Which Homeschool Schedule Actually Works for You?

Pam: Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again?

 

Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids?

 

Welcome to Homeschool Better Together,

 

a podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family.

 

I’m Pam Barnhill, and it’s time to step out of the overwhelm and in to the wonder.

 

Let’s do this.

 

Hey there. Hey there. And welcome back to this episode, the podcast. I hope this is going to be a fun one for you. It’s a little bit different. We are going to be breaking down all kinds of homeschool schedules, and hopefully this is something you geek out over too,

 

if not, and maybe find another one in the podcast app.

 

But no, it’s going to be a really good conversation. So I’m joined today by Laney Homan, who is our member success manager, and Dawn Garrett, who is our customer service manager.

 

These ladies are just like my right and my left arm. They’re always helping people out.

 

Such a wealth of homeschool knowledge between the two of them.

 

So, ladies, thank you for joining me today to talk about schedules. Is everyone just as excited as I am?

 

Laney: I’m always excited about schedules and plans. The execution that’s the problem. Pam.

 

Pam: This is true.

 

Dawn: Amen.

 

Pam: This is true. Planning is so much fun. It is the execution that’s the problem. But we have a class for that, too, honestly.

 

Okay, well, let’s get into it. Like when I presented the idea, let’s do a whole episode on schedules. Neither one of you said, oh, you’re crazy. What are we going to talk about for, you know,

 

a whole podcast on schedules?

 

Because you know as well as I do that there are lots of different kinds of schedules out there. And I thought this was important because people still get caught in the trap of thinking that they have to do school at home or they have to follow the schedule that the school follows.

 

Do you still find that when you.

 

Dawn: Talk to people, especially with new homeschoolers and with kids, families who have kids in different kinds of schools?

 

I find that too. Like, so they have some kid going to the local public or private school, and they’re doing homeschooling with one particular kid, they want to follow that schedule.

 

But my husband,

 

we always schooled on a weird schedule, and my husband said,

 

we don’t have to stick to the man.

 

So we. We’re. We’re. We’re. We’re all about the do our own thing schedule here.

 

Pam: We don’t have to stick to the man. We can stick it to the man. By following our own homeschool schedule.

 

Dawn: That’s right.

 

Pam: Homeschoolers for freedom. I’ve got, like, the Braveheart image now.

 

Dawn: So I’m like a blue face.

 

Laney: Wow.

 

Pam: Blue face. It really is a thing, though. There is so much freedom in realizing that you can do your own thing as a homeschooler.

 

Laney: Well, I used to tell people all the time when they, like, they would be like, well, why do you homeschool especially? When I started homeschooling 20 years ago, it wasn’t quite as popular.

 

I mean, it was still. It was becoming more popular, but I would be like, I just. There’s just something in me that can’t follow somebody else’s schedule. Like,

 

I can’t be told what to do all the time and when to do it. And so I. I used to joke that that was the primary reason that I homeschooled was because I could never actually get the kids out the door.

 

And.

 

But, you know, actually, I have lots of deeper meaning for homeschooling. But I have said that it was always a very, like. Kind of like, that’s just real life.

 

It would be really hard for me to just adhere to that schedule that was so strict all the time.

 

Pam: Yeah. I loved our homeschooling freedoms. And I’m with you. I. I’ve said, people will be like, I don’t know how you can homeschool. And I’m like, I don’t know how you get those kids out the door every single morning.

 

I would way rather homeschool them than have to do that. So 100.

 

Well, and we’re not just talking about daily schedules. We’re talking about all different kinds of schedules. So what we want to do, because for some people listening out there, you may be like,

 

wait a second. Number one, I only thought that you could school like the public school does it.

 

And number two,

 

what are the alternatives? Right. Some people never give a thought to the idea that there are actually lots of different ways to do this. And we have about six different ways here.

 

Why don’t we kind of take turns with them?

 

So who wants to do traditional school year scheduling? Who’s done that before?

 

You both have. Okay, this is going to be a repeated refrain, guys. When we. We like who’s done this one? And everybody’s gonna go. I have.

 

Laney: As we will discuss later in this episode, I have changed homeschooling schooling schedules quite a bit to meet the needs of my family as necessary.

