Before I give my just-finished-first grader’s schedule, I have to just say that after 4 years of homeschooling, I’ve learned to have a plan and a schedule, but not to be tied to it. Things change that you don’t expect. You will need to tweak and adjust as you go. There really is no ‘right’ schedule, because every child, every family, every month in your life is different. Try to spread a wonderful feast, but don’t stress about it. Just like in a real feast, sometimes the turkey will be a bit dry, the potatoes a bit lumpy, and the croutons in the salad a bit soggy. It’s the atmosphere and the relationships you are building and renewing that really matter. Your kid might hate the history book you choose, complain about free reading unless he can read that one favourite book over and over, cry over math because her little brother does it better than she does, and you might forget to do poetry more than you remember it. (Not that any of those things happened here at all ) In the long run, it really doesn’t matter.
So, here is what our current schedule looks like, after about 5 major changes since the beginning of the year. We have DD8, DS6, DD4, and currently a 2 year old and 3 month old in our family dayhome (and a 7yo after school, but that doesn’t affect our school day).
Every morning we do most of our ‘family’ subjects.
Prayer/Hymn,
Religion (5 minute reading),
Spanish Activity, Spanish Song,
Science (10 minutes max) Theoretically we try to do a nature walk once a week in place of science, but in reality it is more like once a month.
One of these: Habits, Drawing, Picture Study, Composer Study.
All of that takes 30-45 minutes, so these are short activities.
Then the children split off to do their music practice, morning chores, Scripture Box, and personal Bible reading, with Mom assisting as needed.
Then we take a break.
At lunch I try to read some poetry and a fun family read aloud or some living math books or other fun stuff. If the baby is fussy or toddler dumps his plate on the floor, it doesn’t always happen.
After lunch (nap time!) my first grader does:
Math (20 minutes),
Listens to and narrates a literature or history reading (10-15 minutes)
Copywork (10 minutes)
Spanish Worksheet (5 minutes)
Free Reading (10 minutes) He was an early reader, so this is independent.
He then has a few minutes of break while Big Sister finishes up (she has a bit more work in grade 3).
Then we do two more readings together of History or Literature or Geography. We put these at the end of the day and back to back because my kids like to colour or draw or do perler beads or handicrafts while they listen and narrate, and they were having trouble returning to work on things like math once they got their projects out. Some of the readings are targeted more toward DD8, and she does the bulk of the narrations on those, but DS6 listens in and contributes some as well.
You’ll notice that DS6 doesn’t have any phonics instruction in there. He is already reading fluently, so he just reads one passage per week aloud to me so I can catch any issues that might come up.
