What Makes A Successful Homeschool Day?

Unless you’re part of a co-op that meets every day, homeschool can be a lonely work of love (or frustration, but let’s just focus on the love ❤️ ). Let’s be honest! While some days flow smoothly other days are TOTAL DISASTERS. In this post, I want to explore how you (we) can make every homeschool day a successful homeschool day.

By the way, be encouraged. There is absolutely, positively no homeschooling mother out there claiming to have perfect days every day. Some homeschool days are unforgettable, others are want-to-forget-ables. This is the story of our lives.

Some homeschool days are unforgettable, others are want-to-forget-ables. This is the story of our lives.
JanaDoesHomeschool.com

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

My first tip is that you shouldn’t expect your homeschool to just happen. The truth is that you’ll need to consider planning your homeschool year. You can work on planning your days after you’ve made the time to plan your year.

Planning Your Year: Buying Homeschool Curriculums

I begin planning for a new homeschool year in March of the prior homeschool year. For example, we are in March of 2022 right now. I’ve already started planning my 2022-2023 school year. This planning is not too extensive. For me, it’s about figuring out which curriculum(s) I think I’ll use for the next school year. Are we going to stick with the same ‘ole? Or are we going to try something different? And why March? For us, March is when I’ve found the best sales on homeschool curriculums.

Once I’ve purchased my curriculums, I let them sit for a few months while we’re completing our school year. Once the Summer comes, around July, I make it a priority to familiarize myself with new curriculums. For example, this upcoming Summer, I’ll need to study Apologia’s Chemistry & Physics Elementary Science Curriculum. This one is new for us so I must give myself extra time to figure it out before the new school year starts.

Planning Your Year: Making a Homeschool Calendar

Another Summer task is syncing my calendar with the public school’s calendar. We tend to follow a similar schedule to the public school, so I make it my business to write out which lessons I plan to teach on which dates. And I sync our holidays to public school holidays. (We honestly don’t always take holidays at the same time as the public schools, but for my past-teacher, must-be-organized brain, it’s best to follow the public school schedule). In any case, below is an example of how I plan out my calendar based on the public school calendar.

Our Plan for the Homeschool Year
Not Fancy-Pancy at all

Planning Your Homeschool Days

Once our homeschool year is planned out, I begin planning our homeschool days. And while I could perhaps link a bunch of fancy, pancy planners here, the truth is that I don’t use them. I have used, and I will continue to use a 5-subject notebook for the foreseeable future. I usually pick up a solid on at Walmart sometime in the Summer.

Armed with my 5-subject notebook, I write “Week 1 Day 1” on the first page. Then I write the order in which I will teach each subject. Under each subject heading, I write the curriculum and the page numbers that I’ll need to teach that day.

Our subject order is very fluid, so it is often re-arranged during the year. This reorganization depends heavily on Jana’s response to the original subject order. For example, when she was younger, it was necessary to schedule ‘Handwriting’ first because she just “couldn’t write properly” after a certain time of day. Has that happened to you too?

Subject Order

Handwriting
Circle Time
Language Arts
Mathematics
Bible
History/Bible/Literature
Science
Typing/Coding
Art/Music (Not Daily)
Physical Education (Not Daily)

How Many Hours to Homeschool a Day?

After seeing our list of subjects, you may have one question. How long does it take you to do all of it? Once I subtract out scheduled breaks, our homeschool day can take about 6-7 hours 😬😱. I know how shocking that is, but our state actually requires at least 6 hours per day of homeschooling. To be fair, nobody checks on that, but an average of 6 hours is the amount of time it takes us anyway.

P.S. You may have follow-up questions about the length of the day. I’ll try to address them in the Frequently Asked Questions below.

How many Days in a Homeschool year?

I am not sure if every state has a requirement for this. However, New York state requires homeschoolers to do 180 days of school per school year.

So for reference, that is 180 days at 6 hrs per day. It’s a commitment for sure, but I know many moms doing it brilliantly. You can too.

If you’re not in New York State and have no such requirements, you’re one of the lucky ones. Enjoy it!

Frequently Asked Questions

For us, it isn’t possible. I remember the first year I taught Chemistry in High School. One thing I learned from that horrible year is that the best teachers plan, and plan, and plan. By my third year of teaching Chemistry, I became the planner I needed to be.

If you want to succeed in homeschooling, my best advice is that you make sure to plan ahead.

I should have qualified the 6-7 hours better.

If you are homeschooling pre-kindergarten, your homeschool day can be as little as 45 minutes. For Jana, I did about 2 hours of homeschool because she was excited about learning and could focus for 2 hours.

As school grades increase, you will need to increase the number of hours of homeschooling.

I can attest that for 3rd grade, we do 6-7 hours. You may do less depending on how much material you choose to cover.

Yes, there are days that I drop off the unnecessary. For example, ‘Circle Time’ can be dropped off. Or there are days where we’ll drop typing because we have a field trip. The beauty of homeschooling is the flexibility, although you might think that ours doesn’t sound too flexible.

P.S. I’ve given the ideal – the holy grail of a successful day for us. But as I indicated before, our days and orders are quite fluid.

These 180 days include Field Trip days. However, my state wants you to account for 180 days.

Like I said before if your state does not, then you’re good to go with doing however many your state requires.

We’re not sitting still for 6-7 hours. Some of our work is done on a table, some are experiments on the ground. There is also some cuddling for read-aloud stories and dancing to Geography songs and playing on the playground (P.E)

Your best bet is to make the 6-7 hours as enjoyable as possible.

Personally, I do.

But hear me out.
1. I have no other children
2. I am also doing school ( a degree in Bible). So while Jana is working, I am working.
3. If I go off ‘choring’ while she’s working, the day would be much longer than it already is, because Jana’s daydreaming would mean her working slower than ever.

The Last Thing You Need to Know about a Homeschool Day

You are allowed to have bad homeschool days. It is okay to replace a weekday with a weekend day or make up a day at some point. Don’t pressure yourself too much for all perfect days.

Happy Homeschooling! And don’t forget to share this article with other homeschoolers.