 

So a traditional school school year schedule would be kind of that starting in August Wrapping up in May,

 

following,

 

you know, whatever your local public school does.

 

And I don’t know, some of the reasons to do that, I guess would be like the kind of new school year excitement that is happening naturally around August. If your children have friends in public school, it’s kind of a natural segue back into the school year, that kind of thing.

 

And a lot of times it just fits with the rhythms of outside life, because other organizations and things can sometimes schedule around a traditional school year.

 

Pam: Yeah, we had a lot of times where we took break, a long break in the summer because that’s when camps were and that’s when vacation Bible school was. And so, you know, we.

 

We were kind of forced to, if my kids were going to participate in those particular things, and we always did. That was something that we wanted to do.

 

Dawn , you found another challenge as your kids got older that you needed to go to this for.

 

Dawn: Yeah, we had never followed a traditional schedule, but as my kids started to take more classes through outside sources, online classes,

 

community college, dual enrollment, all that stuff, they followed the traditional academic schedule. It would have been so much easier if everybody would do things my way,

 

but they didn’t,

 

so I had to do things their way.

 

Pam: Yeah, so, like, after a long, long time of doing a different kind of schedule, when your kids got into those high school years, you’re not worth it anymore.

 

We’re like, we’re butting our heads up against these other schedules.

 

Dawn: There was. There was more than a year where my kids had no break at all because the online classwork was on a schedule. And I was trying to do my stuff on our schedule was exhausting.

 

And we couldn’t. We. We were gonna. We were not gonna make it, so we had to switch.

 

Pam: Yeah. And I’m glad, Lainey, that you brought up some of the benefits. I love,

 

like, having grown up in the school system, I love the back to school excitement. And I kind of ride the momentum of that,

 

you know, in August and September. I mean, that is real.

 

Like, if homeschool mom, if you are listening to me and you love that back to school excitement,

 

ride the momentum of that as long as you can. And we’re going to talk more about that later,

 

what that looks like. But yeah, use that to, like, boost your motivation and get it. Get you excited and get everybody excited.

 

I think some other challenges is, like, speaking of momentum that you’re riding for as long as you can by the end of the school year. Sometimes you get burned out, you know, like, by May I call it limping to the finish line.

 

And we do it every stinking year.

 

Laney: We’re doing it this year.

 

Pam: So I think that’s a very real thing when it comes to doing that. You know,

 

August, end of Sep, you know, end of August, beginning of September to May,

 

you know, go at it kind of schedule.

 

All right, dawn,

 

you talk about the next one because you’ve done this kind of scheduling. And I think we need to address like both.

 

There’s, this is kind of two pronged. So talk about year round homeschooling in general and talk about your year round homeschooling with a twist.

 

Dawn: Okay, well, year round homeschooling in general is really great for families, especially if you have lots of little people. I think because you,

 

you have that routine, you have kind of like the daily rhythm that is established. And at least at my house, having,

 

having school,

 

even if it was just in the morning for that day,

 

met way fewer fights, way, way fewer mom having to intervene.

 

Everybody kind of knew what was going to happen. It helped with the consistency and it,

 

and it helped with, you know, not losing the math over the summer. And we kept with the reading. And so year round homeschooling is a really great option.

 

But when I talk about year round homeschooling, I’m not saying 365 days of schooling.

 

You know, I’m not,

 

not even like 200. And some days I’m still talking about 180 days of homeschooling, at least in my state. I know some people do fewer than that, but we’re in the upper hundreds area.

 

And so we did six weeks on, one week off. Some people call that Sabbath schooling where you do six weeks of school, you take a week off, six weeks of school, take a week off.

 

And that rhythm really helped us stay in the school habit and keep,

 

keep up to date with that. But then that week off gave us not a vacation,

 

but an opportunity to catch up on the housework, make sure that some big project is done,

 

schedule the doctor’s appointments so they weren’t to get school time, you know, like just kind of those maintenance, lifestyle maintenance things. That that week off just kind of saved our bacon every, every after, every six weeks term.

 

And then on top of that,

 

we did school from January until Thanksgiving. And we took our great big break over the holidays because I wanted Christmas to be a big deal.

