BookShark

Category: Homeschool Tips

  • Why Homeschooling Is the Best: Flexible Routines and Schedules

    Why Homeschooling Is the Best: Flexible Routines and Schedules

    With our flexible homeschool schedule, we’ve had the space and control to achieve a perfect rhythm for our days. This schedule has not been imposed on us by public school, and we’re reaping the rewards! Life is much more relaxed, and the kids are learning more, too. Flexible routines and schedules are another reason why I say homeschooling is best.

    The Science of Routines

    Science backs the importance of routines for children. Psychology Today speaks about the comfort that children get from having a predictable routine. When they know what is happening, they feel safe. 

    A study found that a fixed family schedule actually helps children with behavioural issues such as oppositional defiant disorder and hyperactivity/impulsivity. I can attest to this! Our son has elements of both of these disorders and benefits from knowing what is going to happen during his day. When he is in a routine, he has far fewer meltdowns and is much more willing to learn and to engage.

    Based on the data, it would be easy to think that a rigid public school routine is the ultimate comfort. But I have found the opposite to be true. And I’m not the only one!

    Rigid Public School Routines Are Old School

    In his TED Talk from 2010, Bring on the Learning Revolution, the late Sir Ken Robinson explained that the current public school system is based on an old model from the 19th century, “We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people.”

    The public school schedule is an example of this conformity. Children do thrive on predictability, but they are often forced into a learning routine that does not work for them mainly so they can be batched and managed.

    My kids did not thrive with the one-size-fits-all timetable of public education. In fact, the early, rushed starts caused them a huge amount of anxiety.

    Some kids are better later in the morning or in the afternoon. An article in TIME says that teenagers are actually better suited to staying up late and sleeping late, so a more flexible school schedule could lead to more motivated teens. I know that my 9-year-old twins, who do like a set routine, benefit from a later start. 

    The Beauty of a Flexible Homeschool Routine

    Schedules and routines are great, but I don’t think the public school ones should be forced on everybody. And this is where the beauty of the homeschool schedule comes into play. There are so many ways that you can mold your daily schedule to best suit your child. Here are some of the freedoms we’ve discovered in our years of homeschooling:

    • Kids can get enough sleep and are rested and ready for the day. They can then start the day when they feel ready to learn.
    • Kids can have a peaceful morning routine rather than feeling stressed and rushed.
    • You can decide if you want to follow year-round homeschooling, take breaks periodically or use a 4-day schedule. You have the flexibility to decide what works best for your family and to change your mind whenever you like.
    • You can homeschool on the road and take holidays when you want to. Kids can experience the world, without having to wait for designated periods in the year to go on vacation. 
    • Kids can have a break if they’re sick or even just having a bad day. We do this a lot! It’s difficult to expect concentration and engagement from kids when they don’t feel their best. 
    • You can dive deeply into child-led learning, letting children focus on what delights and engages them. A flexible schedule means that subjects can easily be moved around to accommodate these interests.

    The world is changing, and education needs to change too. Even though public schools are constantly improving, they are not doing so quickly enough. The old way of managing kids is still prevalent in most schools, yet this way of teaching is not going to prepare all of them adequately for the future. And that’s why homeschool is the best! 

    When you school at home, you can adapt learning, content, and schedules to give your children the best education possible. And then they can be ready to face a changing world that needs people flexible enough to navigate its complexities. 

    About Our Author

    Charlotte Jones is a multi-tasking mom who works from home. She spends her days blogging at My Little Home School, homeschooling her twins, and teaching English online. Her home is a small house in a quaint little town on the coast of South Africa. You can often find her swimming in the lagoon or hiking in the forest with her husband, special needs twins, and furbaby. She loves her family, spending time in nature, running, red lipstick, and drinking too much coffee.  

  • Why It’s Okay to Homeschool in the Afternoon

    Why It’s Okay to Homeschool in the Afternoon

    Our mornings go a lot like this:

    • I wake up about the same time as the children. We have coffee and breakfast.
    • We do a few chores, and I do some work
    • Suddenly, it’s lunchtime.
    • After lunch, my youngest goes down for a nap, and we get down to the business of school.

