6 Ways You’re Messing Up Your Homeschool Schedule

12 min read
6 Ways You’re Messing Up Your Homeschool Schedule

Are you looking to make an impact with your homeschool schedule? Let’s face it, when creating your homeschool schedule, it can be hard to figure out if your plan will work in reality or not. 

When creating a homeschool schedule, you want to make sure that you’re planning your time wisely in order to make the biggest impact in your child’s education. 

However, even when we have the best intentions, a homeschool schedule can fall flat. Here are six of the most common mistakes people make when they are creating their homeschool schedule!

Over-Scheduling

homeschool daily schedule
As you plan your home school schedule, it is important to understand how full you can make your schedule before it becomes overwhelming to you and your child. Over-scheduling a child’s homeschool routine has multiple risks, including creating too much work for you to review/grade and overburdening your child with
. When kids have too much stuff they’re trying to juggle, studies have shown that their retention actually goes down.

To pack the biggest punch when it comes to your child’s education, you must pick and choose the most valuable uses of your time to maximize the learning that is happening in your home. 

Take a look at the following two schedules:

Schedule A Schedule B
8:30-9:30 am Calendar, Weather, and Quick Review 8:30-9:00 Quiet Reading
9:35-10:30 Math 9:05-10:00 English/Math
10:30-11:30 Science 10:05-11:00 Art
11:35-12:00 Lunch 11:05-11:35 Lunch
12:05-1:30 English 11:40-12:40 Science/Social Studies
1:35-2:00 Art 12:40-1:15 Quiet Reading
2:05-3:05 Social Studies 1:20-2:00 PE/Outside Time
3:10-3:30 Review 2:05-3:00 Review of the Day’s Activities

Both schedules show how different a schedule can be structured, but it also shows that there are different ways to use time effectively.

One of the major advantages of homeschooling a child is that you are in the driver’s seat when scheduling your daily activities.
, so it is important to structure your days somewhat similar when planning your homeschool schedule.

As these two examples demonstrate, there are countless ways that you can structure your day that will work best for your family. However, one of the biggest mistakes that a parent can make when creating their homeschool schedule is by overfilling their daily schedule with too much. There are two places in your homeschool schedule where you need to be intentional about not overfilling. First, the overall daily schedule should not be filled with too many tasks. Next, the time blocked content areas should not be overfilled with activities. 

The Perfect Daily Homeschool Schedule

homeschool calendar

When creating the perfect home school schedule, you must first define what time your school day will start, end, break for lunch, and build in any recesses. Once you have laid the foundation for your schedule, look closely at your child’s daily responsibilities, meaning and how much  mustyour child must complete in a day to stay on track. If their science curriculum uses one day a week to complete a lab, maybe you only need to place science into your schedule a few days per week, but their blocks are longer. 

If your child is really interested in music, you might want to put practice into the schedule every day versus once a week. Since you are the author of your homeschool schedule, you have the power to fine-tune it to meet your family’s needs.

Most homeschool schedules are best with built-in quiet time, independent work time, and outdoor time. These brain breaks are critical to your homeschool schedule’s effectiveness, but it also helps temper the temptations to over-schedule your day. 

The Magic Number of Activities

When planning your daily activities, you must take care of really discerning how much time an activity will take. Just because reading a short passage and answering questions may only take you five minutes, ,it could take 10-15 minutes for a child.

When you put on your scheduling glasses and look at activity through the eyes of your child, you might realize that while you want to accomplish 3-4 activities during a 60-minute time block, that you might only be able to tackle 1-2.

If you take the time to schedule your day with these considerations in mind, you will naturally not overfill your schedule. 

Skipping Breaks

Studies also show that students need a brain break every 13-25 minutes (depending on age). These brain breaks are 2-5 minutes long and take students away from direct instruction and pivot their attention to something different. This could be a coloring activity that goes along with the lesson. Or it could be getting up and taking a bathroom break. Or, my personal favorite, a
.

Whatever you choose, make sure that you include these breaks into your schedule so that your child has the breaks that they crave.

