learning does happen all the time ... but there's no reason why you can't also schedule specific learning time.

New homeschoolers often worry about schedules - are they doing too much? Too little? Should they schedule at all? Should they just go with the flow?

The last two questions, of course, are not scheduling questions at all - they're philosophy of education questions (well, actually, philosophy of life), and the answers to those questions will also influence the answers to the first two questions.

The Well-trained Mind has lots of schedules. So many in fact, and so rigorous, that the authors wrote a "but" entry on their website, entitled: Schedules (Or: A Few Thoughts on Expertise, Curricula Selection, and When to Ignore The Well-Trained Mind)

By the time Amelia was in 1st or 2nd grade (no, I really can't remember exactly), I did start scheduling, for several reasons.

1) my kids both needed intensive language help. I have the kids who even with intensive instruction/phonemic awareness/vision therapy etc struggled with reading for.a.long.time. Once the reading dragon was slayed, the spelling dragon arrived.....

2) I figured that if I made it part of our routine at that age, it would be easier to transition to adding more & more work later on. I knew by the time Amelia was around 6 that we would not be pursuing unschooling, but rather would try to do an adapted classical education, so there would eventually be many subjects piling up on her, and a growing workload. Getting into the rhythm and pattern first on a small scale & then just adding subjects has worked for her. Hugo, as the second guinea pig in my experiment child, has not known anything but our school schedule. This doesn't prevent him from being totally bewildered by it whenever we return from a break.

3) I think my kids actually like the fact that I'd lay out a sched in advance, tell them what we would do, & then do it together. I'm not a spontaneous type of person so I need to plan out activities, crafts, science demo's, field trips, read alouds. In other families those things just seem to happen. In mine, if I don't plan them, they might not. My special power appears to be an endless capacity for wasting time ..... I need to crack a whip over ME to get anything done.

So when they were younger, we started small, with committing a certain number of hours in the morning (9-11 for us) for 'school'. It wasn't 'sit & do these dull worksheets' - it was just the time that I'd set aside, that we'd all set aside, for learning together. It was lots of fun things like science & history & art & read alouds + math and phonics. BUT no field trips, no social gatherings, no errands, no phone calls (turn the phone right off & have it go to voicemail), no email, no chores, no "I just have to do ....." & me getting distracted with something during these hours. This was time for me to focus on the kids & do something fun together. We didn't always take the full 2h, & sometimes things spilled right over into the afternoon if there was great fun with an art project or mucking about with baking soda & vinegar etc.

What your homeschool life looks has everything to do with your personality. I disengage very easily. I'm an introvert. I live quietly in my own little head. It takes an effort for me to do this sort of thing & the only way to make sure that my kids would get this attention from me was to create a time & place where it is just what we do. As time has gone on, that time has expanded of course & most days now we have a full sched right through the afternoon (& by then I'm exhausted and just want to hide in a cave)

{cliche alert!} Everyone needs to find their own way.

I do think that there are two dangers on either extreme of the spectrum:

The first is not just recreating school but making your homeschool like an uber school boot camp, with even more rigorous adherence to schedules than the most rigorous school out there. One of the primary reasons for homeschooling is that with the low student to teacher ratio, you gain huge flexibility in instruction times: you don't need to spend an hour on math if your student got it in 5 minutes. If your student didn't get it, you can spend all week on it, breaking it down & teaching in different, unique ways. Enjoy the freedom you have to teach when & how you need to.

The other danger seems primarily to afflict families who have young children, families who are deeply into the 'benign neglect' run free, radical unschool model, families with moms who crave adult conversation and contact, families in communities with many social field trip & drop-in opportunities; these families sometimes fall into a pattern of never having time to start or complete projects - even if these are lessons & projects that their kids actually want to do.

Most long term homeschool families stumble about, tweaking things endlessly, trying to find our golden mean.

Some of us should know when to stop tweaking though. Like last January, I decided to by a smaller daytimer, ostensibly because it would fit in my purse better. Ended up not using it at all. SIGH. So in August I bought a new one, week at a glance, 8" x 6". That's the format that works for me & no more messing with it!

It's by Pierre Belvedere, Made in Italy & looks just like that but mine is pink!