Homeschool Kindergarten Schedule Ideas

Reduce your stress with these simple homeschool kindergarten schedule ideas. Encourage a love for learning and spend quality time together.

Starting your child’s kindergarten year can be intimidating, whether your decision to homeschool was last minute or always a part of the plan. It is easy as a parent to worry that we are messing our kids up or not doing enough for them. But what our kids really need from us is time. Time spent together to build relationships and connection, and to learn how to communicate and deal with emotions. These are things they miss out on in public school.

Homeschool allows us the freedom to spend all of our time together, and to adapt our kindergarten schedule to fit the child’s specific needs. By putting children in public school, we miss out on so much bonding time and their specific needs cannot be met. A teacher cannot love your child as much as you do. They cannot spend one on one time with your child like you can. They will not cater to your child’s specific needs. And your child is stuck in a desk for 7-8 hours a day!

We can do better. Homeschool is a tremendous blessing that will give you thousands of hours with your children that other parents miss out on. I for one am not willing to miss out on that time!

Speaking of time, how should you be spending your time with your kindergartener?? It’s simple. Spend minimal time in workbooks, and LOTS of time learning life skills, exploring nature, doing things hands on, and bonding with them.

Homeschool Priorities for your Kindergarten Schedule

It is important to think about your homeschool priorities before you enter your child’s kindergarten year and make a schedule. As a homeschooler, you have so much freedom! No need to wake up super early and rush everyone out the door for school drop offs. Your child won’t be forced to sit at a desk all day with a super short recess. Feeling hungry or needing to go to the bathroom can be treated as a normal fact of life instead of as an inconvenience that messes up the schedule. And your child will actually be allowed to talk at lunch. (I’m sure I could come up with hundreds of other perks of homeschooling!)

Every homeschool family has different priorities. That is awesome! We are raising our kids to be their own person, not bowing to the cultural norms to fit in. If you haven’t done it yet, write down some words, ideas, phrases, thoughts about what you envision for your homeschool. This will more than likely change as you get into it more, but it’s a great starting point.

Anytime I need to make a decision about a homeschool purchase, whether it is a field trip, new curriculum, unit study, learning resource, etc., I check it against my homeschool priorities. Even if it looks really awesome and tons of homeschool moms/friends are raving about it, I will not purchase it if it doesn’t align with our homeschool priorities.

Our family’s homeschool priorities:

1. Get outside
2. Read aloud
3. Family style learning

Get Outside

Getting outside is a huge priority for our family. With four young kids running around with lots of energy, getting outside makes getting through the day much more manageable. On average, we spend about 2-3 hours outside every day. (On cold/rainy days we may not go outside at all, but when the weather is great you will usually find us outside 5+ hours a day.)

In 2021, we decided to attempt the 1000 hours outside challenge. During this time, our family reaped huge rewards. We made amazing memories together. Our kid’s sleep habits drastically improved. They very rarely get sick anymore (boosted immune system). And so much more!

Once temperatures are comfortable, you will find us outside for school in the mornings, lunch, and then play in the afternoons. School doesn’t have to be done indoors.

Read Aloud & Family Style Learning

Reading is my favorite thing to do, and I want to instill that love for reading in my children as well. Reading opens doors for kids that they might not otherwise have access to. It opens their eyes to worlds, tragedies, decisions, circumstances, and life experiences that they might not ever witness or experience themselves.

The majority of our time spent doing school is reading aloud together as a family. I read while the kids do activities that keep their hands busy and their mouths quiet. We stop often and discuss passages, address concerns, and answer questions. All of my children, from the 2-year-old to the 8-year-old, participate in this time. We do history, science, music, Bible, and so much more during this time that we call our morning basket.

This method of family style learning is a fantastic way to condense your school time. Instead of working individually with each student on every subject, you do as many subjects together as a family. At the end, we work individually on things like math and language arts for a short time. This allows us to get all of the schoolwork done in roughly 2 hours total each day.

Note: If I only had a kindergartener, the time spent doing school would be cut in half if not more. However, I do have an older student as well. There is no need to spend hours a day in workbooks when you can spend a short time highly focused and knock it out.

Homeschool Hands on for your Kindergarten Schedule

A really neat perk of homeschool is all of the hands-on learning and field trips you can add into your kindergarten schedule (and really any age). When your child is able to see, smell, touch, and hear, it brings learning to another whole level.

Kindergarten is a great time to introduce things in a fun way. There really is no need to sit down to do history, when you can visit historical places around you for a field trip. Want to learn about the butterfly life cycle? Find some caterpillars in nature (or order some) to feed and observe as they go through metamorphosis into a butterfly. Trying to bring math to life? Get in the kitchen and bake together. It’s a great place to talk numbers, adding and fractions.

