Home Education Routines and Schedules! love them or hate them everyone is talking about them at this time of year. Why would you want a routine when you home educate? Surely people choose this lifestyle to have freedom from routine?
It’s true that stepping away from the traditional schooling system does give a family more freedom and some families love having the autonomy of waking up each day and deciding what to learn on the fly. Alternatively, there are families who, while enjoying the freedom from a government imposed curriculum, still want and do better with a structure in place.
I am a routine person; the benefits of having a routine to fall back on are varied and can be as simple as less decision fatigue, as each step is already set out, to helping us get started again when interruptions inevitably happen, to helping create more independent children as they can move from one step to the next without me always being present.
If the thought of a routine causes you to feel stifled or trapped then you shouldn’t feel the need to implement one but if you want a routine but don’t know where to start then some of these tips may help you create a basic routine outline.
The first thing I do is search for lots of other peoples routines, i.e. check out the hashtags on routine posts. The routines I like the look of all get saved to a folder on my Instagram (almost like a Pinterest board). I then look for the simplest form of routine to outline a typical day. Obviously there are field trip days and days when the routine won’t work but I am not looking for perfection just an guide initially.
From my research I came up with the basic routine pictured above. Remember to make it work for your family and don’t try to put something into place that simply won’t suit your family. For example if you all like a lay in don’t plan on an early morning lesson set.
This may seem really simple but you need this basic outline first, think of your day in large blocks of time. Then you can work on the details. For some a basic outline is enough but I want to get down to the exact information of who, what and when. See my next post where I will expand on this routine outline.
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