 

And so we did.

 

And so we still, we got the big bump at the beginning of the school year in January.

 

Hey, we’re starting. There’s all the new things. But then we Also got the big bump at the beginning of the academic year in August when everybody else is going back to school.

 

Hey, we’re going back to school. Yes, we’re going back to school. But we only have two more terms, you know,

 

and so having that,

 

that unusual schedule, that calendar year instead of academic calendar, that all worked really well for my family.

 

Pam: Yeah, I love that so much. And you did it so well for so many years.

 

You know, I just. For as long as I knew you. Until.

 

Until you had to change.

 

Dawn: Until we had to change. Yes.

 

Pam: Yeah. You owned it. And you would still take like, you know, when dawn talks about six weeks on one week off, I know that there were years that it didn’t work perfectly with, say, vbs,

 

Right. And so you would like, you would have like a two week mini term and you’d do vbs and then you’d pick back up and do four more weeks or something like that for sure.

 

Dawn: Although, to be honest, I always counted VBS as a school week because what’s more educational than vbs,

 

right? That’s school hours.

 

So.

 

So yes, I mean, we might take little breaks and we. There were a couple of other times a year where we would have,

 

you know, a few weeks to play with even taking off at Christmas time.

 

So we could, we could massage the schedule in the summer as needed for VBS and church camp or the big things.

 

Pam: Yeah. Okay, so you said during that break week, it was not a vacation. So when did you take vacations?

 

Dawn: It was not always a vacation. We did take.

 

We did take. I did try to line up our. We always have a vacation Memorial Day week. And I did try to line that up so that it fit into our six weeks.

 

You know, it. It usually managed to fit right there. And then we might take the week after off when we got home from vacation. Everybody needs a vacation after vacation.

 

Right.

 

To do that, that maintenance week.

 

Pam: Okay, so she. Dawn  was still getting 180 days in, if that’s what your state requires.

 

Mine, my cover school requires 160 days. So, you know, I usually do a little bit more than that.

 

And so then it just happened on a different pattern.

 

And there are so many pat. Like you could do seven weeks on one week off or five weeks on one week off. You just have to play with the math to make sure you get in the number of days that you want to get in.

 

Okay,

 

well, the next kind, it’s another one where you kind of have to play with the math. And this one is a four day a week schedule. So a Lot of homeschoolers who do this.

 

Pretty much homeschool year round. You’re going to find that you probably need to, to make the math work on this one once again. That doesn’t mean you never take a break.

 

You might be, you know,

 

you might be. You probably have a longer break in the summer and a little bit longer break at Christmas and maybe a spring break.

 

But you only do school four days a week.

 

So you get to pick what four days. Those are. A lot of people will do Monday through Thursday and be off on Friday.

 

I tell you, though, I know some families where dad actually has to work on like Saturday or something. And I suppose at this, mom too,

 

you know, somebody’s working and so they get Monday off. And so the whole family can take Monday off and you don’t homeschool on Monday.

 

You could even take your break in the middle of the week if you wanted to. You could homeschool Monday and Tuesday, take off Wednesday,

 

and then homeschool again Thursday or Friday or whatever day of the week you needed to use that.

 

But the idea behind it is you have an extra day of the week off in order to be able to,

 

you know, run errands,

 

keep the house clean. Maybe you have a kid who has therapies those days,

 

just whatever it is you need to do. You can schedule all your errands for those days. You can schedule all your appointments for the day that you’re off each week.

 

Now,

 

some people say co, op,

 

some people are like, oh, we’re going to take off one day a week and do co op. Co op is school,

 

right?

 

Play date. That might be something different,

 

but co op is school.

 

So I don’t want to hear anybody telling me I homeschool four days a week and I take one day off to do co op. Co op is school.

 

Laney: And it’s funny because with this school year in particular, and we’ve done this a little bit for the last few years, but this school year in particular,

 

the way we were doing co op changed and our cl. Our classes changed a little bit.

 

And it really is more of a fun day for my kids than like they’re doing bowling and co op.

