I never dreamed I’d have five kids in seven years. With the mounds of laundry, the never ending diaper changing, and the sink of dishes, I had my hands full. I was young and inexperienced. Isn’t that how most of us are when we become mothers? But somehow we figure things out and manage. My experience in learning how to get everything done for my family prepared me to do what it takes to create a homeschool schedule that works for my family.

When we add homeschooling to the mix, getting everything done in a day becomes the largest mountain we ever try to climb. For some of us, it’s a new experience to have the kids home all day. Perhaps it’s also a new experience for mom to be home all day. For others, it’s trying to school while keeping up with the toddlers.

It was in those early years that I discovered the importance of a daily schedule, which is why I recognized the importance of having a daily homeschool schedule when the time came.

I watched and observed some of the women around me. They had older children and seemed to have it all together, so I asked question after question about how they scheduled their days. They shared their plan, and I tried it out. It failed, miserably.

You see, schedules are like kids; each of us have them, but they are each distinctly different. Creating the homeschool schedule that works for you begins with recognizing this distinction, evaluating your stage in life, and prioritizing each daily goal.

Homeschool Schedule: Distinctly Different

Some of us have one child while others might have five or six. Some of us live in metropolitan areas while others live in more rural settings. In some families there is one income provider, while in others there are two.

As moms, we often find ourselves scouring Pinterest or the web for ideas about how to schedule better and get more done. But in order to implement the ideas, we need to make certain those ideas fit with our distinctiveness, just as I found that the schedules of moms with teens failed me when I had all toddlers.

Most of my children are now adults, and, looking back, I can see how our distinction changed every few years. From work schedules to traveling across the country for homeschool conventions, we experienced homeschooling in the afternoon or in the car on the way to a national monument. There really wasn’t a solid, daily schedule to follow when life was this unique.

Homeschool Schedule: Stages of Life

Remember when you first had children and your sole goal for the day was a nap or a little extra sleep? Fast forward to when the kids could use the restroom on their own, brush their teeth, and get dressed, and you’ll probably remember different priorities.

The stages of life we go through as our family grows is an important consideration when finding the right schedule. Consider how much of the daily to-do list fall on mom’s shoulders because the kids are little compared to life with tweens and teens where they can help do laundry, cooking, and schoolwork on their own.

When thinking through your stage of life, remember the importance of considering how your daily or homeschool schedule can influence and train your children. When the time is appropriate, begin to add responsibilities for your student with school work along with chores.

Homeschool Schedule: Setting Priorities

Now that you’ve pondered your family’s distinction and considered your stage of life, it’s time to get down to the drawing board of developing a schedule. But wait. There’s one more piece of this time management puzzle. Priorities.

Depending on your personality, you may be like me and have high hopes of accomplishing 56 items a day. So before setting out to schedule the impossible, I’ve learned that it is best to choose five priorities for each day. These include preparing meals, homeschooling, house cleaning, enrichment activities, and community involvement. By limiting myself to the top five, I can create a schedule that is a bit more feasible.

Over the years, I’ve learned that it is best to have a schedule I can abide by that creates a sense of accomplishment rather than the laundry list of to-dos that I can never fully finish. The feeling of despair creeps up when I’m staring at a list only one-third of the way completed.

In the right-hand column, you’ll find a worksheet that can help you evaluate your family’s distinction, the stage of life you are in, and your top five priorities. Once you have finished with this worksheet, you’ll be ready to put pen to paper and create a schedule.

Creating the Daily or Homeschool Schedule

There are a variety of methods to use when drafting a schedule. In the column to the right, you’ll find samples from my trusted Well Planned Gals showing the homeschool schedules they have used at various points in life.

These samples will give you a glimpse of how to schedule with littles, teens, children covering a wide range of ages, and situations where children participate in outside activities such as co-op. Below that, you’ll find a variety of forms that will allow you to experiment with various hourly and block options.

I typically recommend the simple block, rotating days, or school day forms to moms who have young families consisting of babies, toddlers, and elementary age students. Moms who cringe at the thought of schedules and planning should also begin with the simple form. For moms with older students, or perhaps the notorious Type A personality, the variety of hourly forms tends to be the most useful.

