How to Set Up Your Homeschool Schedule (Part 2 of 4)

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Need some help scheduling your Together School Block? I’m here to help!

In Part 1 of this series, I covered how to divide up your day into blocks of time. In the rest of this series we will be looking at those blocks and digging into how to schedule them! Today we will be covering how to schedule the Together School Block! Ready? Let’s go!

Schedule the Together School Block

Decide on the subjects you want to teach.

The subjects in this block are going to be those that you can teach all your kids together, but are not part of your main homeschool studies (like history or science). These are going to be things that you want to teach your children but can’t ever seem to fit them in. Some that I have done during this block of time are: Bible, Composer and Artists Study, Character, Manners, Poetry, Literature, Bible Memory, Missionary stories or biographies. The ideas are really endless.

I like to use this time to cover subjects that sometimes get forgotten about. Now don’t try to do everything at once though! I always do Bible, and then usually add two more things that we read together. When I do my interval planning, I plan out what we are going to be reading during our Together School that interval, and try to change it up from interval to interval to make it more interesting.

So take some time right now and jot down a list of subjects that you may want to cover with your children. Once you are done, move on to the next step!

Choose the materials you are going to use.

Most of the time this is going to be a book, but it could be an audio book, a CD for composer study, etc. I have to confess that most of the time I run across a book online or in a bookstore and say to myself, “That would a great one to read together with the kids!” I’ll usually take that book then and add it to my collection of “Together School” stuff that I want to schedule.

So take a look at your list of subjects you want to teach during Together School and see if you already own something you can use to cover that subject. If you don’t already own something, then take some time to look through some homeschool catalogs or websites online for ideas. Once you have found something you want, go ahead and buy it.

But before moving on to the next step, make sure you have a list of the subject areas you want to cover, and then a list of books/resources you want to use under each subject.

Plan out your Together School for the first 6-7 weeks of your homeschool.

For me personally, I try to make our Together School as simple as possible. We do the same thing each day until we finish a book and are ready to begin something new.

To give you an example, here is what I have planned for the first 6 weeks of our Together School once we start our homeschool next month:

Read a story out of The Child’s Story Bible (Bible)
Read a story out of one of the Scripture Sleuth books (Devotional)
Read a chapter out of Tales from Shakespeare (History-we are studying the Renaissance and Reformation this year)

This only takes 15-20 minutes total and is a wonderful way for me to get in some more learning with the kids!

If we finish up a book before the end of the interval, then I just go back to my Together School list, put a check mark and the date by the book we finished, and then choose another book from the list (can be either the same subject or a different one). Easy!

I hope you can see how effective this time block can be in your homeschool!

In the next post we will move on to scheduling the Independent Work/Table Time Block!