 

And it’s really pe. It’s. It is pe And I still count it as a school day, but it’s a shorter school day where that’s all we’re doing is going in and then we try to schedule our errands and everything else because we’re already in town.

 

So it’s kind of a half school day. But it’s always fun. And I do count that towards their school. It’s totally PE and they’ve, they did an art class on Wednesdays too, that kind of thing.

 

But it was always like,

 

because they were doing those two classes and then we were kind of taking a half day for grocery shopping and other types of errands and things that were always intentionally scheduled during that time.

 

I never made them do a lot of academic work on that day.

 

And so it was, it’s not really a four day school week because we are getting in some school on that day. But it does give us that space to let go of.

 

We don’t have to do math and reading lessons today and that kind of thing. And so it feels more like a break to my kids because they’re doing art and bowling,

 

so.

 

Pam: But it’s still school.

 

Laney: Yeah, it is.

 

Pam: I mean, how your kids are getting socialized, which as we all well know, is the most important thing in the world. So.

 

Dawn: And,

 

and you’re doing home EC when you’re going grocery shopping and talking to them about why you’re buying these specific things and what’s, you know, how that’s going to work in your day and.

 

Yeah,

 

yeah, I think that can be cooling.

 

Pam: You’re schooling more, taking fewer big breaks during the year.

 

You still get all your days in. So just work the math,

 

you know, and make sure.

 

But yeah, take that extra day off if that is something that would be beneficial to you. If that’s something you think you would like.

 

Dawn: All right, can I say one last thing about that? You can make sure it’s intentional and that you’re, you’ve planned for it. If it, if it turns into we’re just schooling four days a week because we’re being inconsistent,

 

that becomes an easy problem.

 

So if, if you’re gonna school four days a week, decide you’re gonna school four days a week and make that the plan and the routine.

 

Don’t just kind of fall into it.

 

Would be my recommendation.

 

Pam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just randomly fall into it.

 

Laney: Right.

 

Pam: If you were to fall into this pattern where you’re always taking Friday off and it becomes something that you do. Yeah, but just like ran, like waking up in the morning and going,

 

oh, we just didn’t get around to do doing school today and doing that once a week and calling yourself a four day a week schooler,

 

maybe not.

 

Laney: Right.

 

Pam: Okay. So we’ve been talking about more, more annual schedules like how are you going to set up your school year?

 

So now let’s shift a Little bit. And talk about some different kind of schedules you have for your day. Well, before we do that, I want to touch on magic number scheduling, because I do.

 

I think that one got put in the wrong place in the outline. Yeah. So.

 

And I’ll just go over this one quickly because I’ve been talking for a while. Magic number scheduling is a concept that we use in our put your homeschool year on autopilot class.

 

And this is something that we have found to be very freeing. I have found it to be very freeing. And this is interesting because Don’s like, just don’t be random.

 

Let me tell you how I’ve been random.

 

Dawn: Intentionally random.

 

Laney: All of the intentionality is the key here, really. And I. I can talk about that a little bit later, too. Go ahead and explain magic number.

 

Pam: So the idea with magic number schooling is you. You basically, you do a little math.

 

I know all of this scheduling stuff is about math. I’m sorry.

 

And so you. You take the number of school days that you need to do in a year,

 

right? For dawn, that’s 180.

 

You know, like, for me, it’s 160. If I want to land somewhere in between, it’s 170.

 

And then you divide it by the number of months that you’re doing school.

 

And so for a lot of times, for us, we were doing school, like, 11 months out of the year, right.

 

And we only took June off because it’s hot in Alabama, and there’s no better thing to do than school in July.

 

And so then I would divide that number of days by the number of months we were going to do school. I always like to use 10 as an example because it’s so easy.

 

So let’s say you’re doing 170.

 

You’re going to school 10 months out of the year. That gives you 17 days each month that you have to do school. And if you do school 17 days each month,

 

voila, you’ve made your 170 school days. It is just that easy. So theoretically.

 

Theoretically, I don’t know anybody who’s ever done this.

 

You could homeschool from the 1st to the 17th of each month and say, we’ve got the rest of the month off.

 

Now, people don’t do that because, you know, Sundays,

 

and a lot of people don’t want to even homeschool on Saturday. Like, I think that’s a. I think that is a recipe for burnout if you were to do it that way.

