Hi everyone! As promised I have another post in the ‘Daily Homeschool Schedule’ series for you all.
As mentioned last week, I’ve had countless questions about our daily schedule. And you can see an overview of our daily schedule here.
But today I wanted to share Tinker Bell’s schedule with you. She’s currently 7 years old, and in 2nd grade.
This year we are doing quite a bit of things. Some days have been challenging due to our recent move. But we’re remaining flexible and at the very least getting our core work completed each day!
Our 2nd grade schedule is as follows:
- 8:30am – Breakfast / Family Devotions
- 9:00am – Calendar Time (Tinker Bell helps Teeny Tot during this.)
- 9:15am – Bible
- 9:30am – Math
- 10:20am – Phonics Lesson
- 10:40am – Language Lesson
- 11:00am – Reading
- 11:20am – Handwriting
- 11:30am – Spelling
- 11:45am – Vocabulary
- 12:00 – Lunch/PE
- 1:00pm – History
- 1:30pm – Science
- 2:00pm – Typing/Music/Art/Piano (1x per week)
- 2:30pm – Literature
As you can see we do most things on a daily basis right now. Normally I alternate History and Science so we’re doing them 2x per week, but this year’s Abeka curriculum requires daily work.
Download a copy:
You can see a full list of Tinker Bell’s actual curriculum below. We are trying out a few new things this year. So far it is going well.
Tinkerbell (2nd Grade)
- Art: World’s Greatest Artists 2 and See the Light Art DVDs
- Bible: Grapevine Studies, and I might add in a Kay Arthur Discover 4 yourself kids unit.
- Spelling: All About Spelling
- Phonics: Abeka Letters & Sounds 2 and Language 2
- Reading: Abeka 2
- Math: Math U See Alpha
- Handwriting: BJU Handwriting 2
- History: Abeka History 2nd Grade
- Literature: Classical Literature Units
- Music: World’s Greatest Composers Vol 1 (Continued from last year)
- Robotics: LEGO Education We’re using the Simple Mechanisms set this year.
- Science: Abeka Science 2 & some of my scientist units.
- P.E.: Family Time Fitness
- Piano: Piano is Easy (We’re starting with Teach Yourself Piano Step by Step)
- Typing: Typing Instructor (CD Version)
- Vocabulary: Wordly Wise 2 (This is our first year trying this so our thoughts on it are TBD.)
The only thing I don’t totally love is the Wordly Wise program. I’d love to hear anyone else’s suggestions for vocab!
Have a comment to share on how.you organize your day? Make sure to leave it below!
I too am wondering how you keep kids on task with that kind of schedule. We are trying a similar type of schedule this year, and we do lose SO much time in transition. Or I schedule 20 min worth of work in a 3o min slot, but they still lose the entire period to messing around. My 5th grader sometimes only completes 2-3 assignments in a day, despite having plenty of time. And no, they are not too difficult. I have 3 boys who like to mess around.
I love seeing how other people home educate. While we started very structured, it had us all in tears in kindergarten. I realized that since I am the teacher, I get to set the schedule. I have three boys so it’s very loose. Whatever we get done is enough. We are taking math off this year (boys are 7, 10 & 11) to play math games and apps and my boys learned linear equations playing DragonBox. Now we’re on to Hands-On Equations to keep going on algebra. I know it works very well for some folks to be very structured. I always recommend reading a John Holt or John Taylor Gatto un-schooling book for balance. It has helped me tremendously to relax about our days and to realize that I don’t want to re-create “school” at home and that we want to play outside a lot, learn to build and program robots and read a ton. One of my boys reads about 1-4 hours per day – he’s 10. Yesterday he came in from playing for a few minutes to finish reading an exciting part in the new Rick Riordan novel. He read for about 5 mins and then ran outside again to play! It’s hilarious. All three of my boys are becoming readers because they have ample time to do so and I have a million books.
Whatever works for our family, right? Thanks for sharing!!
I salivate looking at such an organized day. Sigh….the kids might be able to follow a disciplined schedule, it is me who puts the breaks on. Inevitably, I will stop and spend unreal quantities of time on a concept, until I feel in my heart, my children are not just “getting it”, but are internalizing concepts to the point of understanding how math, literature, science, nature and God are intertwined. Such a balance between
” following the child’s lead” to actually accomplishing my agenda. I struggle daily with pushing through or dwelling on. I long to follow such a schedule. My kids, we’ll see how the years unfold.
I only hs one (the other had to go to private school due to learning delays). We tried to keep a strict schedule our first year of hs. My kid hated it. I hated it. I always felt behind. Then I finally figured out that I didn’t have anybody to be behind. This year we tossed the desk in the garage, we work in spurts, we take as many exercise and food breaks as needed and we bought a literature based curriculum. Everybody is much happier and amazingly we are right where we need to be. That schedule was stressing us out and not working for us!
We use Evan Moore’s Vocabulary Fundamentals (they have them for each of the different grades) and love it!
Love your site. I also wanted to know how this scheduale works when you have other kids that might need help with work at the same time. are you still able to stay on task. I would like to be this structured but my childrens needs are so different. My kids are almost 13 and a independant learner, 11 and a stuggling learner and a 5 year old who is strong willed. I’m laughing as I type this because my persanality is to be sturctured.
Hi Erica!
What level are you using for All About Spelling? I also noticed that you are not doing All About Reading. What are your thoughts on AAR? Thanks!
So interesting how there are so many ways to homeschool. This kind of go-go-go from morning to afternoon (school at home type of homeschooling) would never work for me or my kids. We’d rather be outdoors learning as we live and lots of opportunities for creative play and life learning. Our academics are done in about 45 minutes a day. But, they are learning!
For my 9 yr. old son we are using Abeka 4th grade. We tie in Vocab w/ Reading. As he reads to me, if he comes across a word he doesn’t know then I write it down in a vocab notebook. When he’s done reading he goes to his desk and looks up the meanings of three of his vocab words in a dictionary. On Mondays I give him a written pretest over ten. Throughout the week we play games to practice those ten words. On Fridays I give a written post test. I hope that makes sense and helps you out.
I have noticed that you previously used All About Reading in combination with All About Spelling. I have used AAS with my daughter for first grade this year, we have enjoyed it, and am considering using AAR and AAS for next year. Is there a reason you seem to have moved away from AAR but still use AAS? Any feedback on this would be SO helpful.