Flow Charts and Schedules For Homeschoolers

Hi Kendra & Fletch!

I listened to your podcast on organization today, and would love to look at your flow chart for planning your day. I've been homeschooling 8 years and have yet to find a schedule plan that works for us!!

Thank you and blessings to you for your gift to the homeschool world!

-Katrina

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Happy to help, Katrina!

Back when we began homeschooling, I knew we'd have to have some sort of routine to our day or I was going to drown. At the time, our oldest was 4 and a half and we also had a 2-year-old and a newborn. I was breastfeeding, so there was that, and also involved in stuff at church. If there wasn't a plan for the day, nothing was going to get accomplished.

We went along swimmingly until school became more academic. Somewhere in there I learned about strict scheduling and decided that would take care of any little issues we were having. I made a great color-coded spreadsheet with a plan for what everyone would be doing, half hour by half hour. It looked so gorgeous!

Unfortunately, children do not pay any attention to color-coded spreadsheets. My babies cut teeth, skipped naps, and needed to nurse longer, while my toddlers had diaper blow-outs, the dog threw up, the eggs were left to boil too long on the stove, and my husband had an emergency patient at the end of the day. More often than not, we found ourselves 2 hours behind and reading aloud at night instead of in the afternoons. I also became majorly grumpy, barking, "Stop fooling around! We're 10 minutes late for starting math!" Not pretty.

One morning I sat down with the kids at breakfast and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. Super high tech. I made a list that looked a little like this:

Breakfast/Clean-up
Circle Time
Math
Art
Lunch Prep/Lunch/Clean-up
Babies down for naps
Mom Read Aloud
English/Handwriting
History or Science (depending on day)
Free Time
Dinner Prep

And peace returned to our days. We had a backbone, but it was flexible and able to take into account the changing needs of each person in our home. When we found ourselves in the hospital for long stretches with one child or another, those at home could follow the flow and get some things done, even if Mom wasn't home.

I actually wrote a post over on Preschoolers and Peace about why a flow chart works for me, so hop over there if you want even more info.

-Kendra

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5 For Friday: Homeschool Organization 101

From around the web, here are five articles and blog posts that accompany our latest episode, I Love Homeschooling But I'm Totally Disorganized. We think you'll find them very encouraging this weekend:

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Help for the Unorganized Homeschooler - Marianne Sunderland

"Because who needs to hear how awesome we homeschool bloggers are without also hearing how we fall?" We love Marianne's transparency and very helpful post!

Super Homeschool Mom Fallacies: Organized - Shannen Espelien

Shannen's approach to homeschool organization is realistic and personal. Can you find your keys when you need them? Then you've got an organizational system in place that works for you. Can you improve in some areas? Of course, as can all of us, but keeping up unrealistic standards based on the things we perceive to be going on in someone else's home is not healthy for anyone. Take heart, disorganized homeschooler! 

100 Thoughtful Ways to Organize Your Homeschool Materials - Sara Dennis

100 ways? Yes! 100 ways! In a list compiled to give us lots and lots of ideas, surely we can each find one to implement that might just save the day!

Incremental Approach to Catching Up - or - How Copperswife Digs Herself Out of a Hole - Cheryl Linebarger (Copperswife)

Catch your breath, catch up, take a break, get ahead. Cheryl of Copperswife does a great job showing us how she takes a bite-sized approach to getting things done.

5 Essential Ideas for Homeschool Organization - Kendra Fletcher

Where to begin? Start by making a list of your top five non-negotiable activities and then go from there.

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5 Essential Ideas for Homeschool Organization

Is this the season to get organized? We're tackling homeschool organization on the newest podcast episode in the I Love Homeschooling But . . . series: I Love Homeschooling But I'm Totally Disorganized.

But what if you're starting from square one? What if you don't even know where to begin? I get this. Even though I consider myself sort of naturally organized, I'm very familiar with the feeling of being stymied. Of sitting in the middle of the laundry piles, the dishes, the school books, the toys, and wondering, where do I even start?

Start with 5 essential ideas, but not my ideas, yours. 

Figure out what your "Rock List" should be. Remember that old Sunday School illustration where you fill a jar with sand (all of the non-essential activities of life), then try to fit in the rocks (all of the essential activities)?  The rocks don't fit that way.  But if you reverse the order - rocks, then sand - everything fits just perfectly.

Sit down with pen and paper and write down the essential activities that have to be done daily.  I made a massive list of items that I had on my plate, big and small, and then began to put each item into the "Rock" column or the "Sand" column.  While this was a helpful exercise that saved my dwindling sanity, everything was about to come crashing down and demand redefinition . . .

I had a miscarriage. I was pregnant two months later.  I had a baby.  I was pregnant five months later.  I had that baby.  I was in the PICU with him seven weeks later.  And the Rock List suddenly became a burden.

That's when I trimmed the rock list down to just five: feed kids, run laundry, educate kids, love husband, nurture my spiritual life.

Did toilets have to be cleaned? Yep. But not every day, and that was certainly a job anyone over a certain age could learn to do so I could take it off my plate. Run errands? Yep. But again, not every day.

Can you define your top five non-negotiable activities? Your top five non-negotiables don't have to be anything like mine; they should be between you and the Lord. That's the beauty of living in the freedom of Jesus!

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iHomeschool Studio

affiliate links

If you're looking for encouragement in a BIG dose, you'll want to know about the iHomeschool Studio coming up the second week of February, 2014. 

Continuing education for home educators - to inspire, to encourage, to give you some big ideas and a whole lot of motivation. Who doesn't need motivation at this time of the year?

Kendra will be speaking on Organization For a Peaceful Home on Tuesday the 11th at 5 p.m. EST. She'll cover the basics of home organization but also the nitty gritty of homeschool organization, with an emphasis on electronic and paperless tools.

The sessions are live but included in your ticket price are MP3's of every single session so you can listen any time you want! Woot! Between episodes of HomeschoolingIRL, click on over to one of the iHomeschool Studio sessions and learn some new tricks!

See you there!