 

But each month, you’re just tracking your days that you’re doing school,

 

and, you know, when you’ve hit 17,

 

you’re in a really good place.

 

And what would happen with us is we did ride that enthusiasm at the beginning of the school year, and. And we would bank a ton of days when it was hot outside,

 

when we were excited about new materials, when we were starting back to school and just full of all of this motivation.

 

And so we would bank a lot of days, and we would be way ahead of the number, the magic number that we needed to be at by the time we reached October.

 

And the weather got really, really nice, and we were like, ooh, let’s spend a few more days outside this month,

 

you know? Or we would get to Christmas, and we would be like, well, we’re kind of at the end of a math chapter. Do we want to just stop two days early?

 

You know? And so it did kind of allow me to be inconsistent, but it was so flexible, and it kept me on track because I knew what that number was I needed each month.

 

I knew I could bank things ahead and. And be prepared for when life threw some crazy curveball my way.

 

And it didn’t cause me stress because I knew my magic number,

 

and I had some of those days banked from when we were really motivated. So that’s magic number scheduling. We do teach you exactly how to do it and put your homeschool year on autopilot, how to lay it out.

 

And we have a lot of people who say that it’s really, really helpful to them. Okay, so let’s get into talking about scheduling, kind of our days and weeks. Who wants to tackle loop scheduling?

 

Dawn: Loop scheduling is a way where you can say,

 

these are all the things that I want to get accomplished in a week.

 

In a perfect, ideal week, I would like to have this many history lessons, this many science lessons, this many Shakespeare lessons, this much geography.

 

And then you put them in a loop where you’re kind of alternating between all of them,

 

and you have a set amount of time in a day. So on you have an hour each day to work through your loops,

 

and you just work through it, and you get as far as you can in that hour, and then the next day, you pick up where you left off, and you work through it for an hour.

 

And then the next day you work and you. And you just work through your loop,

 

and it’s. Everything is there waiting for you. When you get back to that point,

 

say you end up taking Friday off for a field trip.

 

You can still pick back up where you left off on Monday. You don’t have to start at the beginning of the loop again. You just keep working through.

 

Working through this loop. It’s.

 

It’s alternating. It’s. It’s making sure that you don’t skip the art lessons because it’s on the loop. So it’s what you’ve got to get done. Right.

 

We use loops a little bit differently. In my homeschool. We had them in our morning time. So we had.

 

We did one thing from our loop every day, but it’s the same thing applied. We did, you know, Shakespeare, handicraft,

 

art lesson or drawing lesson,

 

picture study, composer study, and we just were able to loop through those. And we just did one every day.

 

And that way I didn’t put off the ones that I didn’t want to do.

 

Pam: Yeah, and let’s. Let’s go ahead and talk about this. Let’s talk about block scheduling. And right now to compare it. So if Dawn had been doing block scheduling. So block scheduling is kind of like assigning a specific thing to a specific day.

 

Right.

 

So it’s a more traditional schedule where Dawn would wake up and say, we’re going to do him study on Monday, and we’re going to do picture study on Tuesday, and we’re going to do Shakespeare on Wednesday, and we’re going to do handicrafts on Thursday.

 

But what happens is you start missing some of those and. And you find that you keep getting behind and behind. And I talk about this, but it really is true.

 

I don’t know why,

 

but the law of averages would completely mess me up. Where there would be one day a week that was always the day that took a hit, and I don’t know why.

 

And so we would end up on Lesson, you know, 14 in history and on lesson 42 in science. And it was like, why are we getting way more science done than history?

 

And it was because Thursday was always taking a hit, and that was the day we did history.

 

So with her loop,

 

instead of doing that, she’s just like, we’re going to wake up on Monday and we’re going to do the next thing on the list,

 

and then we’re going to wake up on Tuesday and do the next thing on the list. And if we miss Wednesday, it’s no big deal, because Thursday we’re going to do the next thing on the list.

 

That’s what a loop is. It’s just a list. And then when she got to the bottom of the list, she would just loop back up to the top.

 

And I just think they’re So, I mean, there’s just so much freedom in doing it this way. Laney, have you ever used loops?

