Daily Routines

For readers who have been asking about our daily routine, here you go! First, you should know that we are more the relaxed set of homeschoolers and though I'm a very structured classroom teacher, I am not at all that way in my homeschooling. One of my Hall of Fame Posts is a Day in the Life kind of post. You can see here how we did things when we had a full-fledged toddler in residence. Things are easier now that our youngest is five. Five!

Last spring I put this together and it's worked pretty well. I had to back off from the workboxes because they were too controlling on our day...but as you can see in recent posts, they are working more for US now rather than the opposite. That is not to say workboxes are all bad! Some families are thriving with them and that is wonderful. They were just too rigid for our homeschool goals. I am more comfortable with how we use them at this point. They still allow us to be creative and spontaneous which is a requirement at our house! At the same time, they help me to stay focused along with this "routine".

This is the first draft of last spring's grid- I still have it hanging next to my desk and it's missing LA! Guess I need to replace it with the below. Tweaked it based on my notes there.

Keep in mind this is a "routine". I purposely do not have times on the grid. It is a framework we use to do our work. It's pretty self explanatory I think. We don't do all of everything every day. That should make some of you feel better! One thing I love about this weekly routine is that if we get behind or we have to go out unexpectedly, I just pick up where we left off. So, if one morning gets shortened and miss the history lesson, I don't cram it in the next day. I leave it for the next scheduled day. If that makes sense.

I also listed our our daily and weekly chores. Say...if you see something up here that is obviously missing let me know! For example, if washing curtains is on your weekly list, you won't find it on mine. What else would you do weekly?!

I like the idea of using this to keep the pattern of our day consistent. I've tried times and times make me crazy, but I can do the pattern. Feel free to check out our official Weekly Routine document below. I have it colored so that I can easily tell meal times and the morning, afternoon, and evening batched items. Feel free to ask more questions if I've left anything unanswered!

Weekly Schedule