likes that particular thing thrives while the other siblings feel slighted. They all received the same thing or the same attention but it was only appropriate for one of the siblings. Each child in the family should have the opportunity to have his or her time as the favorite child which each child will feel once the parents are working with their differences instead of against them.

The next item is that parents think having different schedules will create chaos. To think of having three different children on three different schedules seems impossible on the surface but once we look at the advantages, it might not seem so chaotic. Each child will work better and accomplish more if they are allowed to function within their own personal comfort zone. One goal of independent scheduling is to develop independent workers and if they are using the schedule that works best for them, they will be more independent. Parents can become private tutors instead of taskmasters. Allowing independent study time does not mean that families can't still participate in group activities or group learning sessions.

Lastly, working with different schedules is not as difficult as one might think. The different schedules can free up the parent to have more personal time with each child. Instead of feeling pulled in three different directions throughout the school day, parents will now have time to work inside a personalized learning plan for each child. Use of a master calendar will help everyone to schedule their personal time without interferring with family time or group study sessions.

Here are a couple of examples of homeschool curriculum schedules.
Schedule #1 - Daily Schedule

All Assignments are due by 4:00 Friday

For an excellent resource to help you organize each of your children's schoolwork, see The Full-Year Notebook System a homeschool curriculum schedule planner which works with each of your children's unique learning styles and keeps your family on schedule even when life gets in the way.