 

Yes, I do use loops.

 

Laney: I use loops to kind of get number one to avoid exactly what you’re talking about.

 

And that is as life happens and there are disruptions,

 

and I feel like we’re off our schedule because,

 

you know, whatever, maybe it’s Tuesday and Thursday that keep getting hits or whatever, but it just. It throws things out of balance.

 

So just knowing that we’re going to get to things kind of equally as we’re moving through I think can be really helpful.

 

The other thing I will say about block scheduling, kind of like going. Because we talked about that just a second, how you assign, like something to a particular day.

 

The other way I’ve used block scheduling. So I kind of use block scheduling and loops together is I will block off, like, three subjects that we’re going to loop through for this term,

 

and then the next term we’ll have three subjects that we’re going to loop through, but they’re kind of blocked in that we’re not doing all six subjects for the whole term.

 

Pam: Right.

 

Laney: For both terms. But we’re blocking off when we do certain subjects. And I find that that helps my kids stay more focused if my loop is a little bit shorter.

 

And we’ve also used block scheduling for high schoolers that I have had some high schoolers who have chosen to take fewer classes at a time and spend more time working through those classes to finish them.

 

And, you know, it’s. Maybe it’s a full credit class, but they’ll take, you know, three or four classes for one semester and knock those out. And then the second semester they’ll, you know, pick up the rest of their credits by working for extended periods of time on another subject.

 

So we block that way as well.

 

Things I don’t block are math and foreign language. I usually prefer them to kind of keep that consistent so they don’t lose the knowledge and have to kind of be like, wait a second,

 

yeah, math last term.

 

Now I’ve got to dive back into it. That that can be frustrating. But a lot of the other content subjects that they’re working through, they can, like, work through just a, you know, a single subject in a faster time frame if they have fewer classes to do.

 

So that’s another way we’ve used blocking.

 

Pam: And that’s what blocking is. It’s very simply assigning something to a specific time period. So whether that be a block in your day.

 

Right. I’m going to assign something to this time period or whether that be over the course of a term or a semester. I’m going to assign these three subjects for this time period, and we’re going to get them done.

 

And then next semester we’re going to do three other subjects or two.

 

And you can do it with one subject,

 

two subjects, things like that.

 

Laney: She always did history one semester and science the next semester.

 

Pam: Yeah.

 

Laney: And that way she was consistently covering both. But they would,

 

you know, they didn’t have to also oscillate back and forth. They weren’t having to loop anything. It’s just really cut and dry.

 

Pam: And you’re going to have kids who prefer that. Kids who are like, yes, I would like to sit down, focus, and work on an extended period of time for shorter things.

 

And then you’re going to have kids who want the variety.

 

And I would say blocking like that especially. Well, if you’re doing elementary school and you just want to do science in the fall and history in the spring, that’s great.

 

You know, honestly, let’s just be really super honest here. You don’t have to cover,

 

like, any real specific amount for elementary school history and science. Right. You’re just. You’re just kind of moving along and doing your thing. And I personally love, like, following their interest for those kind of content subjects.

 

When you get to high school, you’re going to have to have a kid who’s bought into that idea and really wants to do that focus for them to finish the credit in that amount of time.

 

The other thing I want to say about loop scheduling, and so these are kind of like two sides to a coin,

 

except we combine them a lot. We talk about combining them in autopilot.

 

But the number one mistake. So if you’re. If you’re interested in this loop scheduling thing, and I’ve got like, a video I can link for you that really kind of lays it out and walks you through it.

 

The number one mistake I see is people put too many things on their loop. They think, oh, I want to do all the things. And this allows me to do all the things.

 

And they put so many different things on their loop. By the time you read this, you know, let’s say this geography lesson up here. And then you, like, between everything else you’re doing and the interruptions, it takes you 21 days to get back and, like, finish the chapter.

 

That’s way too long and it falls apart.

 

Dawn: There’s a video you have where you’re like, that. That imperfect week.

 

Amount of content That I think that’s really key with creating your loops like that. And I wanted to say one more thing about blocking. When I had elementary school kids for a bit, we alternated so one week would be history, one week would be science, one week would be history,

 

one week would be science.

