This year I’ll have a fifth grader, a third grader, a first grader and a preschooler. Yes, you counted right, that’s four kids. A couple of months ago, the thought of this school year honestly scared me. Now that I’ve sat down, looked at everyone’s curriculum and mapped out a plan, I feel infinitely better. I might actually be able to manage it! Here’s exactly how I planned our daily and weekly routine, and how I planned the year as a whole.
What you’ll get from this post
- Why I plan a daily flow instead of a minute-by-minute schedule
- The notebook-and-table method I use so I’m never needed by two kids at once
- How I set up a printed checklist for each kid’s desk
- How older siblings help teach the preschooler
- Why a consistent bedtime is the secret to a consistent school day
- The quick calendar count that gives me a year-at-a-glance view
Some links here are affiliate links. If you buy, we may earn a little, at no extra cost to you. We only share stuff we actually use.
Chapters
- 0:00 Planning for four kids
- 1:00 A flow, not a rigid schedule
- 3:06 Mapping out each kid’s subjects
- 6:34 Printed schedules for each desk
- 8:39 Why bedtime matters
- 10:02 Planning the whole homeschool year
Why I plan a flow, not a timed schedule
I’m a planner and organizer at heart. That has served me well with homeschooling, but there’s a downside, and my fellow planners will get this: it’s really hard for me to be flexible. When things don’t go according to plan, it stresses me out.
So instead of a rigid, timed schedule, I plan a daily rhythm, a flow for our day. Things come up with kids. You just can’t perfectly schedule out a day, so I’d rather embrace that from the start. The same goes for the year. I don’t plan exactly what we’ll do every single day, because I want room for life. If friends or family want to visit, I want to say yes without stressing about taking off school. If we get sick, or we just get an itch to go do something fun, that flexibility is already baked into the plan.
I used to think I was super easygoing, flexible and patient. Then I had kids. I can still be those things, but I have to work a lot harder at them. See the conundrum? A flow works much better for me.
Start with the curriculum you’ve already chosen
Most of my kids use a lot of online and video-based curriculum this year, so many of their subjects don’t need my teaching time. That’s by design. I was nervous about teaching multiple kids, so I wanted to safeguard my time. If you’re curious what we picked, here are our 1st grade curriculum picks, 3rd grade curriculum picks and 5th grade curriculum picks for that year.
Here’s how I break it down:
- Grab a notebook and write each kid’s name on a separate sheet of paper.
- Look through each kid’s curriculum and figure out how many lessons of each subject they need to do per week.
- Highlight the subjects where I need to teach.
- Jot down how long I estimate my teaching time will take for each subject, and how long their independent work will take.
Build a table so you’re never needed twice at once
Next, I made a table (you’ll like my fancy table) to find a good order for each kid’s subjects, so the others don’t need me while I’m teaching one kid. I look at who I need to teach and what, so I’m not overbooking myself in the same time slot.
For example, I could start the day teaching my third grader language arts. I jot down 20 minutes, because that’s how long it should take me, and I highlight it so I know that one’s me. Meanwhile, my first grader plays the reading games on the Hooked on Phonics app independently, and my fifth grader does his online English class. Then I keep plugging subjects in until nothing overlaps. I can still mix and match things around later.
You might find this easier in an Excel sheet, where you can copy, paste and move things quickly. Either way, it’s a great way to see where I’m needed and when. Of course they’ll still have questions, and that’s fine. But nobody is sitting around waiting 30 minutes for their lesson.
We can also use break times for the other kids while I teach one, but I didn’t want our whole day to be like that. Too many breaks push the school day late, and I really like us to wrap up around lunchtime if we can. Writing this out strategically helps us be efficient.
A printed checklist for each kid’s desk
Having our flow mapped out for each day and week brings me so much calm. Usually I feel like I’m juggling it all in my brain, and it’s just too much. Having it on paper I can reference all day gives my brain a break.
I made the schedules in Excel. One master copy goes on the cork board next to my desk, with the order of subjects for each kid. Then each kid gets their own to keep at their desk as a checklist, so they know what order to do things in.
- My fifth grader: We do a four-day school week, but the fun day off is flexible, not a set day. So I labeled his days one, two, three and four instead of Monday through Thursday. Two days look lighter, but he doubles up on history one day and English another, so it all fits in four days.
- My third grader: She only has history two to three times a week, so her sheet says “every other week” for that subject.
- My first grader: On a day when Finn finishes early, his list says “Theo.” That’s our three-year-old, and Finn gets to play teacher for the day.
