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In our last post on homeschool schedules and routines, we broke down different methods for planning your over-arching school year. In this post, we will be addressing how to create a homeschool scope and sequence and use weekly and daily schedules and routines. We will cover fitting your school routine into your life routine more in Post #12: Balancing Work, Life, and Homeschool.
Creating a Scope and Sequence
After you have planned out your annual schedule, you are ready to create a scope and sequence or pacing guide for your school year. These are simply lists of what you will teach and when.
List out every subject that you would like to cover this year and next to each subject, list what curriculum or resources you will use to teach that subject for each child.
You may find it easiest to pick one curriculum that can cover multiple subjects instead of a different curriculum for each subject. It is also a good idea to have some subjects that you do with all of your children, so that you don’t have to use a separate curriculum for each child. History, Science, and Bible are usually easier subjects to combine grades for group learning. We will discuss picking out curriculum in more detail over the next six days.
Next, go through each curriculum and list how many chapters, units or lessons each curriculum uses. If I use the same curriculum for multiple subjects, I list the number of lessons one time and make a note referencing the curriculum next to each subject.
After you know how many lessons there are in each curriculum, you can decide how often you would need to work on that subject to reach your goal for the year. You do not have to finish every workbook that you purchase! Likewise, you may finish early and start another. We work through math books daily and just move to the next level when we finish the current book.
Once you know what you are teaching and how often you need to teach that subject, you are ready to work on a weekly and/or daily routine.
If you want more information on creating a scope and sequence, I recommend reading through Kristi Clover’s guide on creating a Course of Study.
Weekly and Daily Schedules and Routines
When planning your weekly schedule, I recommend printing off a blank weekly planner.
First, think about your average week and write down times that you have prior commitments or expect to be out of the house. Block off time for appointments, extracurriculars and homeschool groups, and errands. Once you have those times blocked off, you can see how much time you realistically have for school.
You can then decide how to plan out when you will teach each of your subjects. Here are a few different options to keep in mind when creating your personalized schedule.
Classic Scheduling
The type of schedule people are most familiar with is simply a list of times with an assigned activity next to it. These schedules work well as long as you don’t get too tied down to it.
You see, most people imagine homeschooling as being school-at-home. We think of children sitting at a desk, workbook opened, hand raised when they have a question, and a subject change each time a bell dings. Homeschooling usually does not work that way.
Each day in a homeschool will have a little bit of chaos, a few schedule tweeking events, and probably some attitude problems (from kids and/or mom).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pretty color-coded, time-blocked schedules. You just need to remind yourselves that they are more of a guide for how the day could go.
If the toddler spills a jug of milk, the baby has a blow out at 7:30, and you are supposed to start school at 7:45, you don’t have to skip the first subject of the day. You move everything back. If Math is scheduled from 8:00-8:30 but your child finishes his work in 15 minutes, you don’t have to wait until 8:30 to start handwriting.
If a schedule with times on in will cause a lot of stress and guilt, you could still use the classic schedule and not include times.
Loop Scheduling
A loop schedule is a list of subjects that you rotate through as time allows. You can loop all of your subjects or a certain set of subjects. With a classic schedule, you start at the top of the list and work your way down. Each day you start back at the top. With a loop schedule, you start at the top of the list and work your way down; however, you pick up at the last spot you stopped on.
To create a loop schedule, list the subjects that you want to include in your loop. You may wish to list a certain subject more than once if you would like to do it more often than the other subjects. For instance, if you would like to do science two times per week and would like to do art and music one time per week, you would list science twice on your “elective loop.”
You may then decide how and when to do your loop. You may choose to do a certain number of subjects or spend a certain amount of time working through the loop each day. Loops may be done daily or only on certain days of the week.
Loop schedules are great for those subjects that we struggle to get to due to lack of time or interest.
Block Scheduling With School Subjects
Block scheduling is when you assign a certain block of time to a subject or set of subjects. Typically block scheduling means that you spend a larger amount of time working on fewer subjects. For example instead of working through eight subjects daily, you work through four subjects daily for the same length of time.
You would rotate subjects daily, weekly, or each term of the school year.
Block scheduling may work better for high school students that have longer attention spans. Taking too much time off of certain subjects, such as math and grammar could lead to forgotten skills over the break.
Block Scheduling With Routines
Block scheduling can be a great way to chunk up your daily routine. This type of scheduling chunks up your time into blocks and you will only work on certain tasks during that block.
I break my day into the following blocks: Morning, School, Lunch, Afternoon, Family Time, Bedtime. During the school block I do not allow myself to work on things that are reserved for the afternoon block and vice versa.
For a very detailed look into block scheduling, I recommend watching Jordan Paige’s Youtube video. No, she is not a homeschooler, but she is a productivity blogger and I use her block scheduling system for myself to schedule my days.
Routines
One of the most important aspects of homeschooling is teaching everyone in the family how to create certain routines. I recommend having a set routine for morning and bedtime for each member of the family (including the parents). Routines for lunch and late afternoon/dinner are helpful as well. By having established routines in place, your family will stay more organized and productive, which can lead to better attitudes and a better environment for homeschooling.