Are your homeschool kids on a schedule?

[zansammommy]

Are your kids on a schedule? Do they get up at the same time? Go to bed at the same time? Eat, play etc..

We just to be really well when my husband worked in the morning. I got up when he was heading out the door, kids got up about half hour later, eat did morning chores (beds made, teeth brush etc) and then we did school till lunch. Since my son is K/1st, he had the rest of the day free. I normally made him rest while his sister napped. Then the normal night time stuff, dinner, play or movie, bath and bed.

Well now my husband is working nights and things are off. We are getting up when he is getting home.

Just wonder if anyone is a schedule person. Just trying to problem solving the household sleeping issue. Thought maybe changing things up might fix it.

Thanks

[mum2hba]

We are on a schedule, partly because I have a young lady who gets to the house at 7:15. I get up at 6:15 get a shower, and get ready for the day. The kids get up between 6:30-7:00, eat breakfast. At 7:15, we start school. We finish between 10:30-11. Around 11 we eat, at noon they get naps/rest time until 2. Then the kids play until dinner which is around 4:30. The kids are in bed by 7:00, and that is our day.

Dh works from home on Fridays, it messes up a little bit, but it is not to bad.

[zansammommy]

Maybe we just need to really get up before Daddy get home.

Might help with nap time and bed time.

Thanks for sharing. I am really trying to get back on track. We had a good thing worked on before the holiday, then my husband went to nights and everything needs to get shuffled. Even dinner gets moved to lunch. Then for dinner the kids and I eat "lunch"

thanks again, it has helped me to brain storm to see what others are doing.

[jkelstaten]

We're not really on a set schedule right now. We are trying to be flexible because we go to church 4-5 nights a week now (traveling to raise funds) and some of those nights we may not get back to our trailer until midnight. Because my oldest isn't really great at taking naps (she's 5 1/2) I let her sleep as long as she needs.

Then we have a slow morning and usually get started with school around 10 or 11. Because we eat a late breakfast, we usually eat lunch around 1:30. If DD#1 works hard she can have her bookwork complete before lunch, but she has a tendency to dawdle. Then I put the baby down for a nap and we do another hour or so of school if she didn't complete her work before lunch.

After we're done with the book stuff, they're free to do crafts or read independently for the rest of the afternoon. We usually take advantage of good weather days and let the girls run around outside after lunch instead. There's no running space inside, so if there's not good weather we head to a mall playground or museum (we got a yearly membership good at 100 museums) for the afternoon instead.

We also do some school on Saturdays if we don't get full days in throughout the week. But Sundays are definitely a day off.

(And before anyone thinks I'm pushing my "kindergartener" too much, she finished all the scope for kindergarten in about a month and has moved on to 1st grade with about 2 hours of school each day...and most of December off)

[zansammommy]

We're not really on a set schedule right now. We are trying to be flexible because we go to church 4-5 nights a week now (traveling to raise funds) and some of those nights we may not get back to our trailer until midnight. Because my oldest isn't really great at taking naps (she's 5 1/2) I let her sleep as long as she needs.

Then we have a slow morning and usually get started with school around 10 or 11. Because we eat a late breakfast, we usually eat lunch around 1:30. If DD#1 works hard she can have her bookwork complete before lunch, but she has a tendency to dawdle. Then I put the baby down for a nap and we do another hour or so of school if she didn't complete her work before lunch.

After we're done with the book stuff, they're free to do crafts or read independently for the rest of the afternoon. We usually take advantage of good weather days and let the girls run around outside after lunch instead. There's no running space inside, so if there's not good weather we head to a mall playground or museum (we got a yearly membership good at 100 museums) for the afternoon instead.

We also do some school on Saturdays if we don't get full days in throughout the week. But Sundays are definitely a day off.

(And before anyone thinks I'm pushing my "kindergartener" too much, she finished all the scope for kindergarten in about a month and has moved on to 1st grade with about 2 hours of school each day...and most of December off)

thanks for the suggestions. It nice to see others so I can brain storm how to schedule our crazy life.
I don't think you are pushing your kindergartener. My son was 4 1/2 and did K Math in three months. You go at the speed of your kid, that's how all the homeschooler I know do it.

[TheWoman]

I have done homeschooling when my husband worked nights. He would leave for work at 10:30 at night. It was only then that I would get any time alone, so I usually wasn't in bed until 11:30. I need 9 hours of sleep to be at my best, so there was no way I was getting up at 7:00. Instead I let the kids stay up later and we all slept later and started school when I was good and ready. If we didn't get everything done we did it in the evening after thier friends had gone to bed. It worked for us at the time. My kids loved it because the rule was that they were allowed to watch tv or play on the computer if they got up before I did. That gave them an incentive to let me sleep.

One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is that you can work it around your husband's schedule.

[jkelstaten]

I have done homeschooling when my husband worked nights. He would leave for work at 10:30 at night. It was only then that I would get any time alone, so I usually wasn't in bed until 11:30. I need 9 hours of sleep to be at my best, so there was no way I was getting up at 7:00. Instead I let the kids stay up later and we all slept later and started school when I was good and ready. If we didn't get everything done we did it in the evening after thier friends had gone to bed. It worked for us at the time. My kids loved it because the rule was that they were allowed to watch tv or play on the computer if they got up before I did. That gave them an incentive to let me sleep.

One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is that you can work it around your husband's schedule.

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one that is a night owl. Even when we have an off night, I still don't go to bed until at least midnight. I need that much time to unwind and work on "my" projects after the kids go to sleep (around 9 or 10). Then I need about 8 hours of sleep. When we are overseas the people there don't usually go to bed until after 12 and their day starts around 9 or so. (Stores don't even open until 11), so we learned that early is relative. To the people there, we were weird for waking up at 8!

[jkelstaten]

thanks for the suggestions. It nice to see others so I can brain storm how to schedule our crazy life.
I don't think you are pushing your kindergartener. My son was 4 1/2 and did K Math in three months. You go at the speed of your kid, that's how all the homeschooler I know do it.

Thanks. I've gotten several comments over the last couple years on how I was trying to push her too hard, so I thought I'd preempt them

[mommyto6]

I haven't always been on a schedule. However, I've found that with 6 dc plus homeschooling if I wasn't on a schedule I was always wandering around aimlessly all day trying to figure out which fire to put out first. Since we've been on a schedule things have been SO much smoother.

I'll post ours in a little while if I can get it to look right on here.

[mommaof2kiddos]

Ours is not set in stone, but we do things at pretty much the same time every day out of routine. We get up around 7:30 or 8, eat breakfast, journal and then on to schoolwork. Lunch is around 12:30, DDs nap at about 2:30 pm and that is when DS and I can do science or new math that requires no toddler interuptions LOL. Dinner is 6:30ish with a bath afterwards and bed at 8:30 or 9. I stay up with DH until around 11 most nights. DH leaves before we get up and gets home for dinner. It doesn't always go this way, but most days this is it for us.