- My preschooler: He’s three, so he doesn’t get a sheet. It’s easy to do little learning games with him here and there.
I’m also asking my two older kids to find about 10 minutes one day a week to be the teacher for Theo. I think they’ll enjoy it, I know Theo will, and it frees me up while I’m working with someone else.
Don’t skip the consistent bedtime
Another key piece to a routine you can stick to all week and all year is a pretty consistent bedtime. I don’t mean everything you do before bed. I mean the time itself.
We’re not super strict when something special is going on or friends are over. But if nothing special is happening, we stick to it. We can’t expect kids to go to bed super late and still be ready to rock at a certain time every morning. I really thrive on consistency, and I think kids do too.
A consistent bedtime gives you a consistent wake-up time, which gives you a consistent start to the school day. Otherwise it’s, “Oh goodness, we slept in until 9:30 or 10, and now school’s going to run into the late afternoon.” Just my two cents.
How I plan the homeschool year
We don’t homeschool year-round. We tried it for a few years, and it turns out I get real lazy in the summer. We have a lot of friends who go to school and are at the pool all summer, and we want to do that too. So we follow a typical nine-month school year, August through May, with a nice long summer break.
I need that break. It’s when I get the house in order, clean out the school room and get it ready, and give my brain time to think through how last year went and what to change. I think the kids need it too.
Here’s my simple process:
- Look at the calendar for the next nine months.
- Jot down trips and natural holiday breaks that are already baked into the year.
- Go month by month and write down how many school days we can get done.
I don’t plan every day off. I like flexibility. But knowing how many school days we can fit between August and May means I can see, as the year goes on, whether we have days “in the bank” to take off when things come up.
This is actually the first year I’ve done this. I know, that may shock you, since I like to plan! In past years I was flying blind. We’d get to springtime and I’d be wondering how many days and lessons we had left, and then came the mad rush to finish. I don’t want to do that anymore. It wasn’t hard and didn’t take long. Write it on a piece of paper and keep it in your desk, or put it in your planner. Now I have a bird’s-eye view I can check any time and say, “Yeah, we can take these couple of days off. We’ve got time.”
Key takeaways
- Plan a daily flow instead of a minute-by-minute schedule, and build flexibility in on purpose.
- List each kid’s weekly lessons, highlight the ones you teach, and estimate the time.
- Use a table so you’re never teaching two kids at the same time.
- Give each kid a printed checklist of their subject order.
- Let older siblings teach the youngest for a few minutes.
- Keep a consistent bedtime so your school day starts at a consistent time.
- Count your school days month by month for a year-at-a-glance view.
What viewers say
I love having a rhythm instead of a strict schedule, too. It helps keep me focused without too much pressure. Haha. 😊
@justcookingformyfam on YouTube
Thanks, Sarah! I just sat down today and used some of your tips for planning! I’ve never gone through my calendar and counted up the days before, so that was very helpful!
@jessicadillon2481 on YouTube
Things we mentioned
- Hooked on Phonics app: the reading app my first grader uses on his own.
- How to teach your kindergartener at home
- Our homeschool room makeover
- How we fixed bad behavior during homeschool
- 6 tips to prepare for the new school year
Planning your homeschool year too? Come hang out with our crew on YouTube. Subscribe to The Johnson Crew on YouTube.
FAQ
How do you homeschool multiple kids at once?
I list each kid’s subjects, highlight the ones I have to teach, and build a table so I’m only teaching one kid at a time. The others do independent or online work, like a reading app or an online class, during that slot.
Should I use a homeschool schedule or a routine?
I use a routine, or flow, instead of a timed schedule. Things come up with kids, and a flow lets you stay on track without stressing when the day doesn’t go perfectly.
How many months do you homeschool each year?
We follow a nine-month school year, August through May, and take about three months off in the summer.
How do you keep track of homeschool days?
I look at the calendar, note trips and holidays, and write down how many school days we can do each month. Then I can see when we have days to spare.
More from our crew
- 6 Tips to Prep for Next Homeschool Year: How to Have a Smooth Homeschool Year
- How Long Is Our Homeschool Day? Does It Have to Last All Day?
