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Last updated on April 29th, 2023 at 12:16 am
Recently, I began listening to the homeschooling podcast Your Morning Basket. Up until now, I’ve been averse to all the posts I’ve seen on Pinterest about Morning Baskets. But now, this idea has sparked my own ideas for how I’m organizing our homeschool schedule this term.
Routines and rhythms change as our seasons of life change. My student is still very young but she’s soaking up a lot of information. I want to nourish her mind with good things. But I’ve been overwhelmed by trying to fit all the subjects into one day.
If we begin a project, she always wants to finish it. This means I don’t get to the other subjects on my list that I want to cover for the day.
While lists are good, they can also be stressful, which is exactly what I’ve been finding as I try to pack what I can into our homeschool day.
Instead of worrying about getting to everything on my list, I’m using morning time and loops for organizing our homeschool schedule this term.
So many subjects!
There are so many subjects and things I want to cover during our homeschooling years! I came up with a list of everything I want to do now while she’s young (and I’m still adding on!). Some subjects are best done daily while others can be done every so often.
Morning Time
Here are the subjects/activities I want to do daily:
- Prayer
- Bible reading
- Reading aloud
- Dictation
- Math
- Fairy tales/ fables/ tall tales
- Memory work
- Cursive writing practice
Since learning about what Morning Time or what a Morning Basket is, I realized this would be a great way to get some of the daily things into our day.
For most families, a Morning Basket contains the things all different ages can learn at the same time. Having an only child, I like it as a way to efficiently use our time by making it into a daily rhythm. It allows me to get to the things I tend to skip, such as Bible reading and fairy tales.
Morning Time is kind of like in elementary school when we would recite the Pledge of Allegiance and talk about the weather for the day.
I’m trying not to do too much in my Morning Time as we get started. For right now, we’re starting with prayer, Bible reading, fairy tale read aloud, and memory work (that I often pair with dictation).
Check out this page for more about Morning Baskets and Morning Time.
(You might also like a post on how I homeschool without a curriculum.)
Looping
As I said earlier, trying to get to every subject in one day was overwhelming, even if we were only doing that subject once a week! Then I learned that by using a loop I could ease the burden.
Looping is when you work on one subject one day, another the next day, then another the next. Then you go back to the first subject.
For example, I’m currently looping three subjects: geography/nature study, history, and music appreciation.
The loop looks something like this:
- Monday – Geography/Nature Study
- Tuesday – History
- Wednesday – Music Appreciation
- Thursday – Geography/Nature Study
- Friday – History
- Monday – Music Appreciation
And so on.
When we pick up a subject, we pick up where we left off.
Looping doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more done. It prevents you from feeling like you’re falling behind or that you didn’t get everything done.
Most of the time, my student wants to finish a project in one day. Looping gives us plenty of time to finish a project without having to worry about moving to the next thing.
Here’s a post about using loops in your Morning Time.
Shorter Terms
I admit that I haven’t quite managed to sit down and calendar out my terms. But I’m planning on switching up the subject loops every 6-8 weeks.
Why? Because it gets a bit boring to keep working on the same thing for weeks and weeks. (How well do I remember this from my school days …why did we spend so much time on The Scarlet Letter?) My daughter likes things fast-paced, so I have to keep things exciting and enticing for her by presenting new concepts and knowledge.
Experimenting with a homeschool schedule
In this season, this is how I’m organizing our homeschool schedule this term. It’s an experiment, but then again, my whole foray into homeschooling is an experiment!
How do you schedule your homeschool? Share your ideas for others in the comments!
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