I’ve been homeschooling for three years now and the one thing that took me three years to finally conquer was our schedule. When I first embarked on this homeschool journey, our homeschool days took forever because the curriculum I had purchased required every subject for every day. This made our homeschool miserable. So when we changed things our second year of homeschool it was a little better with how I was scheduling but still stressful. Now halfway through our third year, we finally have the perfect schedule, it’s our homeschool block schedule. This allows for our days to be as short or as long as we want. It also gives us so much freedom.
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What is block scheduling?
Block scheduling in the traditional sense was used in middle and high schools for fewer classes in a day. So instead of having 7 classes in one day, you would only have 4. The classes would change on specific days. For example Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you may have English, Math, Gym, and Science. Then on Tuesday and Thursday, you would have History, Music, Art, and Public Speaking.
Now for homeschool, the block schedule is very similar. We have certain subjects we learn on certain days. My 6th grader only has his Grammar on Tuesday and Thursday, while my 1st grader works on his handwriting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This simple method allows us to not feel overwhelmed and allows us to go deeper into our subjects. My children are actually learning because there is no time crunch.
How we block schedule?
Like I said above there are certain days my children do specific subjects, but with our group subjects, we have a rotating loop. We have three main subjects that we are learning this year, ocean, presidents, and art. Throughout the week we rotate these. So on Monday, we will start with the ocean, Tuesday learn about the presidents, Wednesday discuss and do art, and Thursday back to oceans. Most Fridays we keep free. You can check out how I schedule their homeschool here. This helps us keep one subject per day and there is no overwhelm.
Do we do any subjects every day?
Yes! We do our core subjects, Math and English every single day. I do this because the Math Curriculum, Horizons Math, we use is designed for 180 school days. You can read more about this curriculum here. I also feel it is important for my kids to read each day and work on their spelling words to practice. We use Evan-Moor Daily Workbooks for our spelling.
How to be successful with your block schedule?
As seen above we use this little board to list out our block schedule. It works for us as well as these free printable schedule sheets I created for our homeschool block schedule. Both of these allow my children to know what we are working on for the week. I hope these help you be successful in your homeschool. Remember to have fun and allow your homeschool to fit your needs.
