We are back in the ten day series on back to homeschool prep, and today we’re tackling building a weekly homeschooling routine! First, of course, a few disclaimers:

  • Do what’s best for your homeschool, it’s completely up to you.
  • You do not have to be married to your weekly routine.
  • Yes, I understand that nothing “goes as planned” in a homeschool, I still feel more confident with a rough plan.
  • If you hate plans, don’t plan. Simple as that!

Okay, with that out of the way. Let’s chat about building a weekly routine for your homeschool.

Building a Weekly Routine for Your Homeschool

Building a weekly homeschooling routine is a huge part of back to homeschool prep! Your whole homeschooling year is easier with a good weekly routine!

Why Have a Weekly Routine?

I like to have a weekly homeschool routine because it gives me less decisions to make every day. If I know that we do history on Tuesday, that’s what we do.

I am a crazy busy mom. There are four kids, two of which are homeschooling, one is tot-schooling, one is still exclusively nursing, two have various disabilities, and all of them want fed 847 times a day. I also work from home writing this blog, doing VA/writing work for others, and selling Fundanoodle.

If I have to make a decision in the morning about whether or not it’s a “school day” or what subjects we will or will not cover? It will quickly turn into a jammie day watching cartoons. I’m that mom.

A weekly routine also helps A-Man know what to expect. He lives by routines because of his autism, and they help him understand his world and feel safe.

Plan Non-Negotiables First

Every family will have different non-negotiables, but I’ll try to give a few examples.

A-Man has therapy Monday mornings. Mr. C and A-Man go to their bio-dad’s Monday morning to Wednesday morning every week. Those things never (or almost never) change.

For your family, it might be that you have a homeschool co-op on Thursdays, or you’re part of a Bible study that meets on Tuesdays.

Whatever the non-negotiables are in your family, plan those first in your weekly homeschool routine, that way you can be sure you’re planning around them.

If your kid has piano practice on Wednesday afternoons, you might choose to do a lighter school day that week. Or you might even make that an “off” day and decide to run all of your errands before piano practice.

Building a weekly homeschooling routine is a huge part of back to homeschool prep! Your whole homeschooling year is easier with a good weekly routine!

Plan The Most Important Things Next

Then fill in the subjects that are most important. For our family, we focus on core subjects (reading, writing, math, and Bible) first.

Make sure you fill these subjects in with as much time as you feel they need. Once you decide how many days you are going to do each of your main subjects, you can evaluate what time you’ve got left.

Of course, make sure that you can do your important subjects around your non-negotiables.

In our house we’re getting two sets of some reading, writing, and math products so that A-Man and Mr. C can do the work at their bio-dad’s house to get the full time in, for example.

Fill In The Rest

This is where you get to play tetris with your weekly routine.

Look at the rest of the subjects that you have. In our homeschool, we have history, science, vocabulary, and Spanish.

There’s no way that I could teach all of them every day, so we’ve found it to be easiest to switch days.

Tuesday/Thursday will be history and vocabulary, while Wednesday/Friday will be science and Spanish. Again, we’re matching this to our non-negotiables from above. Mr. C can easily bring his current history book to his bio-dad’s house, and the vocabulary that we’ve chosen has simple activities that he can take back and forth.

Getting ready to go back to homeschool is a stressful time, so I'm sharing a ten day series for back to homeschool prep so that we can face it together!