Our Realistic Homeschool Routine & Schedule | Flexible Daily Schedule for Middle School

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallock Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be all about our homeschool rhythm or routine or schedule if you like that word better, even though I kind of don't. So, if you follow me on social media, you saw me have a mini meltdown about a month ago over how I was going to make this homechool year work for our rhythm or routine. Emily likes dependability. That is one of her very big quirks. She likes to have a at the very least a flow to the day. She likes to know that like we do the same thing after we wake up, whether that's at 10:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m. and our day progresses in a similar fashion pretty much every day. She likes predictability. She thrives on that. And so as she's gotten older and we've added more extracurriculars, I was struggling with how to give her the schedule that she desired while also trying to find a way to make me happy and get like the academics that we wanted done, keep her in the extracurriculars that she wanted and also be having that joy and connection that was my goal for the year. Um, and it just it was breaking my brain. I couldn't figure out how to do it. So, luckily, an amazing Instagram follower messaged me and she tried to help me with our schedule and she gave me the idea of using either index cards or post-it notes and like making a life-size calendar, if you will, and just kind of writing down like, for example, on Mondays at 3:30, we have guitar. That's a non-negotiable. Um, at Tuesdays at 12:00, she has book club. At Wednesdays, you know, once a month, she has book club. And, uh, Monday nights she has a D&D class. and you know, Friday afternoon she's going to be doing either sewing or leather work with my dad or my mom. And so it was like all of these things that you couldn't control and then the things that you wanted to get done math four times a week. So writing that on four different post-its and I just sat here and like stuck up to the table and kept doing it until I was like okay I think I can make this work. So with that in mind, I have completely like broken my way of thinking and also been able to make blocks or pockets of time that give Emily the ability that she was looking for, but giving me the freedom to change what happens in that. So this is kind of complicated because everybody has different requirements and different like homeschool needs, but I'm going to try my best to explain it. So, for example, when she wakes up in the morning, she's going to do like an hour of independent work. Like that's the block that she has with independent work. What what happens during that time? I will dictate, right? Like I will just lay out her math book, which means she needs to do a math lesson or I'll lay out whatever she's going to do. Um, and so she knows that what's going to happen is she's going to work independently for an hour. So that gives her brain the predictability, the dependability, and the flow that she needs, but it gives me the freedom to change what's happening in that block of time. Like what's happening there? So I'm just going to kind of give you like an overview. The first thing that is different than we've ever done it before is for the most part, um, Monday is our day off kind of. So, we used to always do a four-day school week and that was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with Friday being a fun day because on Mondays she has her guitar lessons as well as her D&D class, which that is basically from 200 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. And because Monday has always been our most difficult day to get back into it because we've been out of our routine for the weekend, I decided it wasn't worth the uphill battle of us trying to get a whole lot done while also knowing that we needed to leave to make all of the other extracurriculars happen. So Monday we do our mail time Monday because it's something that we really enjoy. It's something we've always enjoyed. So we're doing mail time Monday when she gets up with whenever that is. Um she has no independent work on Monday. We do our meal time Monday. Then we eat lunch. Then we head out basically for the whole kind of rest of the day and we're home in time for dinner. That is pretty much our maximum capacity of all we can handle. Then Tuesday through Friday is now our normal school days. Um and we have like I said blocks of time. So 10 to 12 tenatively. And I'm giving us a lot of cushion in these blocks. Um, is her independent work. Her independent work can look like Dennis and math, fix it, grammar, a discovery deck, reading because she needs to read obviously her graphic novels and her fiction books. So, she does whatever independent work she has that I've laid out. Um, and then she reads until I'm ready, which basically means I've worked out, I've taken a shower, I'm free. So that's somewhere in the range of like one and a half to two hours. So I say 10 to 12. It's not always two hours. Maybe she didn't get up and get ready until 10:30. Maybe I was ready by 11:45. Again, generic. Once I am ready to sit down with her from 12 to 2, we do lunch and