Part 1 – Outline your beliefs
Part 2 – Finding your child’s dominant intelligence(s) and learning style
Part 3 – Choosing a learning style
Part 4 – Locating the curriculum/program and finding resources
Part 5 – Adapting/Modifying the curriculum
Part 6 – Mapping out the year
Part 7 – Mapping out the months
Part 8 – Planning the Week
In Part 8, you planned the week by actually planning the activities daily. You’ve finally arrived at the point where you can plan what your homeschool days will look like.
Outline a Daily Rhythm
As a family, you have already established some kind of routine—whether you did it intentionally or not. You probably have a regular wake-up time, a general time when you eat lunch, and a time when you have dinner. In between, you’ve either filled it in with chores, outings, or perhaps, play-based activities.
For homeschooling, become aware of what you’ve already been doing and replace the activities/outings so that they are now more academic-related. Don’t try to restructure your already set-in rhythm unless it was chaotic or didn’t work for your family. Your child has already internalized the patterns of the day, and changing things up for homeschooling might cause anxiety.
Here’s how to keep it simple:
I started brainstorming our daily rhythm by blocking the meals. My son’s meals are sacred and cannot be skipped or delayed.
Your child might not be so demanding with feeding schedules. Yet, I highly recommend that you use your mealtimes as anchors for planning your homeschool day.
While you may not have a set time when your child eats breakfast, you know that it does happen sometime in the morning. The same for lunch and dinner. They usually happen somewhere between midday and early evening, respectively.
Begin by blocking in those meals in your Homeschool Reflections journal.
Based on your child’s developmental level, decide how many activities you can manage to fit in between those meals. As you can see from my brainstorm above, I have included an activity before breakfast. This doesn’t always happen since wake-up times are unpredictable. However, I have that pencilled in for those days where the wake-up is earlier. On those days, we attempt four activities.
I have two activities blocked somewhere between breakfast and lunch and one activity between lunch and dinner.
Ask yourself:
- How many formal activities can my child handle in one day? (2, 3, 4 or more? It all depends on his age and developmental level.)
Types of activities to include in each block of time
My son and I function better in the morning, so I like to have the bulk of the “schooling” done in the morning while leaving the afternoon activities informal and for rest. However, some activities lend themselves better to certain times of the day.
Below, I share with you some suggestions for activities within each block of time. Please note that you should not do all these activities in a block or even in one day. These are simply ideas you can select from.
For a neurodivergent or disabled child, I suggest varying the activities from fine motor to gross motor; from sitting/floor play to standing; from a quiet activity to a more active one. The Waldorf approach refers to this as in-breath and out-breath. Every time you plan an energetic activity, follow it with a calming one to balance the activities.
Before breakfast
- Storytelling or reading
- Morning songs and music
- Chores
I try to keep this time of day mellow. We’re only just getting started, and we’re gently welcoming the day. We often do the storytelling in bed, and the songs/music happen while I prepare breakfast.
After breakfast
- Dress up, brush teeth, comb hair (daily personal care)
- Neighbourhood walk (where some nature/science activities can happen)
- Crafts
- Painting
- Modelling
- Baking
- Songs
- Storytelling, reading or puppetry
- Gross motor activities
- Fine motor activities
- Academics (math, ELA, art, science, music, etc.)
- Educational videos
- Free-play
- Etc.
There is usually a snack in this period, which includes self-feeding practice. As I prepare lunch, my son needs to be in a safe place, and that’s when I resort to the television//tablet/videos.
After lunch
- Finishing up a morning activity (academic or other)
- Storytelling, reading or puppetry
- Free-play
- Rest (my son doesn’t nap anymore, but he has to be on his bed for about 45 minutes to 1 hour—he enjoys “resting his bones,” as I like to call it!)
Using this general guideline for our daily rhythm makes it easier for me to plan what we’ll do each day. But, I take this one step further.
I have designated a day each week where we work on one particular element: painting, modelling, crafting/handwork, or baking.
In the image above, you can see that I’ve written each activity on sticky note paper, adding “outing” on a fifth one. The Waldorf approach suggests selecting the same day each week for these activities. For instance, baking always on Monday, painting always on Tuesday, etc. This is done to help build an internal rhythm of the days of the week for children who are not developmentally ready to understand a calendar.
While this is what I aim to do for the most part with my son, who is not developmentally ready to understand how a calendar works, I know it will not be realistic for us. We sometimes have appointments and visitors. This is why I wrote the activities down on sticky note paper—they can now easily be moved around weekly.
I aim to have the activities set for specific days each week, but when it’s not possible, I may switch two (or more) around. What’s important is that my son gets exposed to each of these activities weekly. It also makes planning easier. When I know that we’re to paint today, I can look at my brainstorming for monthly activities and select a painting activity that I want to attempt, and planning is done in seconds.
“Our task is to educate the human being in such a way that he or she can bring to expression in the right way that which is living in the whole human being, and on the other side that which puts him/her into the world in the right way.” ~Rudolf Steiner
Putting it all together
Parts 6 to 9 include all the details you need to plan the year, the months, the week and each day.
I show you how I put all of this into one neat place so that you don’t find yourself with note sheets and calendars all over your house.
I’ve never found a planner that works for me 100%. But, I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel either. I’ve taken bits and pieces and assembled them to make my planner—designed specifically for our needs. I’ve included the link to my free planner in the resources so you can put one like this together yourself! I recommend personalizing your planner to best suit your family’s needs. Do a little research. There are plenty of free online printables available.
The beauty of putting together a planner with book rings is that you can add and remove papers as you wish, but it’s much more portable than a 3-ring binder.
There you have it! You’re all set for easy homeschool planning so that you can give your child the full attention they need. The remainder of this series includes tips for finding community resources, assessments/evaluations and parental reflections.
Download my entire FREE fillable planner here.
Weekly planner – Download this free, fillable PDF in landscape format
I offer individual consultations if you’d like some help planning for homeschooling. Learn how I can support your and your family here.
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