Free Time for Homeschoolers

When people ask me how much time I spend homeschooling, it's hard to answer. Do you include family work? Do you want me to count music practice? What about time spent reading?

And what about free time? At first, I'm sure you'd say no, but free time is actually something I'm pretty passionate about. Kids need time to just play, create, explore, and be kids.

Today, for example, I was doing some dishes after lunch. Usually, I recruit help from all my little eaters, but I looked around and decided not to disrupt them.

Bubs was at the piano, picking out the Star Wars theme song by ear.

Welly was writing a retelling of Cinderella.

Why-Why was actually vacuuming for me.

OK...so I did ask Why to vacuum, but Bubs and Welly were using their free time for great creative pursuits that they chose to do.

There's so much power in choice, isn't there? When we choose to play an instrument, write a story, or whatever else we may choose to do, don't you think we get so much more out of it than if we were just fulfilling an assignment?

Mini Lesson Ideas: Math, Geography, Art, and More...

Each morning after breakfast, we do a Mini Lesson, which is a short lesson about whatever random thing I think of. Sometimes the ideas are inspired by the kids and sometimes not.

Mini Lessons are a great way to introduce ideas and concepts that don't already fit into our daily work...and they're pretty much the kids' favorite part of the day. I never tell them ahead of time what it will be. The surprise helps keep them fun.

Here are some of the lessons we've done...

1. Tell a short story that includes basic shapes. Trace the shapes in the air while you tell it, and then have everyone draw an interpretation of the story. After you've set the example, have the kids tell a brief story and have everyone draw theirs, too.

2. Compare a flat world map with a globe. Find where you live on both. Identify the 7 continents. Color and label the continents on a blank world map.

3. Measure things around the house with a measuring tape/ruler. Record findings. (When we did this, we discovered that Y's neck is bigger around than his big sister's and brother's necks! No wonder we can't button the top button of his church shirt!)

4. Make coin critters! We absolutely love this idea from Family Fun.

5. Make paper airplanes. Talk about lift and gravity. Color and label a diagram of a wing.

6. Build card houses. (This one turned into a zoo for little stuffed animals.)

7. ABC Gratitudes. Write out the letters A-Z, one letter on each line. The first person fills in something that they're grateful for that starts with an A, then passes it to the next person, until you have a whole alphabet of thanksgiving.

8. Work on memorizing the 50 States Song.

Right after Mini Lesson, I read aloud to the kids, so I like to finish with something they can do with their hands while I read...usually it's some kind of coloring. They also like to embroider, finger knit, draw, and write notes while I read.

I keep a running list of ideas that is easily accessible because some days I have lots of ideas and other days I don't.

New Schedule

So, I'd love to say that I haven't been blogging because I've just spent way less time on-line, but that would be a BIG lie. I've been on-line obsessively looking at houses.

We're looking to shorten Robby's commute and expand a bit. We made an offer on a Be-U-tiful house with a heavenly yard, but so did 13 other families...and we didn't win.  :(

I have read a few novels lately, but none of them fit the Deliciously Clean Reads bill, unfortunately.

So, I'm rambling.

We also made a new homeschool schedule that we are loving...so I thought I'd share...

This schedule doesn't have times. It's more of a routine than a schedule.

1. Wake up. (It's harder than it sounds.)
2. Personal Chores: get dressed, pick up room, brush teeth, comb hair
3. Breakfast and dishes.
4. Mini Lesson and Read-Aloud (We're done some fun stuff I'll be sharing. The Mini-lesson can be about anything I feel like teaching.)
5. Scripture Goals: Bubs and Welly both made goals to read the scriptures on their own every day this year. Yay for that!!!
6. Math. We're using the A Beka books. So far, so great!
7. Family Work: One load of laundry and Daily Work)
8. Free Time.
9. Lunch and Clean Up.
10. ROW to Know. (Read or Write to Know.)
11. Service.
12. Errands/Whatever else needs to be done.
13. Free time.
14. Dinner and Clean up.
15. Family Time. (Often wrestle-with-Daddy time.)
16. Family Scripture Study: Currently studying the New Testament.
17. Bedtime. (Almost always with bedtime stories and lullabies.)

Isn't it about...Time?

Remember the LDS commercials that said, Isn't it about...time?


Well, time is on my mind these days. Honestly, it's one of the main reasons I homeschool. So I have time with my children. So they have time to roam, imagine, and explore. So they have time to be best friends with each other. So we all have time to pursue our passions.


Recently, I came across the article, Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills by Alix Spiegel. In it, Spiegel shows how play has changed over the last 50 or so years. Play has gone from unstructured, imaginative time to time that is scripted by toys and media.


Dorothy Singer, a psychological researcher at Yale, said the following:

"Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time. I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills."

In another article, written by Lenore Skenazy, entitled The Power of Free Play, the author compares modern day children who participate in many scheduled activities to those with plenty of free time.