 

Because I,

 

as a history person, I would do all history and no science. So I had to give myself a little bit of.

 

A little bit of that kind of definition. And that really helped us again, stay on schedule and it helped me to like stay in the science zone.

 

Pam: Yeah,

 

yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. So blocking, assigning content to a certain period of time, whether that be an hour in your day, a day of the week, or a term or semester, then looping is.

 

We’re just going to make a list,

 

we’re going to set aside some time and just, we’re going to work on the next thing on the list. So both of them totally work.

 

So what have you. Like, we’ve alluded to some of the stuff that we’ve done through the years and, and we talked about Dawn ‘s big shift.

 

Have you tried it on? Is there any kind you’ve not tried?

 

Let’s talk about that. Let’s. Yeah. Is there any kind you’ve not tried?

 

I would say I was never officially a four day a week homeschooler.

 

I never did that.

 

I wanted. I liked my, my longer breaks too much to do that now. I will say something I have done in the past is in February.

 

I said, okay, just for February, we’re going to take every Friday off because it was a nice change. It was a little extra break when the kids were little. We called February Parkuary because it was like when the weather broke here and it was actually warm enough to go spend time in the park.

 

So I’m in the deep South, y’ all, if you can’t tell by the accent. So, like February is perfect for the park here. It’s not too hot, not too cold.

 

Laney: I think for me, when I started homeschooling, I did not have a particular schedule. We just started schooling and I knew some homeschoolers that did year round homeschooling. And so I took that and I really didn’t like, I never intentionally scheduled breaks.

 

We would just school until either I got tired or burned out and then we’d take a little break.

 

Sometimes it was intentional because I was like, oh, everybody needs a break. And other times it was because it was just like school wasn’t happening. And then it was just like, oh, look, we just took a break and now we need to get back to it.

 

And then I noticed after my kids started to get a little bit older that they were having frustration with not knowing when their breaks were coming.

 

It was always at the whim of.

 

And so I remember the first year that I was like super intentional about printing off that year of days,

 

you know, just that calendar at a glance for a whole year and highlighting the weeks that we would take a break where they were actually scheduled in. And it was such a game changer for everybody’s attitudes because they knew when to expect a break.

 

And then I could plan for,

 

you know, kind of catch up and those types of things in the house. And we’ve talked about that, right? And kind of what dawn was describing as her break week.

 

But I could also build rest into my own school year for myself.

 

And I could also.

 

Well, back in the day when I was actually planning during the school year, I could plan, you know, I could build in some planning days. Now that I do autopilot, I do all of my planning in the summer, so I don’t have to feel like I’m scrambling for those days.

 

But I still will set up periodic reviews to go back and kind of reevaluate everything and make sure that we’re, you know, meeting goals and everything. Like we talk about in put your homeschool year on autopilot, but that it was really just about the intentionality.

 

And then over the years, our type of schedule has changed based upon our circumstances and our life. And every year it seems like I look and evaluate, like, what is going on in all the kids lives, what’s going on in my life, how.

 

How are we going to approach our homeschool year? This year we did kind of do that when I started intentionally scheduling breaks. We did kind of follow the six weeks on, one week off for a while.

 

I love schooling year round.

 

I like schooling in the summertime when it’s super hot.

 

But my oldest child became a lifeguard.

 

So at like 15,

 

so it was like, okay, well now he’s gone. And so like we just had some life circumstances, kind of like dawn was talking about with her kids, you know, outsourced classes,

 

where all of a sudden they had schedules to meet for other people.

 

And we kind of morphed into a more traditional school year to kind of map out that,

 

you know, flow of life for the kids.

 

And once I had my oldest go to college,

 

we actually just followed the college schedule so that we could be on break when he was on break because he would still come home for break. And it was nice to be able to not try to convince the children to do school whenever their brother was home.

 

It was like a party every time he came home. And so we’ve just kind of looked at the needs of our life and then adapted our schedule accordingly. And that has really kind of encompassed all of these different schedules that we’ve talked about.

 

Pam: Okay, you just said what I was going to say. I mean, it really sounds like. And dawn, you did the same thing.

