5 Steps to Creating a Daily Homeschool Routine for Kids with Free Canva Template
If you have been homeschooling for any length of time you have probably found yourself craving a plan, schedule, routine, ANYTHING, to anchor your day. My family has been through many MANY iterations of what our homeschool day looks like. Between pregnancies, babies, and toddlers underfoot, I found myself needing and clinging to our daily rhythm like a lifeline even though it changed alot. I finally feel like we are in routine that we are able to stick to pretty consistently (even with babies and toddlers underfoot).
I am going to share the process I use to create our daily rhythm and a Canva Template to create a visual schedule for you and your family to reference. The visual schedule is what takes the plan from being something that sounds great in your head to something that the whole family has bought into and follows consistently. It’s not quite as simple as printing it out and sticking it up on the fridge though. Below you will see the 5 Steps I believe are imperative to not just creating your daily rhythm but sticking to it!
In this blog, I am going to show you how to build a daily routine that is uniquely suited to your family with built-in incentives to make implementation and consistency easier for everyone.
1. Before building a schedule, take some time to create a vision or top 6 list for your homeschool. What do you value? How do you want to spend your time together? What does a perfect day look like? This will help you curate a day that feels enjoyable and intentional.
2. Start Small and Build Up from There. While creating a vision for what you want your homeschool to be eventually is important, resist the urge to do it all right away. You would laugh if you saw the homeschool routines I have tried to get my kids to follow in the past. I definitely had listened to one too many homeschool podcasts about poetry tea time, nature journaling, artist and composer studies. I was so excited to do EVERYTHING that I made a daily routine that was massive and unrealistic, especially with a baby and toddler in tow.
Start by writing down everything you would like your kids to get done in a day. Include self care (brushing teeth, getting dressed, etc), chores, school work, outside time, etc.
Just get it all out.
Next, get really picky about what really HAS to happen every day. Depending on how old your kids are and how long you have been working on your daily routine you may need to narrow this down quite a bit. I know I did.
For us this was narrowed down to:
Morning Routine (get dressed, brush teeth, family contribution), Family Learning Time (the heart of our homeschool that includes prayer, gratitude, a few curated read alouds, with an oral or written narration), Learning Block (Math and LA for the 6 and 8 year old), Reset the House (a quick cleanup after dinner), Bedtime Routine (brush teeth, read books).
Put these things in order of how you would like them to happen. You can put a time if that helps you know what to aim for, but I like to stay consistent with the order in which we do things instead of what time.
3. Motivate- It Needs to Matter to Them
“Because you’ve been wearing that for the last two days and it’s filthy.” Is often something we would say to our boys when they would push back on getting dressed in the morning. I cannot tell you how many times I have been pulled into the “clothing negotiation.” Apparently, their own hygiene is of no consequence to them, so we needed to find a way to make it matter.
Ask yourself, “What motivates my children?”
If your brain went to a rewards chart, that is not what I am talking about. It is merely being intentional with when things happen in your day so that you can use “When, Then” statements.
For example, “When your schoolwork is done, THEN you can have your ipad time” For my kids, it is allowance and screen time. My kids earn screen time once all of their schoolwork is done for the day and a small, daily allowance for completing everything on their daily schedule without complaining. It motivates them to follow the routine and creates a clear boundary (that is easier for us to enforce) around the things we have deemed “non negotiables” in our day.
Side Note: We recently got the Greenlight App as a way of giving allowance and our kids have loved seeing the money get transferred to their account each day. We also have the specific tasks required to get their allowance listed in the app so they can see we are checking them off as the day progresses. Using Greenlight has helped us so much with being more consistent with their allowance and holding the kids accountable to their responsibilities each day. If you click this link to try it you get $30! https://share.greenlight.com/13217474
4. Host a Family Meeting- Introduce and Follow Up
My absolute favorite tweak we have made this year is adding in Family Meetings!
Our very first family meeting this year was to go over the new daily schedule. We walked them through the day, talked about why it was important, and showed them how the new allowance system was going to go. We also let them ask us any questions they had and express concerns. It helped us get buy-in from them before we even started. This was huge!
FOLLOW UP: The following week at our family meeting we checked in. What is working? What isn’t? What did you like? What was hard?
This is working really well for our 6 and 8 year old! Our 1 and 4 year old are usually asleep during this time so we can give the older kids our full focus. I think family meetings would be helpful for kids 4 and up depending on temperament and maturity.
5. Put a Visual of the Daily Routine in a Common Area
After putting all the work into creating this new daily routine, you have to put up a visual that everyone can see. A visual helps everyone (including you) remember what you have already agreed upon. It also gives you something to point to when your child needs reminding without you having to nag them with your voice. If creating a Visual Daily Routine sounds like a lot of work, I have got you covered! I created a really simple Daily Routine Template on Canva that you can download and customize!
In conclusion!
- Simplify your requirements for the day (focus on starting small and building from there)
- Figure out what motivates your children and plan those things strategically after the required activities.
- Have a Family Meeting to introduce the routine and follow up as much as needed.
- Put your Daily Routine where everyone can see it.
Download your Free Canva Daily Routine Template.
