Skip to main content

Tips & Tricks: Class Schedule

How do you make a class schedule? When do you do which subjects? How long do you do a class? Does each day look the same? It is easy to make a homeschool schedule since you can school however you like. Since we use Timberdoodle we have access to their online schedule which over the years has been updated to be an outstanding way to schedule our subjects. If you do not use Timberdoodle I would suggest using Excel. If you know a website that allows you to create a schedule (for free) then let me know in the comments. The first thing I do make our schedule is make a list of all of our items and mark which ones I think will be challenging and which will be easy. Core subjects would be harder than things like STEM and thinking skills. Then I use that list to make another list on what day we will do each item. Making sure that not one day will be to hard or to easy. I like it to be pretty even as well as each day having about the same number of items. Some subjects we do everyday those are English and math. The other subjects I do on Tuesday/Thursday or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. So far we do history on MWF and science/art/STEM/thinking skills on TTH. It is just the way I find best for us but you can schedule things whenever you like for what works your kids.

After this I see which items, if any, I would like to use at the beginning of the year and which closer to the end. This would items that may overlap or if I have multiple of similar items like thinking skills books. I make sure if items are for the same subject that I have them planned for the same days. That way they can follow each other and we do not miss a beat. Then I go onto Timberdoodles online scheduler and create my schedule. Some items I delete and input manually. I do this because blank pages are often counted. I like for the schedule to be very precise. I do keep to our schedule. Now this may change as she gets older if she does not understand something but right now she grasps everything we are doing perfectly. The only thing that I do not have a set time to end is our reading curriculum, All About Reading. I go at her pace since she is young for reading and it is a hard thing to learn. I make sure we take it at a slow pace. This is the only subject that we do even on the weekends. We do not do the full class on the weekends just a bit of practice. 

Sometimes I get asked how long we do school for or how long a class is. Since we do not do school for as long as public school and we have a longer school year we do not cover to much in one day. I do class for as long as we need. Once our daughter finishes the assignments we move on. I always start with math to get it out of the way, then whatever she wants to do next and we end with reading. Normally school does not take longer than a 1-3 hours each day. Longer if we play games or do experiments for an extended time. How do you create your schedule? Do you use a planner or hand write it? Have a program you use or just go with flow? Let us know in the comments below.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Sensory Tissue Box

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called  Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T

Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

 I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Review: 180 Days of Social Studies 1st

When I noticed that our history class did not have a lot for social studies I decided to look for something to add into our homeschool. I came across 180 Days of Social Studies  and decided to try it. So, we started with the kindergarten version and I thought it was quite well done so we have kept it for 1st grade as well. Just like with the kinder one the booklet is done in black and white and I wish it was done in color. It goes over so much but in an easy to understand way for the age group that would be using it. 180 Days goes over American things so if you are homeschooling in another country and not learning about American history then I would look for another curriculum to use. The 1st grade version goes over the systems of government, civics, economics, geography and history. The thing I like best about 180 Days is that you only do a page a day. If your school year is a 36 weeks then you are perfectly set up to do 1 page a day. Since we do a 47 week school year we only do a few