    Although some families swear by starting your homeschool day early, morning school is impractical for our family. I’m here to tell you that homeschooling is okay at any time of day!

    I grew up in the homeschool world, and in those days, homeschooling moms spent a lot of time trying to copy each other or the homeschool celebrity they heard at a conference that year.

    My mom spent hours creating schedules that we ultimately never used because they were not right for us. She often felt guilty for not following someone else’s schedule rather than feeling awesome about what she was able to accomplish (a lot).  

    For our family, afternoon homeschooling works best. We would not do well on a homeschool schedule that starts at 8 a.m. or even at 9 a.m.

    My children and I are not morning people. The thought of getting up and immediately taxing our brains with school sounds exhausting. Morning school would cause needless frustration and tears in our home. Why should I adhere to the schedule of traditional school if I don’t have to?

    In the mornings, Bo (age 3) is up early, and she is such a busy little bee that it is nearly impossible to focus on school while she is awake. Monkey (age 9) likes following a schedule she puts together includes starting school at 1 p.m.

    The Benefits of Afternoon Homeschool

    Homeschooling is just what it says—HOME schooling. Your homeschool should reflect the needs of your home. It doesn’t matter if you start school at 8 a.m. or even 8 p.m. if that is what works best for your family.

    There are hundreds of reasons I can think of that make afternoon school ideal:

    • Extracurricular activities or doctor’s appointments in the morning
    • Work
    • Kids or mom are not morning people
    • Dad goes into work late
    • Baby naps in the afternoon
    • Not feeling rushed in the morning
    • Health challenges
    • Grandparents or extended visitors in the home

    The Challenge of Afternoon School

    The only drawback with afternoon schooling is that you cannot skip it. If you procrastinate, it could easily get to be evening without any lessons having been completed. While this is okay occasionally or in short bursts, this could get you off track if it happens long-term. Even if you start school in the afternoon, it still requires discipline to sit down and teach the lessons each day.

    We have defeated this challenge by creating a semi-structured afternoon schedule that helps keep us on track for school.

    Learning Can Happen Any Time

    Homeschooling is an amazing journey that provides flexibility and tailored learning in an environment unlike any other. Many top private schools work hard to create a home-like environment for their students that is precisely what we have in homeschooling. Your school does not, and should not, look like everyone else’s.

    You chose to homeschool because it is best for your family. And if starting school in the afternoon is best for your family, then by all means skip morning school. We can enjoy our morning coffee guilt-free together!

    About the Author

    Brenda is a professional writer and homeschooling mother to two girls in Dallas, TX, with a passion for books, DIY, and creative education. Her blog, Schooling a Monkey, is all about homeschooling, crafts, green living, and fun.

  • Homeschool Science for Multiple Children: How I Failed But Finally Won

    Homeschool Science for Multiple Children: How I Failed But Finally Won

    With seven years of homeschooling I’ve racked up more than a few successes and failures, but nothing has been so black and white as our science journey. I’m sorry we wasted so much time but grateful we’ve finally found our perfect science fit. Here are six tips that would have gotten us learning and loving science much sooner.

    #1 FAIL: Keep Using Science Curriculum No One Likes

    We started out doing science with a grade-specific textbook for our oldest daughter. As time marched on and we added another student, we discovered that juggling two science programs was possible. I would sit down with each girl separately to read the assigned pages and ask the coordinating comprehension questions. But there wasn’t ever any additional discussion. They didn’t talk to each other about what they were learning, and they weren’t ever waiting at the door when their dad got home, bubbling with excitement over the new information they had learned.

    Our time doing science didn’t cause any sparks; it was clear that we were just serving our time in order to check science off the daily to-do list.
    Unfortunately, there seemed to be a disconnect between my kids’ innate interest in all things animal, weather, or nature-related and how disinterested they were during our science time. It didn’t make sense, but we kept plodding on.

