Our Daily Schedule
FYI: I am a pretty laid back person. One of the reasons I enjoy homeschooling is the flexibility it allows in our lives. When Daddy has a day off, we take it off too and enjoy the day with him. If one of the kids has a doctor’s appointment, we adjust our day for it. Someone is sick? No problem. We do not always follow our schedule, but we try most days.
With that in mind, here is an overview of our daily schedule.
6:00 am
This is wake-up time in our house. Daddy usually nudges us out of bed right before he leaves for work. Big kids shower, get dressed and make their beds. Mom wakes little ones and dresses them. Big kids complete morning chores, like watering the garden, and then spend time reading their scriptures and having personal prayer time.
This time period is ended with breakfast, and then breakfast clean up.
7:00 am – 8:45 am
In our house, Math is the first subject of the day. For multiple reasons:
- Wiggly kids are at their best first thing in the morning. Math requires fresh, focused minds.
- I schedule all appointments for later in the morning/afternoon. So even we have to miss other subjects, Math gets finished no matter what.
Since the kids do their Math on the computer (DIVE is the greatest!), Mom can spend time starting her own chores and playing with little ones.
After Math, big kids move on to vocab work.
8:45 am
At this time each day, all kids (big and small), gather around the table with Mom for what we call Opening Exercises. We use this time to sing, pray, and have flag salute.
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Back to work big kids! They study history and have reading during this time. Little kids are usually following Mom around, helping with laundry or playing with puzzles and toys.
10:45 am
Big families sometimes equal big messes. At 10:45 am we take a break for a quick house pick up. Everyone is assigned something like vaccuuming the hall, picking up dirty clothes off the floor or similar. Since we’ve always made it feel like a game, the little ones gladly help along!
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
It’s almost lunch and the kids are getting hungry. We spend this hour working on geography and grammar lessons.
12:00 pm
Finally! It’s lunch! After we eat, everyone helps to clean up the table so we can finish school.
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
The last few hours of the day are spent on personal improvment studies (good manners, character development, etc), and science. Little kids enjoy painting and coloring during this time.
3: 00 pm
We walk away the pounds, literally! It’s P.E. time and since it’s so hot where we live right now, we have been using DVD’s to exercies in the living room. Even the baby enjoys walking with her siblings.
3:45 pm
School is over for the day. We end with Closing Exercies where we once again sing, pray and plan for the evening. Immediately following, we spend about 10-15 minutes cleaning up the house so it’s nice for Daddy when he gets home.
After school is over, the kids have free time to play outside, practice piano, work on their laptops, or whatever else they feel like doing. Most days we have either Church meetings or sport practices to attend in the early evening.
There never seems to be a free moment to just relax, but we wouldn’t want it any other way!
