whether you’ve been forced into homeschooling 2020 or it’s always been your desire, i’m sharing our multi-age homeschool schedule for preschool, kindergarten and 2nd grade with a total of 7 kids!

as a former special education teacher and more importantly as ‘mama’ to 4 babes 5 and under, i know the importance of a routine! kids thrive on routine and let’s be honest, as an adult, i do too!
so after the initial shutdown {thanks coronavirus}, we shared what our daily schedule looked like and it was so fun hearing from so many of you who were trying new things. fast forward to the schools moving fully-online, as a family we decided that homeschooling would be our best option. although it’s been a crazy few months {see also: having a stroke at 32}, we ultimately decided that with some creativity, our kids would thrive at home and i’d be able to pull the cobwebs off my teacher hat!

some fast facts:

we live in ohio… a state that allows someone other than the parent to provide the academics.
live in ohio?! ohio homeschool is a wonderful resource for you!

we will have a total of 7 kids here, 4 days a week.
1 seven-year old who would have been entering 2nd grade
4 five-year-olds who would have been entering kindergarten
1 three-year-old who would have been entering preschool
1 one-year-old who rules the roost

a 2nd adult will be present and in charge of maisley {1 year old} + frequently miller {3 years old}

you can read about our curriculum choices here.

you can see our morning routine here.

while this is a homeschool schedule, i tend to think of it more as a routine… a guide for our day. you’ll notice there’s about an hour give or take for ‘school work’… an hour that we will be in our homeschool room doing intentional teaching. some days this may be shorter, others longer and for our 2nd grader it will be a bit more involved. but note, if we’re having a great discussion about Jesus or in the middle of understanding a new concept, we’re not going to just ‘switch subjects’ because it’s 9:15 and we need to move on.

our kindergarten homeschool schedule

about our homeschool schedule

the number one piece of advice i can give {speaking as a former public school educator coming into homeschool – especially in early childhood – as teacher/mama} is to throw out the idea you formally had that education HAS to look like public education. it doesn’t need to be 8am-3pm filled with worksheets and drill. don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly a place for drill + memorization, but at this age the emphasis should be on discovery and building foundational skills for cross-curricular learning. we live on a farm and much of our time will be spent outside learning about lifecycles, using pebbles from the creek as math manipulatives, baking and including math and language arts.
think about it. how much of your life is spent divided into ‘curricula’? rarely. there are skills that need to intentionally be taught…but let’s learn letters with sticks? there’s so much creativity to be had and i promise the memories will be worth it!

another extremely important note to take away is that everyone’s ‘homeschool’ days look different because every home is different!! 2 of my very close friends are also homeschooling and i guarantee their day looks different than ours and that’s great!

take this schedule and use it as a guide for getting started…and then come back and let me know how it goes!!!

you got this, mama!

hear me out here, friends. if you are new to this staying at home gig or new to the homeschool realm, i need you to hear me loud and clear or your brain might explode…. F L E X I B I L I T Y is the name of the game. and grace. grace for your kids. grace for yourself.