    #2 FAIL: Stop Doing Science Altogether

    The walk from the couch to the school bookshelf took approximately seven steps when it was time to start art or literature. Oddly enough when it was time to grab a science or handwriting book, the floor expanded to approximately seven hundred foot-draggy steps, complete with moaning.
    Ultimately, we threw in the towel when our third child, accurately dubbed The Tornado, skipped walking and graduated right to running at one. I didn’t have the time or energy to keep multiple science plates spinning, especially with the song and dance required to keep my kids motivated. To be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about those science textbooks either, and I couldn’t fabricate enough curiosity for all of us while chasing The Tornado.


    We took a break from the textbooks, which meant stepping back from science, too.

    #3 FAIL: Attempt to Design a Whole Curriculum from Scratch

    Our break didn’t last very long since I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was letting my kids down by leaving big gaps in their education without science.


    I tried following several book lists and checking out science-themed books from the library, but that required lots of free mom-time I didn’t have. I spent too many precious hours trying to figure out charts of topics, wondering if I was missing a major -ology.


    The books we did bring home, however, were devoured without any pushing on my part. We were getting closer to a solution. I sensed that winning was just around the corner.

    #1 WIN: Trust a Solid Curriculum Plan

     Reading about another family’s success with BookShark this past spring got my curriculum-investigating wheels turning. It didn’t take long to see that it might offer a solution for our science-loving, but textbook-hating, multi-level family.


    We settled on one science program that we’d all do together BookShark’s Science D. My kids clock in at ages 10, 9, 6, 4, and 1 1/2. It’s already a zoo, even before baby number six arrives this winter. The option of doing science as a family with a single science program is ideal.

    Spiral Science Homeschool Program

    Based on our experience, I knew that a literature-based, hands-on program would work well for our family. What I didn’t realize was how BookShark’s spiral approach is perfect for multi-level families like ours.
    With the spiral approach, students explore a wide range of content with the understanding that they will cover those same topics in greater depth several times in the future. My school-age children who can’t read can still listen and help us complete the experiments without being shamed for not being able to answer all the same questions as their older siblings.


    The best part? I don’t have to organize that master plan. I don’t have to remember when or how to cover topics. Experts have already thought through exactly when to cover and re-cover every topic. It’s one less thing (more like one hundred fewer things) for me to worry about.

    #2 WIN: Go Beyond the Textbook

    In my past homeschool science teacher life, I wanted to figure out appropriate experiments or find the perfect coordinating videos online. But it just took too much time. I half-heartedly checked out some hands-on science books from the library, flipped through them, and quietly slipped them into the return box without showing the kids, feeling like a failure for not doing more.


    By blending hands-on activities and experiments, high quality literature, and videos, all my kids can get something out of what we’re doing this year with BookShark. Obviously my preschooler and my middle schooler won’t finish the year with all the same factoids floating around in their minds, but they will have memories of completing experiments together.


    They each glean what they can from the books we read, and I know that they’re internalizing so much more than they would otherwise.

    #3 WIN: Have Fun

    We spent far too long dreading science in our homeschool. I reached that sorry conclusion when I was unpacking all our BookShark science supplies for this year while my kids looked on. They weren’t drooling -because that would be weird -but they were pretty much drooling. They were so excited to see how the materials in the little supply box were going to get put to use, and I had to squirrel away the included books so they wouldn’t be read secretly under covers in the dead of night with a flashlight ahead of time. They flipped out at the thought that sometime this year we would be growing our own popcorn. Popcorn! When my husband came home that night, he could barely squeeze inside due to four little people at the door, bursting to tell him about all that science holds for us this year.

    The moral of our story is that we can win at science whether we have one child or ten, if only we just give them the right tools to enjoy it.

    About the Author

    Alicia Schonhardt lives in Iowa with her husband and five homeschooled kids. She loves reading aloud with all the right voices and pretending to be crafty. She is not-so-great at planning and organization but dabbles in minimalism, so it isn’t quite so tricky.
    With two medically needy kids, Alicia strives to choose happiness even when things are hard. She blogs at Sweeping Up Joy, about finding beauty and humor in life right now, even when it’s hidden behind piles of laundry and chewed up books.