Committing to a Specific Curriculum

homeschool schedule ideas

It can be easy to think that a curriculum is a one size fits all solution to your homeschool curriculum. One of the best parts of homeschool is that you can piecemeal your curriculum to make it work for your child and your family’s needs. 

One of the biggest issues that parents run into when building their homeschool curriculum is that they think they must stick with one homeschool curriculum after they research the vast library of curriculums available. The problem with this method is that if your child struggles with a particular topic, gets bored with a specific unit, or simply doesn’t work with the chosen curriculum, you (and your child) can feel stuck with your choice. 

When building your homeschool curriculum, consider the value that would be added to your daily schedule by adding various curriculums to meet the needs of your student. If you find that an independent resource will give your child a more complete understanding of a topic, then take the leap and grab the resource! You are not required to use a curriculum in it’s entirety– it’s not law!

Looking for a resource to add to curriculum to increase your student’s understanding? ArgoPrep offers complete supplemental workbooks to help your student tackle their schoolwork and learn complex topics easily!

Don’t believe us? ArgoPrep is the preferred homeschool supplemental workbook for thousands of parents.

Copying Others Homeschool Schedule

In the era of at-home learning, homeschool classrooms, curriculums, and schedules are even more popular than ever before. Thanks to social media, it can be easy to fall prey to the idea that your schedule is not as beautiful, instagrammable, or unique enough.

One of the biggest considerations you should make when creating your homeschool schedule is whether or not you are copying what works for somebody else.  Just because somebody has a schedule that is

  • overflowing with activities
  • filled with beautiful art projects
  • built with daily field trips
  • complete self-directed by the student
  • etc.

It doesn’t mean that it is an ideal schedule for your family. When you are creating your homeschool schedule, it is important to take an individualized approach to your planning to make it work for your family. 

When you are intentional about not copying somebody else, you reduce the risk of making a schedule that doesn’t work. Then you’ll increase the likelihood of a strong and effective homeschool schedule. 

Not Building in Time for Review

homeschool routine

As educators, both homeschool and classroom, we like to move kids forward. We understand how much there is to do. While the todo list will always be long, it is critical that you set time aside each day to review and correct what your child is learning.

This is even more important for students who are in middle or high school, since they are more likely to be working independently. Build in time each day (or once in the morning and once in the afternoon even) to review completed work. Next revisit specific topics that your child didn’t master.

When we get so hung up in moving the student forward, we are sacrificing the quality of their instruction. If you want homeschooling to work for your family, you must include time each day to review, remediate, and reflect. 

Do you find that your student struggles with a specific topic? Or that they need a different type of review in order to reinforce topics? That’s where ArgoPrep is ready to help! With our complete programs, your child can get high-quality practice workbooks, online explanations of every problem, and more! 

ArgoPrep offers workbooks for all ages and stages, including assessments such as the SAT.

If you want to create a bigger impact with your review time, grab an ArgoPrep workbook today!

Not Adjusting for Changes

year round homeschool schedule

So you have created your homeschool schedule and put it to work? Great! But maybe you have also noticed that your schedule isn’t working as well as you have planned.

One of the worst mistakes that somebody can make when creating a homeschool schedule is noticing that the schedule isn’t working that well, and not doing anything about it. Build time into your planning and prep regularly to adjust for your needs in homeschooling. 

These changes could be permanent, such as adjusting the time your child works or how long they work for. Or it could be temporary to accommodate a specific unit of study. Either way, when you adjust your schedule, you are using the benefit of the homeschool curriculum to help it meet the needs of the student.

Do not get stuck in a rut with the same schedule that isn’t working.

Make an Impact with Your Homeschool Schedule

Nobody wants to create a homeschool schedule that demands most of our day filled with painful instruction with poor results. That’s why it’s critically important that you research and create a schedule that will benefit your child. 

Homeschool schedules are as customizable as you want them to be. Keep in mind these six important reminders as you are building your schedule in order to minimize the need to go back and revise. 

What are your best tips for building a homeschool schedule? Let us know in the comments below!