Our Homeschool Schedule for Kindergarten

Here’s how we created a homeschool schedule that allows us to do kindergarten in 2 hours or less every day!

The Biggest Secret to Homeschool Schedules

Here’s the biggest secret I learned as a new homeschool mom: Homeschool is not public school. Full stop.

When I first started, I thought that since the public schools fill an 8 hour school day, 5 days per week, so should I. And honestly, just the thought of doing so was totally overwhelming. How could I possibly figure out what to do every day for 8 hours, much less fill 8 hours every day with learning?

And how was I going to fit this into my already busy stay-at-home mom schedule? When would I have time to do laundry, or cook dinner, or have a free moment to myself?

One day I saw a list that changed my life. It was a list of all the other “stuff” that happens every day in public schools that they count as “school time.” It looked something like this:

• Taking attendance
• Standing in line
• Walking from class to class
• Transitioning between subjects
• Passing out and collecting papers
• Show and tell
• Lunch
• Recess
• Bathroom breaks
• Celebrating birthdays
• Class parties
• Fire and tornado drills
• Cleaning and organizing desks
• Dividing into groups
• Playing games
• Taking standardized tests
• Assemblies

And add to that the fact that one teacher is trying to teach a whole classroom of students who are all at different levels in their understanding. So kids spend even more time doing things like:

• Listening to classmates read aloud
• Listening to other kids ask- and the teacher answer- questions they already knew
• Spacing out because the lesson is too hard- or too easy- for them
• Waiting for other kids to figure out things they already know

The bottom line? It’s totally possible, and actually pretty easy, to be more efficient than the public schools and to get school done in a fraction of the time!

How many days per week should you homeschool?

Before you start homeschooling, it’s important to know what is required of you. The first and most important thing to check when planning a homeschool schedule is your state’s legal requirements.  You can find your state’s requirements on this interactive map. By clicking on your state in the map, you can quickly learn what the rules are in your state. Some states mandate a certain number of days or hours of instruction per year, and it’s important to know what the specific rules are for your family.

Beyond that, the decision about how many days per week to homeschool is a very individual one. Some families choose to homeschool 5 days per week during the school year. Others choose to homeschool fewer days per week and extend their school year into the summer or homeschool year round.

Can you homeschool 4 days per week?

Absolutely yes! If you homeschool 4 days per week instead of 5, you will just need to add a few extra weeks to your homeschool year. If your state requires 180 days of homeschool per year, this would work out to 36 5-day weeks or 45 4-day weeks.

Our family uses a flexible homeschool schedule depending on the season of the year. We homeschool 4 days per week in the fall and spring. During my husband’s busy season of work in the winter, we homeschool 5 or sometimes 6 days per week. To keep track of this schedule, I printed a simple yearly calendar. I put Xs on the days that we homeschool, and I keep a running tally of the number of days for each month.

We also like to use a homeschool daily checklist to keep track of what subjects we do each day.

How many hours a day should you homeschool for kindergarten?

Here’s a helpful rule of thumb when planning your homeschool lessons:

To figure out how long your lessons should be: multiply your child’s age x 2-5 minutes

This means that a 5 year old will have an attention span of 10-25 minutes. Kindergarten lessons should NOT be longer than 25 minutes for any subject- and shorter is better. When kids are engaged and focused they will learn better and quicker, enjoy the lesson more, and remember more of what they have learned. When the lesson starts to run long, kids are more likely to get distracted, remember less of what they are learning, and start to resist and cause conflicts. The total length of an average kindergarten homeschool day is usually about 1-2 hours, depending on how many subjects your child is learning.

This year we are spending about 2 hours per day on our kindergarten homeschool schedule. We are studying 6 subjects every day:

• Bible
• Math
• Language/reading
• Handwriting (this is a focus area for us because it’s one of my goals for my son to improve in this area this year)
• Science or history (we do these subjects on a loop schedule- more below)
• Read aloud (this is scheduled time where I read to my kids from a novel)

I keep track of when we start each of these subjects. My goal is to keep each of the lessons under 20 minutes. I keep track because when we get to 20 minutes, I stop, even if we are not done with the lesson I had planned for the day. Because I expect that my son is focused on homeschool while I am spending time working with him, I try to limit this time to a length that I can expect he will be able to pay attention. I have found that when I try to “push it,” this frequently leads to frustration and conflicts. I would rather come back to the subject fresh the next day.

A top homeschool curriculum will usually be designed for short lessons.

What is a loop schedule?

A loop schedule is a fantastic tool if you have more subjects that you would like to cover than you have time in the day. It’s also helpful if you have some subjects that you would like to cover, but not every day. In a loop schedule, you will list all the subjects in order, then cover the next subject on the list each homeschool day. We are currently using a loop schedule for our science and history lessons. This means that I alternate between science and history every homeschool day. (The alternative would be to assign days of the week to certain subjects, ie, teach science on Mondays and Wednesdays and history on Tuesdays and Thursdays).

Loop schedules really shine when you think about your homeschool schedule for kindergarten in the context of a busy life. What if your child has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and you skip homeschool? Then the next week you need to run errands on Thursday and you cut homeschool short again? All of a sudden, you are 2 weeks behind on the subjects that are scheduled for Thursday. If you are using a loop schedule, you just pick up where you left off on Friday of each of those weeks, and you won’t get behind in any one subject compared to the others.

Read more about homeschooling with loop schedules here!

Tips for a Homeschool Schedule for Kindergarten

1. We start our homeschool day while my kids are eating breakfast. During this time, they are already gathered around the table, and they are generally pretty quiet while they are eating. I use this time to read to my kids while they are eating and I can usually get our Bible lesson and our read aloud finished before my kids are ready to leave the table. This helps us make our Bible lesson a priority and finish it first, and it helps my kids focus on what they are hearing.
2. After breakfast, we start with our hardest/least favorite subjects first. My son struggles with handwriting and usually doesn’t enjoy it as much as the other subjects. I always ask him to start with handwriting first so he can get it out of the way. Then I let him pick what we do next which gives him some good motivation to get it done.
3. I like to give my son choices about the order of our day. I’ve found that if he chooses what subject he’d like to work on next, he is often more excited for the lesson and more willing to do the work because he chose it. Even a choice between 2 of his subjects is enough of a choice to get his buy in for the lesson.
4. At the beginning of each lesson, I set a timer for 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes is up, the lesson is done- even if we haven’t finished everything on the plan. There is always tomorrow. When I try to “push it,” this invariably leads to struggles, frustration, and resistance. I see this as a challenge for me- how can I teach this efficiently so he can understand in 20 minutes?