- Can You Homeschool Just 4 Days a Week? How and Why We Do
Full transcript
Homeschooling can be intimidating and homeschooling more than one child even more so this year I'll have a fifth grader a third grader a first grader and a preschooler yes you counted right that is four children and you might have more um but yeah just a couple months ago the thought of this upcoming school year was really scary to me made me very stressed and very nervous but I can honestly say that now that I have sat down planned out our school year looked at their curriculum
And mapped out a plan I feel infinitely better so much less stressed I feel like I might actually be able to manage it can you believe that so today I'm going to share with you how I went about planning out our homeschool routine in order to teach multiple children and planned out our homeschool year so that hopefully that will help you feel that much better about your upcoming school year so let's get into it here's the thing I am a planner and organizer at heart which has served me very
Well in planning out homeschooling things but there is a negative side to that and you fellow planners and organizers can I'm sure resonate with this that it is really hard to be flexible because of that when things don't go according to my plan it really stresses me out so I like to schedule out a daily rhythm a flow for our day as opposed to a rigid timed schedule for the day because things just they come up with kids right and you can't perfectly schedule out that day it's going to be hard for it to go according to plan
So might as well embrace that and creating the flow makes that a lot easier for me and the same kind of goes with planning out the year as a whole as well I don't like to plan out exactly what we're going to do every single day because I know that things come up and I like to leave room for things to come up you know if friends or family want to come visit I want to be able to say yes and not be stressed about having to take off of school if you know we get sick
And we need to take off or if we just get an itch to go do something fun like I want to have that flexibility baked into the plan you know I really used to think of myself as being like super easy going flexible patient until I had kids I'm not going to say that I can't be those things now that I have kids but I have to work a lot harder to be those things I have to work really hard to be easy going see the conundrum there
So planning a routine or flow for the day rather than scheduling things minute by minute works a lot better for me so here's what I find most helpful to do when I'm trying to plan out our home school routine with multiple kids that's actually going to work for most of my kids we're using a lot of online and video based curriculums so not a lot of them require my teaching time which is by design because I was so nervous about teaching multiple kids I wanted to kind of safeguard that
So I'll leave links below to the videos I made earlier this year sharing what those curriculums are that we've chosen for the 2022-2023 school year in case you're curious what those are I grab a notebook and write each kid's name on a separate sheet of paper and then I look through each kid's curriculums and figure out how many lessons of each subject they need to do per week and then highlight which of those subjects I need to teach them and jot down how long I estimate my teaching time to take for each subject
And their independent work time for each subject then I made a table where I could figure out a good order for each kid to do their subjects in so that the others didn't require me while I was teaching one kid you like my fancy table so I'm looking to see who and what I need to teach so that I'm not overlapping overbooking myself in the same time slot so I could start my day with my third grader and teaching her language arts and I'm just going to jot down 20 minutes over here because that's how long that should take me to teach her
And I'm going to highlight that subject so I know that's me I have to teach that and then I can have my first grader be on the hooked on phonics app doing those games independently while my fifth grader is doing his english class which is online and then I just keep plugging these in so that I'm not overlapping myself at any point and I can still mix and match this around if I want to you may find this easier to do in an excel sheet on the computer
So you can like quickly copy and paste and move stuff around but this is just a great way to visualize where I'm needed when I'm needed so that I'm not needed at the exact same time which of course they're going to have questions and that's fine but I'm not needed to teach and I'm not putting somebody off to wait for me for like 30 minutes for their lesson so I find this very helpful sorry for my terrible handwriting and of course we can also use break times for the other kids while I'm teaching one kid
But I didn't want our whole day to be like that and be taking more breaks than necessary and then be pushing the whole school day to end really late like I really like us to wrap up around lunchtime if possible so I just I find that writing this out and making this plan strategically does help us to be efficient in our homeschool day so really simply having this mapped out this flow for each day and each week brings me so much calm I feel like things are less chaotic
And I am much less stressed out now that I have a plan of attack because usually I feel like I have to juggle it all in my brain and it's just it's too much and so having it all laid out on a piece of paper that I can print out and reference throughout the day makes the school day so much easier gives my brain a break and I'm going to print out schedules for each one of them to have at their desk I say schedule
But flow for the day that they can kind of use as a checklist and know what order to do each subject in so then I just went on excel and I made up these um schedules to hang up so the first one is for me to have on the cork board that's next to my desk and so it's a list of the order of subjects for each kid and I don't have one for my preschooler he's only three and so he's pretty easy to just do little learning games with here
And there I've got my oldest my fifth grader he's got all of his laid out we do a four day school week but that fun school day is flexible it's not a set day of the week so that's why I labeled it day one two three and four it looks like these two days have less subjects but really he's gonna double up on his history lesson on this day and double up on his english lesson on this day and that's so that we can still have that four day school week
