For homeschoolers who follow a traditional school schedule, and even those who take a break in summer, this is go time!
Get Inspired
Your excitement is contagious, mom. Check out these great ideas for planning, organizing, and the first day of school. Choose a few of them and set aside some time to put them into practice. Ask your husband to take the kids on an outing, trade childcare with a friend, or go somewhere you can focus.
If you haven’t even started planning, don’t panic. You can use either of my crazy easy approaches to homeschool planning and record keeping and be ready in no time.
If you want a simple reminder of what you should be doing every day, every week, every month, and every year, you’ll want to nab the free printable PDFs I’ve created that you can put into page protectors in your homeschool planner. When you download one of them, you’ll also get access to a monthly and yearly to-do list in the subscriber freebies folder (linked at the bottom of this email for subscribers).
If you’re looking for help with your homeschool schedule, check out the amazing free printables from Pam Barnhill at EdSnapshots. She not only provides you with the free printables, but the help to go with them.
If you just need direction for getting organized, you’ll want to start with the Back to School challenge and continue with the weekly Organized Homeschool challenges. Just 15 minutes a day will do it!
Parents of traditionally-schooled children are busy looking for school lunch ideas, but homeschooling moms need ideas, too! Check out my 10 lunch ideas and be sure to check out the other iHomeschool Network bloggers ideas, too. Then be sure to download my free meal planning ebook that will help you simplify this process that takes so much of our time.
Once you’re prepared for school, you’ll want to make plans for the first day. My favorite thing to do is surprise the kids. We have gone out for ice cream and last year we went to a theme park the last day it was open. I’m still trying to come up with a unique surprise, but I love these ideas.
Can you believe it’s here already? Whether you’ve been homeschooling all year or won’t be getting back to it until next month, this week is as good as any to do some back-to-school organization.
#1 Create a school schedule
I wrote about scheduling your homeschool several years ago, but thought I would share what my current schedule looks like.
6:00 Devotions, time with my husband, breakfast, workouts on certain days, shower
7:45 Kids up, dress, breakfast (my time for morning must-do’s or time with kids)
8:15 Chores and organizing
8:45 Chore checking and tweaking
9:00 Bible time
9:30 Classical Conversations & other memory work
10:00 Piano
10:30 Tutoring individuals
11:00 Language arts
11:30 History, Science
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Literature
1:30 Individual work (my to-do’s)
2:30 Workout
3:00 Snack
3:15 Weekly chores
3:30 Individual work (my project time)
4:00 Outside play / free time (my project time)
5:00 Dinner & tomorrow’s breakfast prep
6:30 Evening chores
6:45 Family / Activity Time
9:00 Ready for bed & reading (my writing time)
A lot of this schedule is very close to what we actually do. The problem we have is with going to bed and getting up at the same times. We’ll be getting better at this soon! We have activities that necessitate a completely different schedule on one to two days a week, but this is our at-home schedule.
Real Life at Home’s Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Scheduling can help you create a schedule that works for you. Just remember that it’s ALWAYS a work in progress. As a result of heatmapping, I discovered that I was doing subjects that took the most energy at the times I had the least energy. Take your energy levels (and your kids”) into account when you schedule.
#2 Plan activities to make the first day special
I used to surprise the kids with new school supplies when they were younger, but I think I own enough school stuff to supply a small country. Last year I surprised them with a trip out for ice cream.
Remember what I wrote about having gobs of school supplies? That’s because I’ve skipped this step too often. To prepare for back-to-school, make sure you go through your stash. First, use a school supply list appropriate to your children’s’ ages. This is an example. Cross off items you have or don’t need and then see how many of the items you already own. The rest will be your shopping list.
Now that you know what you actually need, you can shop. Don’t forget office supply stores which often give homeschoolers a teacher discount and are much less crowded this time of year.
I needed notebooks and glue sticks. What do you need to buy to get ready for school?
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
For homeschoolers who follow a traditional school schedule, and even those who take a break in summer, this is go time!
