Hi all again, thanks again for your previous comments. I really appreciate them. I am afraid that question is just the tip of the iceberg My next question is how much do you emphasize routine? My spouse is a coach and we go to all the games. This means my monsters up late at night and the routine is different because I let them sleep in. Is this bad? Does it really matter? Thanks for the help.
Homeschooling is all about YOUR HOME. Hey... it's always 8 a.m. somewhere, right? As long as they're learning (both from books and life), you're doing it right. The clock doesn't matter. Besides, being in 1st and 2nd grades, they shouldn't be spending more than about 1-2 hours tops on school work anyway. You can do that anytime, and even break it up throughout the day. A good rule of thumb is appx 30 minutes per grade level (give or take). There's so, so, so much they can learn through dad's coaching, too. Don't discount that as wasted time. They're soaking up everything around them.
I agree 100% with 2littleboys. Our life doesn't work well with routine. Hey, honestly, I am lousy about routine. So after two years of HSing, I was miserable and stressed trying to keep to the arbitrary schedule I'd assigned to our home. I had to let go and do things 'my way' and suddenly HSing was doable again. Some parents, and children, however, would come unglued without a routine.
We totally fly by the seat of our pants around here. She's up when everyone else is up, but there is no set "schedule" of activities. As long as we meet our goals for the day, I don't stress. Sometimes she's really into something or teaching the 2 y.o. something, so we put the other stuff on hold. She was giving him a lesson in watercolors today, so we never finished science. Oh, well!! I wouldn't worry about it. Like someone else mentioned, there are life skills in sports too
I have a set time to start school. but that said, we dont always start when I would like...... dont stress about time to start, just set daily goals of things you would like done each day.
I can't believe I feel this way now, but whatever works for you and your children is best. I was always a very strict schedule keeper. And we started back in Sept that way. I quickly learned it was stressing me out to try to start at a certain time and make sure we had everything done before there was anything else going on. Needless to say I have totally changed my way of thinking. Play around with your routine. See what works best. And change it if you see you need to. Some days we start at 8:30. Other days not until 10am. I have found if I am easy going about it my boys respond so differently. Have FUN!
Wow. Our lives would totally fall apart without our routine! LOL My kids THRIVE on it. They go totally bonkers on days when they have off because they just don't know what to do with themselves! I consider myself pretty laid back, personally. But my kids are very OCD about their schedules! Especially my oldest. For OUR family, routine is key to getting through the day without anyone getting hurt (LOL...not THAT serious...but important).
Our "routine" is that we do school in the mornings. My son is a morning person. If I try to do school in the afternoon, he has a meltdown. He craves it in the mornings, though. If we have errands to run, we don't do school that day (or have a very light schedule). If we have something planned 3-4 days out of 5, we'll have a really long school day once a week. That's doable, though. We have a routine, but it's flexible.
routine,yes. Times, no. I used to think we had to begin at 8 in the morning. But I finally realized that was not going to work for us. My boys are grumpy when they get up in the morning and I end up wasting my time getting them to do their work when they are like that. Also, once they are finished they fight like crazy if they don't have anything constructive to do. Either that or they bug the heck out of me to take them here and there when I have things that need to be done too. So we've decided to start whenever we feel like it. Sometimes it's nine in the morning sometimes not until 11. Friday is our errand day so we have a lighter schedule. Depending on when we start they may have just math,language arts, and science. My dd7 does everything every day since her work doesn't take long. Do whatever works for YOUR family. There's no one size fits all in homeschooling. I do believe that a routine is important. Our routine is basic. Get up (around 9 or 10), after breakfast start school do it until they are finished, do chores, Go play. Sometimes this takes all day sometimes only 4-5 hours. Not much to it. We don't count time. But we do try to get finished before the public school neighbor kids get off the school bus so the kids can go play with them..
My kids tend to prefer a set schedule so they know what to expect. We typically start school and end school around the same time of day, but there is no specific school start or stop time.
We do have a pretty strict 'routine' but NOT strict start/end times. I won't wake anyone up, for example. That leads to exhausted kids, and no one can learn like that. Another thing that I was glad to say goodbye to when we left ps. They also always have breakfast first, and have a few minutes to let their food settle. I want their brains in gear when the day starts
Since I'm schooling Other People's Kids, we generally NEED to have an agreed-upon start and stop time. But last week, when it was so cold and the heat at school wasn't working properly, we met at 11 am and spent the day at the library where it was warm! Totally changed our routine, but we still got an amazing amount of work done. Flexible is good.
I didn't read what everyone else put, but I think it depends on the family. It is a huge deal here. We don't do anything if we don't have a routine and we are lost without it. Pluse they will have to follow one when they growup anyway.
Some kids NEED the consistency more than others, especially special needs children. I do believe in some sort of routine, but it looks different for everyone. For example, I know of a hs'ing family that don't start school until after dinner, then school until they finish, sometimes at 1 AM. Then they sleep until noon. Not MY way of doing things, but it works for them! Start your day later. Let them sleep until 10 or 11, have a brunch, and then get going. And remember that your family should NEVER be slave to your schedule! (BTW, my family is up usually at 6, and starting school a little after 7, but that's just us!)
everyone is different. You have to do what works for your family and your family only. Some routines work for one person might not work for yours. We try to stick to one, does it work no.
Thanks everyone's help. I am going to let MY ocd go and try to be more relaxed. We will get work done it just will not be a set time. Thanks again everyone. This site is such a great resource!
I would love to say that we went by a schedule here but I can no longer do that. Trying to live by the schedule I made was my number one stressor. Now I let him sleep in later and he actually smiles during our lessons!
My 18 yr old son is autistic so I really had no choice but to get into a routine when he was younger. He really thrived with having a routine. We still have a routine, but not so much by the clock. My kids have a bedtime, and we stick to it. We roll out of bed by 9am, do our housework or run errands and then do our schoolwork after lunch. Bedtime and "get up" time is by the clock, everything else just falls into place.
We have a schedule in the sense of my kids know how much we are planning to do and in what order we are going to try for. We choose however when they are going to occur during a day. If we have the chance for a field trip, event, or free concert that keeps us out late then we simply get up later and begin our day when we are ready. Other days we want to be free by a certain time in the afternoon so we get up early and get started. This flexibility has made it easier for us to take advantage of all the fun and educational events we find in our area without "falling behind" in the studies we are working on. I know it may not work for others but it has worked for us so far. I'm sure you'll find what works the best for your family and that is fine even if it is different than how anyone else does it.
If you can't always have set times because of late night, you can have a set order to things. For example: When you wake up you make up your bed. Then eat breakfast. Then hygiene. Then take care of feeding pets and/or light morning chores. Devotions study break study lunch study play and have fun.