basket time. Um, again, I'm making lunch in there somewhere, so we might not actually sit down till 12:30. We might go a little longer, but again, block is basket time. We're having lunch and we're having basket time. So, I make her something to eat. She makes herself something to eat. Whatever makes her happy and we sit down in the living room and we go through whatever we're going to do that day in our basket time, morning basket. So, we do all of our daily things. I will actually link our morning basket up here for this year in case you haven't watched it. But we do all of our daily things. So our um positive thinking for the day, our on this day in history, our five science facts a day, our animal for the day um and then we read from our personal growth book. And because I wanted to make sure that we were reading aloud a lot more as well, then that's where I stack our readalouds as well because we're already there and it was a way for me to do it. We can get through our morning basket in about an hour. So, I chunked I tacked on another hourish. Again, this is flexible. And that's where we're reading like Arcane Chronicles for the Egyptian unit. Um, and then anything else that she's wanting us to read aloud, like that's that's that chunk of time we're sitting down and we're just reading. Um, it's also kind of a break time for her cuz she eats for kind of the first half of it and then she'll do something like color, put a puzzle together, do some sort of handy craft. That is like the large block of time. Then from 2 to 4 is whatever table work we're going to do. So that would be I say table work. Tuesdays and Thursdays it's table work. Um so that might look like us doing her newsletter together if that's if it's that time of the month. It might look like us doing journaling together. Um, it might look like her and Kevin doing steam together, which nope, actually that's not happening on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sorry, I will correct that in a minute. Um, anyway, Tuesdays and Thursdays, whatever table work, our unit study stuff, whatever like written stuff, our novel studies, anything that she needs to write that she would prefer for me to be there happens between 2 and 4. when we are done with whatever that is. Um then she takes from 4:00 to 5:00 on every day like not just Tuesday and Thursday but from 4 to 5 she takes as a practice block and she alternates practicing guitar and archery. So like if she does guitar today she does archery tomorrow. Um and that one is just kind of on a loop. She just knows she does the opposite. That way if she misses a day she's not um not practicing guitar or not practicing archery. We just kind of alternate. Now, on Wednesdays and Fridays, that two to four block where I was saying we do table work, uh we alternate Wednesdays is Kevin's uh two-hour block with her and then Fridays is my 2-hour block with her. And that's when we do more of like the fun stuff. So, on Wednesdays, her and Kevin do steam together. And then on Fridays, Emily and I actually have a fun loop that we work through um or fun ideas loop if you will. But it's fun. Like, it's fun with mom. So that might be poetry tea time. It might be that we're going to bake together. It might be, okay, I don't feel like we've played enough games this week, so we're going to play a whole bunch of games. Um, those are the kinds of things that are happening on Friday. And then also during our table time, which again I said happens between 2 and 4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if we finish like let's say I'm working with her on some sort of language arts concept. If we're done in an hour, then we're going to spend the other hour playing games. If we're, you know, working on like I'm helping her with a math concept that she's struggling with, then if we're done in 30 minutes, then we're going to play games for the rest of the time. Like, that is my go-to. It's not to fill it with more academics. It's to fill it with more of that fun. So, if we've, you know, played games a lot that week, then I'm going to say, "Hey, let's pick a recipe to bake together. Hey, let's do a poacher tea time. um let's do something else that we find fun and enjoyable together instead of doing like more academics, you know, like I want to I want to make sure we're having that fun. And I feel like these blocks give her that dependability and us the flexibility to have more of that happening. Once a month she's doing leather work with my dad and once a month she's doing le sewing with my mom. So on those days when that happens um that will take my fun block from me like they will both get off and have her from Friday like afternoon and evening. Um not once a month once a month period. So that's like like one month for my dad and one month for my mom. They'll they're alternating. So once a month I will forfeit or give up my fun block so that she can have the rest of the day with them to do either leather work or sewing. And then on Saturdays at some point on Saturdays we're that's when we're going to be doing our movie nights. Um which we'll be using lights camera learn for that and it'll just happen at some point cuz Saturday is normally my work day or at least I try to make it my work