When it comes to making the most of your homeschooling days, organization is key, and the most efficient way to keep your family organized is with a schedule. A written schedule will help everyone stay on task, maximize productivity, and work independently. Here are some scheduling tips for better organization.

How Dual Credit Works for Homeschooled Students

Create a Monthly Calendar

  1. Print twelve months of free calendar pages from http://www.pdfcalendar.com/ and put them in a three-ring binder with a viewable front.
  2. Sit down with your children and write in all the activities, field trips, dual credit exams, classes, meetings, and playdates for the month.
  3. Put the current month’s calendar behind the clear cover on your binder. Then be sure and keep the binder front-and-center where everyone can see it – maybe on your desk or nearby the kitchen, etc.) At the end of the month, put the current month in the back of the binder, and put the new month’s page in the front cover.

Not only are calendar pages a great way to keep all of your activities (music lessons, sports practices, etc.) organized, they also serve as tools for recordkeeping. We have ours in a 3-ring binder and it goes all the way back to 2007 when I started keeping the family calendar this way – fun memories to look back through!

Create a Weekly Schedule You Can Print Out

I find that the best way to do this is with an Excel Spreadsheet. Make one for each child and keep a template on file so you can change it each week. A detailed weekly schedule will make it easy for you to check each child’s work when they are finished. Here’s a sample of a schedule I created for our 12-year-old.

  1. Schedule in blocks of times for school subjects, activities, mealtimes, chores, and rest times.
  2. Be as specific as you can, detailing what your child should be doing each day, and in what order. This way your kids know what to do when you are busy with other things.
  3. Leave enough room in your spreadsheet cells for grades, CLEP & DSST scores, lesson numbers, names of textbooks, etc.
  4. After you’ve looked over, graded, or approved your child’s work, you can check off the box and move on.
  5. At the beginning of each week, all you have to do is change the dates and other minor details, print off the schedules and give them to your children to follow. (Or better yet, print off the next 10-12 weeks so you don’t have to think about it each Monday – sometimes one of my kids can still be waiting on Wednesday for me to print off the week’s schedule!)
  6. Keep your kids’ completed weekly schedules in a file or 3-ring binder so you can use them at the end of the year for recordkeeping.

Organizing your homeschool days with a written schedule will help your family maximize time and stay on task, making your days far less frenzied and more productive.