Play gets everything going: the mind, the body, the will to live. It is so crucial to child health that the American Academy of Pediatrics released a huge report on it in 2006, recommending that we stop adding hours to the academic day, shrinking recess and supervising all our kids’ activities. It begged parents to remember that even though we desperately want our kids to “succeed,” play does not take away from that pursuit. “As parents prepare their children for the future, they cannot know precisely which skills they will need for the workforce,” wrote the docs. But confidence, creativity, tenacity, problem solving, decency and the ability to have a little fun will surely help.

Besides the research, leaders of the Church have warned about having too much going on. In Elder Oaks' talk, Good, Better, Best, he discusses the value of family time.

The amount of children-and-parent time absorbed in the good activities of private lessons, team sports, and other school and club activities also needs to be carefully regulated. Otherwise, children will be overscheduled, and parents will be frazzled and frustrated...Parents should teach gospel priorities through what they do with their children.

Family experts have warned against what they call “the overscheduling of children.” In the last generation children are far busier and families spend far less time together. Among many measures of this disturbing trend are the reports that structured sports time has doubled, but children’s free time has declined by 12 hours per week, and unstructured outdoor activities have fallen by 50 percent.2 The number of those who report that their “whole family usually eats dinner together” has declined 33 percent. 

Again, I homeschool to have time with my family. What is more important than building our eternal relationships and spending time gaining knowledge together that will also be eternal?

After all, isn't it about...time?

**This is a post I created for Latter-day Homeschooling. Hope you enjoyed it!**

First Day of (non) School

Just because we homeschool, doesn't mean we want to miss out on things like the first day of school! We are joining a co-op this year that meets once to twice a week, and we started this week with a visit to a local museum. The kids were excited, so we put on their new clothes and backpacks and started our new school year with a bang.

We have a revamped schedule we are working on. Here's what it looks like so far:

5:30 My Personal exercise

6:00 My personal time for prayer and scripture study

6:45 Family Scripture Study and prayer

7:15 Breakfast/Dishes
Fold and put away one load of laundry together
Weekly Worky (Monday-make bread, Tuesday-dust/vacuum, Wednesday-bathrooms, Thursday-windows/mopping, Friday-according to need)
Personal Chores (Get dressed, brush hair and teeth, straighten room...)

9:15 Quick-Pick up

9:30 Pledge of Allegiance
Memorization (write out what we are trying to memorize that day, then memorize through actions, marching to the rhythm, taking turns saying lines...)
Mom School-A mini lesson on whatever I think is lacking (like symmetry/assymetry)

10:30 Read-aloud during snack

11:00 ROW to Know-Quiet, individual reading or writing time

12:00 Lunch-discuss what we learned during ROW

12:30 Math

1:00 Quiet Time

1:30 Free Productive Time (pretty much anything except friends, media, or outside time)

(2:30 Errands if we have any)

3:00 Free Time

5:00 Everyone comes in to prepare for dinner time.

6:00 Dinner/Dishes

6:45 Family Read-Aloud

7:30 Bedtime

9:30 Grown-up bedtime

So, there you have it...our basic outline. And, yes, we are very flexible with it.

Homeschool Schedule

Every family is so different when it comes to their homeschool schedules, but we all like to hear what everyone else is doing anyway.

A while ago, I started thinking a lot about our schedule and the ever-present question, "Am I doing enough?"

I took a while to digest the question before I tried to answer it.

I knew that strict schedules didn't work for me or my family. I took a couple of weeks to observe what did work for us and to think about how we could be more efficient and productive with our days.

I concluded that we need a lot of flexibility in our family, but it is nice to have a structure to follow.

I looked at our natural rhythms and how everything fit around naps and mealtimes. Then I took these rhythms and wrote them out into a framework.

Here is the schedule that we have been following for the last couple weeks. It has transformed our lives (without changing them very much.)

I know it won't work for your family. Like I said, every family has their own rhythm.

(Times are flexible, of course.)

7:00 Wake up and take care of personal chores. (get dressed, pick up room, brush teeth)
8:00 Eat breakfast.
        Devotional--Read and discuss a Bible story and work on memorizing our poem of the week.
(9:00 MWF-exercise)
10:00 Snack and Free learning time (pretty much anything except computer/friends)
11:00 ROW to Know (I made this up. It stands for Read or Write to Know. I work on my novel while the kids read or write quietly.)
12:00 Lunch/Discuss what everyone learned during ROW.
12:30 Read-Aloud
1:30 Weekly Worky (M-make bread, T-dust and vacuum, W-clean bathrooms, TH-Mop/Clean windows)
        Free Time
5:00 Prepare for dinner
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Journal of Gratitudes and Inspirations
        Scripture Study
7:30 Bedtime

It's interesting. I hate being stuck to a schedule. We have very few activities scheduled on the calendar. I like to be free to do whatever we are inspired to do, but it's nice to have a framework, too. It's nice to have a rhythm to fall back on or to throw out the window when we feel so inclined.

Our Homeschool Schedule

Today I'm talking about the way we structure our days over at the TJEd Trenches.