 

Like, I think the most important thing I’m hearing from you guys is you have to evaluate what your needs are in the moment and choose the scheduling types. Whether you’re using one or combining or whatever that’s going to meet your needs in the moment.

 

Dawn: For sure.

 

Yeah. I think I never, I never used the magic number scheduling and I think that was just a situational thing for me because we were kind of all falling apart at the seams and being very irregular at first.

 

And then once we switched to the Sabbath schooling,

 

that just worked for us and so we stuck to it. And then I learned about magic schooling, number schooling, and I was like, well,

 

I think I. I really liked the way we were doing it. And so I never really tried that.

 

Pam: Yeah.

 

Dawn: And so that you asked which ones we hadn’t used. That’s the only one I hadn’t used. And mostly out of it hadn’t been invented yet.

 

Pam: Well, and. And so the other thing is, it’s all about setting an intention.

 

Right. Like just not floating along at the whims of life. And magic number is probably the least amount of intention. But you are saying my intention is to sit. And when we show you how to lay it out, we actually.

 

You actually do write a little number at the top of the month. Like, that is my intention for how many homeschool days I’m going to do this month.

 

Maybe it does work when your kids are younger because they know. Or maybe you post the schedule and you show the kids. Like, this is my intention for this month.

 

Laney: Yeah, I have actually used magic number. And we. I schedule out those days. It helps me to see because we. Where we came into a struggle with the Sabbath school schooling, with doing six weeks on and one week off was there was inevitably something that just wouldn’t line up well.

 

And I.

 

It just,

 

you know, you were, you mentioned like, oh, you could do like a short two week term and then take your break week and then finish your term at four. No, no.

 

And my brain doesn’t work that way it stresses me out.

 

We must do school in set,

 

like blocks of time. If I’m doing this Sabbath, like, if.

 

Pam: I have the schedule, it’s got to be six weeks on, one week off, right?

 

Laney: I really struggle with the like needing it to be a particular way and like adapting that. So the magic number actually helped me to adapt it a little bit more because I could see like, oh, my son’s on fall break for school and so we still have to get in this many days of school.

 

But I would actually sit with that yearly calendar and mark off those days that we were going to do school. And then I could see where we could take a few extra days off.

 

And I could be like, oh, we’ve been doing school for six weeks with no days off. We certainly need even, even if we can’t take a full week here,

 

we need to have a half week break because everybody’s going to be kind of ready for that.

 

And I do that even when we’re following a more traditional calendar.

 

If it’s like, if we’re kind of trying to line up with the public school calendar for meeting like the kids friends are off and different things that we have needed to meet that schedule for.

 

I still try to look and I’m like, oh, they have like every Friday off in this series of time,

 

but we don’t really need to do that.

 

But I can take this break. And it, it’s just all about being intentional. I think that’s primary thing.

 

Pam: I think intentionality is the key. And I think the other big thing as we close it out is you, like, you’re not a failure for trying something and it doesn’t work for your family.

 

Right? So, you know, if you’re like, oh, like, I really think this would meet our needs. I really think this would be good for us. And you try it and it doesn’t work.

 

You know, and they’re obviously, you’ve heard us say today, different things for different seasons,

 

sometimes even different things for different kids. You might have two high schoolers and one of them needs a loop schedule and one of them wants to like block and do like just three subjects this semester and four subjects next semester.

 

So,

 

you know, you can totally try different things. It really is.

 

You’re just working on what works for you,

 

what works for your kids,

 

what works for your family,

 

and try something, and if it doesn’t work,

 

try something else. And you may at the end of the day come around and find that following a strict traditional school schedule is what works for your family.

 

And that’s okay, too.

 

Well, ladies, thank you so much for joining me here today. I do want to say if you would like a deep dive into all of these different kinds of schedules, videos on how to set them up and conversations with other schedule geeks like us,

 

you can find all of that in Put yout Homeschool Year on Autopilot and the Planning Group.

 

And we have all the forms to help you set them up and we show you exactly how to do it year after year after year. So we’ll put a link in the show notes to put your homeschool year on Autopilot.

 

All right, thanks so much.

 

That’s our show for today.

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