A lot of people like to have a daily routine. I love a routine and my children thrive when we have a schedule and keep to it every day. I read a blog a while ago about keeping a daily rhythm instead of a schedule. A schedule is so confining whereas a rhythm gives you some wiggle room for life to happen.
After reading that blog, it got me thinking about how I want my homeschool day to look. Well, any day really. I want there to be some kind of routine but lots of room to have fun and rest. So, I came up with a daily rhythm that works for our family. We are still figuring out what works and what doesn’t with it but so far we like it a lot.
Our Daily Rhythm:
- Wake Up- get dressed, brush teeth, make beds, and eat breakfast.
- Morning Chores- we have a loop schedule and each boy (and myself) are assigned certain jobs each day.
- Morning Basket Time- includes: read aloud, Bible study, and a loop of either poetry, character study, map study, Shakespeare study, artist/composer study, and timeline. (lasts about 30 minutes)
- Complete School Work- lasts about 1-2 hours
- Lunch and Clean Up
- Free Time and Silent Reading Time- this lasts until about 4pm. During this time I do ask that they read for 30 minutes and then they can play outside or in their room. On rainy days they may watch a movie.
- Dinner and Clean Up
- Evening Chores- includes helping with dinner clean up and tidying the house from everyday use.
- Bedtime Routine- showers, PJs, brush teeth, read aloud, and pray.
As you can see, I like to leave my afternoons free. If we ever have appointments or a field trip in the morning, we do our school work in the afternoon. It’s very flexible. Like I said, we are still working out the kinks. But, we are really enjoying have a daily rhythm that we can follow. I hope you can glean something good from our rhythm. What would you add or take away?