Also, note that most forms come in a five- and seven-day weekly format. Depending on your family’s uniqueness, you may need to schedule all seven days of the week. If you tend to take two days off and just want to maintain a schedule during school days, the five-day week works best.

Now for scheduling. Remember that your first homeschool schedule isn’t set in stone. It’s a rough draft, a schedule you will try out for 1-2 weeks. Begin by writing down the five priorities for each day of the week. For example, under Meals, write down breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can also include snack time.

Why write down something you do each and every day? Well, it’s a reminder of the time needed to prepare and serve while also an opportunity to check it off.

Next add in school. For the simple block form, you may schedule Bible, math, and phonics in the morning slot. For the hourly form, you might indicate a beginning time for school and length of time for each subject.

After adding school subjects to your homeschool schedule, let’s add another essential to the overall daily schedule: housecleaning. I have used two different systems over the years. When my children were younger, my daily goal throughout the week was maintaining meals, dishes, diapers, and laundry. I scheduled cleaning of bathrooms, floors, refrigerator, windows, and all those areas of the house for Saturday.

When the kids were a bit older and I had a little more time throughout the week, I switched to setting aside 15 minutes 1-3 times a day. On Monday I tackled the bathroom. We had 2.5 baths, so I dedicated 15 minutes to each throughout the day. By Tuesday it was floors. Kitchen hardwood for one 15 (ok, sometimes 30 minutes), then vacuuming in the next 15-minute slot on my schedule.

Breaking up the tasks helped me regain my Saturdays (which by this time were busy with baseball and other activities), while it also gave me a break from school to feel the accomplishment of a clean area. This system also worked best when someone popped in for a visit; most of the house was clean!

This is where we need to stop and reflect. With your daily and homeschool schedules filled out to this point, it’s a great bird’s eye view of what your week will look like. Now it’s time to reflect on these questions:

• Is this schedule doable?
• Is there room to add anything else?
• Will this schedule allow me breathing room for the interruptions that come with daily life?

Once you’ve evaluated, finish up your schedule by adding enrichment or other community commitments to the schedule.

Remember to include drive time and a little buffer to outside activities. If a 40-minute piano lesson begins at 2:00, and you need 20 minutes of drive time, schedule from 1:30 to 3:15. It makes a difference on your schedule when you include all that is involved for each task.

I highly recommend making sure there are at least 2 hours each day unscheduled. And no, I don’t mean from 4am-6am. Preferably an hour in the middle of the day and an hour after dinner. This gives you time to catch up on tasks.

Homeschool Schedule: Test Run

With your homeschool schedule in hand and your overall daily schedule established, give them a test run for 1-2 weeks. I typically keep my homeschool planner easily accessible in my planner and my overall daily schedule posted on the refrigerator so I can cross off items as I finish them. If tasks take me longer than I anticipated, I jot down a note to reference when I begin an evaluation.

It’s important to remember that any schedule — whether your homeschool schedule or overall schedule — is a guideline for how to run your days. It helps create a rhythm within your home that you and the kids turn into a routine.

Don’t focus too much on the specific times; rather, focus on moving from one task or subject to the next in a consistent manner. Children tend to thrive in structure and routine, and your schedule allows them to practice this rhythm.

Homeschool Schedule: Evaluate!

Your test run is done, and now it’s time to evaluate and make adjustments to your schedule. And yes, we have a worksheet for that, too, in the right-hand column! Here are some of the questions you’ll be asking yourself while evaluating:

• Did I try to do too much?
• Did I allot enough space for each to-do? Too much space?
• Am I able to keep this pace? Is there downtime to help keep me refreshed?
• How can I adjust to help the kids acclimate?
• Do I need to remove items, or do I have time to add activities?
• Do I have the breathing room I anticipated?
• What was my primary goal in creating a schedule? Is this the path to accomplish it?

From this point, refer to your notes, print a new schedule form, and begin creating an adjusted homeschool schedule. Try it out again, and always remember that you can make adjustments from week to week — and that your schedule will need to be revisited and revised once or twice each semester, depending on the ages of your children.

The most important part is that a rhythm of routine is beginning to develop in your home.