Okay and then my third grader she's got her list of subjects now she only has to do history two to three times a week so that's why this one says every other week my first grader and I've got his list of subjects here and this says theo because that is my three-year-old son and so while finn is finished up early this day he can teach theo some things he can play teacher for the day so that's why I put that in there and I'm going to get my two older kids to find just like 10 minutes one day a week to be the teacher for my three-year-old as
Well I think they will enjoy that and I know my three-year-old will and it also frees me up while I'm working with somebody another key piece to having a good homeschool routine that actually works and you can stick to all week long all year long is making sure that you have a consistent bedtime routine and I don't mean like all the things that you do right before bed but just a bed time that's pretty consistent um when we have special things going on or friends over you know we're not super strict about we have to get to bed at exactly this time
But if if nothing special is going on we do try to stick to a pretty consistent bedtime for the kids you know we can't expect them to be going to bed super late and then still waking up at a certain time or be ready to rock at a certain time in the morning every single day and I really really thrive and I think kids thrive too on consistency so having that consistent bedtime allows you to have a consistent wake-up time and then that way you have this consistent routine that you do every day instead of like oh goodness guys like we slept in until 9 30 10
Now school's going to take into late afternoon so I think sticking to a consistent start time of the day is really really key and the way to achieve that is by having a consistent bedtime just my two cents okay so that's how we plan out our homeschool routine for each day and each week as a whole but now let's talk about how we plan out our homeschool year we do not homeschool all year round we did try that a few years and it turns out that I get real lazy in the summer we have a lot of friends who go to school
And so they're at the pool all the time in the summer and we want to do that too and so I decided that we are totally good with having the typical nine-month school year and give ourselves a nice long break in the summer I feel like it's a nice time for me to get the house in order and redo some things in our school room you know clean it out get it ready for the new year give my brain a break so I can think through how things went last year
And make some changes for the upcoming school year to to make it better than the last so I really need that break time and I think the kids do too and so anyways all to say that we follow a nine month school year calendar so I find it helpful to look at the calendar for the next nine months and just see what trips and you know natural holiday breaks are already baked into the year and kind of jot those down and I'll look at each month individually
And write down how many days can we get school done each month and I don't plan out all the days we're going to take off for the school year again I like to be flexible but just having that written down and knowing that we can get this many school days accomplished between august and may then as the year goes along I can see oh we we do have time left in the you know the bank to take more days off as things come up here
And there throughout the year this is actually the first year that I'm doing this I know that may shock you because I do like to plan things but I really I've been like flying blind in years past and you know we'll get to like springtime and I'm like how many days do we have left before summer's break is supposed to start and how many lessons do we have left you know and then it's like that mad rush to try to get things done before the end of the school year
So no longer I don't want to do that anymore it really does stress me out so this year I have looked at the calendar it's not a hard thing to do it didn't take me very long and jotted all these things down so that I have this quick year at a glance view you could just write it down on a piece of paper and keep it in your desk somewhere safe or if you have a planner put it in there but giving myself this bird's eye view of the year that I can quickly
And easily reference as we go on throughout the year it's not like I'm having to sit down randomly and add up the next several months worth the school day you know I've already done the work and it's there and I can say oh yeah yeah we can take this day off or these couple of days off like it's fine we've got time so I am excited to see what kind of relief that will bring me this year just knowing that it's already been thought out
And we're ready for the year hopefully that was helpful to you and preparing for this upcoming school year and planning your home school routine and planning out your whole homeschool year if you are still feeling overwhelmed or feeling like you could use a little bit more one-on-one help in order to get organized for the year I am going to be offering something that I haven't offered on youtube before but I feel like it could be a really great service is a one-on-one coaching session and that sounds funny to say
But basically we'd get on the phone and chat about the curriculum that you have your kids their ages and I would help you craft a daily routine just like you saw me do for my kids I'd help you craft the master routine so that you're not having to teach kids at the exact same time if you want to have it set up kind of like I have and then help you craft a schedule for the kids for each day of the week and then looking at your year as a whole
So if that interests you I'm going to be offering that for 50 and I've got my email address listed below in the description box so you can shoot me an email and we can get you started and set up for that so that you can have an awesome very organized school year in next wednesday's video I'm going to be showing you how we prep our kids before we start school in order to have a great start to the school year that's actually what I'm going to be doing this week
So I will report back to you after we've done it and let you know how it goes I've got some ideas of how to change things that didn't go that well last year and how to make things better for this year so once I pitch it to them I'll I'll report back to you so I hope you have an amazing day and I'll catch you in next week's video bye