Homeschool Tidbits: Planning and Routine in the High School Years
September 6, 2024
Welcome to Build Your Library’s Homeschool Tidbits: Episode 72—Planning and Routine in the High School Years. In this weekly video series, I will delve briefly into a topic related to homeschooling and share some of my knowledge and expertise as a long-time homeschooling mother of four children—three of whom have graduated high school and two who are college graduates!
My youngest and I just kicked off our 10th-grade year, and I wanted to chat about how we create routine and how that routine changes a bit in the high school years.
I’ve got a whole video/blog post about how I approach planning, so if you want more details about how I plan, you can go check that out. I won’t go into detail about planning here, but I want to touch on it briefly. I’ve always enjoyed planning out our year, and I think having a solid plan gives us the framework to build our routine.
I always start with the credits we need for the year. That guides our choices in the high school years. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun! This year, my overarching goal was to create a year that we would both find enjoyable. This is my last homeschooling hurrah, and I want to go out with a bang! Some things, like math, are non-negotiable. But we can embellish everything else and adjust it to our specific preferences. I think it’s a false assumption that high school can’t be fun. Sure, it won’t look the same as what you did at the elementary level, but it doesn’t have to be rigid and boring to equal out to a credit!
To give a quick example, I knew we needed a world history credit this year, and I know that history is not my daughter’s favorite subject. So, I took something that I know she does enjoy – learning about weird and morbid things like cannibalism and serial killers and created an entire year’s worth of history around that. It isn’t a linear history course, so I’m adding timeline assignments to help her keep track of when everything is happening. We don’t have a single spine for the year, but rather, we have several smaller ones. She won’t be bored and will still earn that history credit! If you want to know more about what we’re studying in history this year, check out my 10th Grade Plans: Morbid Curiosities video!
Ensuring we hit the necessary credits and having my plan in place, we’re ready to delve into our routine. In high school, I transfer much of the learning to my teen’s shoulders. I’m still there for moral support and assistance, but I’m slowly starting to take a backseat. A big part of this is our notebook checklist system. I’ve also got a whole video on this topic if you want to check that out, but the gist is that I write out a list of daily assignments every week. This helps us stay on track and ensures that we get to everything that we need to.
We always start our day together around 8:30 a.m. – this is when we do our read-alouds, which this year includes history, science, health, civics, and literature. And yes, I read aloud to my teens through high school. They have all requested that I keep reading, which means we get to have a book club atmosphere in our homeschool. We sip our tea or coffee, read, and discuss. This is by far the best part of our day.
After we finish our reading, which takes around two hours, I review the rest of the day’s assignments. Then she goes off to get her work done. The rule is that she must turn her assignments in by the end of the day and return the checklist to me so I can see that she did all her work. Sometimes, she needs help, and we’ll work together, but most days, she gets it done and then goes on with her day. This means that my homeschool day is much shorter than hers – I’m usually done by noon, if not sooner. She works on her assignments until 2 pm or so. Because she has the checklist to work from, there is no question about what she needs to do – it’s all right there on the list. It also doesn’t matter what order she does her work as long as it gets done. It’s up to her to organize her schedule.
Because we’ve been following this routine since she was small, it’s ingrained. This is how it goes – we read together, then math, then the next thing, then the next. She knows the drill, and having that routine in place makes our school days so much easier. The best part of a routine is that it doesn’t matter what time things happen; they always occur in a similar order. So, if we oversleep or have a doctor’s appointment in the morning, we can still jump into our routine and get everything done.
High school isn’t as Instagramable as the early years, but it can still be just as fun. Having a set daily routine makes it a pleasant experience for everyone!
Coming up next…
I hope you found this Tidbit helpful! Come back next week for more homeschooling inspiration!
Until then, happy reading!