day. So whenever I'm done with my workday probably after dinner we will just have a family movie night. We were going to do it on Friday nights because that's what like made the most sense for my brain, but I was worried that with her um possibly being with my mom or my dad once a month that that would mean we were going to be losing one week a month. And I didn't want like that habit to fall to the wayside with us not doing it anyway. So, we're going to do it on Saturday nights. That way, we can stick with it and it'll keep happening and it's not going to be a habit that doesn't happen. All of this gets a little crazy except on Tuesdays when she has her book club that happens at noon which is in between her independent time lunch and basket time. So that's why that that's why noon was kind of like my cuto off if you will. So she'll her independent work will be lighter. She'll finish her independent work. She'll have her book club and then our basket time will be a little shorter that day. So I will like read less to make up for that time in between when the book club happened. And then the same thing Wednesdays once once a month when her fiction book club happens. And that's kind of why that block is there because I can be like, "Okay, you're going to do a little less on your independent work and then I'm going to start a little later." And it just happened in the middle. So those made the most sense there. um taking Monday off made the most sense, which again that was like I don't know why that was so hard for my brain to just be like you're just not going to do school on Mondays because it's going to be too much. Um and then having like only two days where we're doing table work together whereas before we would have done table work every day for an hour, you know, to get, you know, to get everything done. Maybe we would have do language arts today and math tomorrow or or whatever. We would done table work every day for an hour. But then I just kept feeling like an hour isn't enough time for like her and Kevin to do steam together or me and her to like really get into a fun project like an art project or something. So finally my brain was like you homeschool you have the freedom to do whatever you want. So being able to say okay we're only going to do independent work or table work sorry on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that you can have that same two hours which is a longer block for her and Kevin and then her and I. Anyway, I don't know. It should have been easier than it was. I'm telling you guys, like it broke my brain. But it now that it's done, it's so simple. And we've done it so far. This is our third week of kind of following this routine or rhythm. And it has been, I mean, again, 3 weeks in is really nothing like ask me at the end of the year. But so far, 3 weeks in, it's been working really, really well. It gives Emily that dependability that she likes. It gives her like knowing we're just going to move from one block to the other, but it gives me the freedom of being able to like lessen the loads in both to make room for things to happen or have a big enough buffer to start like a larger project. Um or you know like for example sometimes on her fix it grammar she wants me to do it with her so it's easy to shift that into you know our table time and I can shift things around like if she needs me for something it's easy for me to just move it into our time and it doesn't matter because in her mind that doesn't feel like the schedule's getting upended right like she still has her independent time she still has her basket time together we like as long as those blocks stay the same she's happy and then I'm happy because I can move things in and out of them or rearrange things depending on what happens. In case you made it through all this and you're like, "My brain is broken. I don't even know what you said anymore. Mondays we are doing mail time only and then we eat lunch, we leave, we do guitar, DND, dinner." That's it. That's what happens on Mondays. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We have um our independent work from 10:00 to 12. We have our basket time from 12:00 to 2. And we have table work from two to four. That table work is um actual academic work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then it is steam with Kevin on Wednesdays and some sort of something fun with me on Fridays except once a month when it is either leather work with my dad or sewing with my mom. Um and then from 4:00 to 5:00 that is like her practice block and she alternates and practices either guitar or archery. um whichever she hasn't done the day before. And like I said, we do that so that if she's done archery or like let's say it rained yesterday and she didn't get to archery and she did guitar, then she could just do archery today. Like it's not always perfect and she doesn't do it every day, but we try to have that block for her to make sure that she has like a set time aside to practice the things that she wants to get better at. Now, I would absolutely love to hear from you and hear what your routine or rhythm or even schedule looks like um and how you are making it work in your home school this year. Let me know down in the comments. [Music]