Spending time with your kids in nature is also a really great way to get hands on with learning. Kids learn so much just through touching, seeing, and smelling. For our family, getting out in nature has provided so many opportunities to talk about who God is and what he has done for us. Opportunities to hike and use our bodies. Improve our immune systems by soaking up vitamin D. And so much more!

When you bring learning to life through bonding and hands on learning, the memories created help the information to stick a lot longer and better. Instead of having to pull up facts when a question is asked, your child can pull up a memory that includes the facts they learned.

Homeschool Tips for your Kindergarten Schedule

Homeschooling a kindergartener is so much fun and I look forward to doing it with my other two kids as well. It is such a joy to watch them grow in their independence and knowledge, and to start to grasp concepts like numbers and letter sounds to form words.

However, homeschooling also gives you the opportunity to teach your kids important life skills that they wouldn’t learn if they attended public school. Young children love to help around the house and in the kitchen. Use this to your advantage and take the time to teach them these skills. It will provide more bonding time together and help to take a little bit of the load off of you as they get older and can do even more. Yes, they will slow you down a little bit, but it’s worth it in the long run.

A Few More Tips to Keep Your Homeschool Kindergarten Schedule Simple:

• Focus on core subjects (math, language arts/reading, handwriting, Bible) first. Once you get into a good rhythm, then consider adding in other subjects that your child shows interest in. Ex. life cycles of animals, baking, outer space…
• Change locations. Sometimes a change in location is all it takes to make learning fun again. Grab a blanket and head outside. Pack up the books and go to a coffee shop, library, park, or your favorite restaurant. It can even be fun to set up a picnic in the living room on a rainy day. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
• Take snack breaks. Remember, kids focus way better on a full stomach. Keep simple, healthy snacks easily accessible to help everyone make it to the next meal with minimal whining.
• Have an older student? Have them help teach your kindergartener. This is a great way to solidify a concept for your older child and can be helpful when they explain things more simply to your kindergartener. And it allows you to help another child, gather snacks, prep lunch, move over laundry, etc.
• Use a timer. A timer is something we recently added into our homeschool day and it has helped tremendously. It is a great way for kids to visualize how long you need their full focused attention. I find that my kids give me better focus for that time, and we complete more work than we did without it. For my kindergartener, I set the timer for 20 minutes.

How Do I Make a Homeschool Kindergarten Schedule?

With anything that is new, it will take you a little bit to find what works best for you and your kindergartener. Just start and over a few weeks, you will begin to find a daily rhythm that works well.

Take into account when your child seems to be able to sit still and focus the best. My kids tend to do better first thing in the morning, right after breakfast and morning chores. It is really nice to knock school out first thing and have the rest of the day set aside for play and crafts. However, your kids might need to run off lots of energy before sitting down to focus.

Another thing to consider is if you have younger children who nap still. Many families like to do book work while the baby/toddler naps. I have always preferred to just do it in the morning with the baby/toddler participating. It does make it a little more chaotic sometimes, but I think that it is important that they learn how to interact with others during school time and entertain themselves.

Here is a look at our typical day:

• Wake up and eat breakfast (while the kids eat breakfast, I work out).
• Morning chores and then morning basket time. This is when we do Bible, loop studies and read aloud time. We start around 9-9:30 am.
• After morning basket time, we move into individual lessons in either math or language arts. I set a timer for 20 minutes with my kindergartener. The other kids play and entertain each other.
• Immediately after, the kids head outside to play while I tidy up and get lunch ready. At this point, school is done for the day. Yes, you heard me right! We are done for the day by 11-11:30 am.
• After lunch, I will read aloud from our current book for a little bit, and then we all head to quiet time while my youngest takes her nap. Quiet time lasts roughly 2 hours.
• The rest of the day is spent in play. Outside if the weather is good.
• Dinner is around 6:30 pm, and then we will usually read from our current read aloud or read some library books together before bed.

I hope that you can see our homeschool priorities showing clearly in this view of our kindergarten schedule. We spend lots of time outside together and reading aloud. We talk, bond, play and work together all day. Some days are harder than others, but you can always find a few things to smile about at the end of the day.

Remember, you know your child better than anyone. You are more invested in their future than a teacher will ever be. Face one fear or challenge at a time and press on.

Share your homeschool priorities in the COMMENTS. I would love to hear them or answer any questions you have.

Check Out These Posts:

• Kindergarten Popcorn (Sight) Words Activities
• Read Aloud Activities to Improve Listening
• How to Put Together a Morning Basket
• Kids in Nature: Benefits of Outdoor Play
• 5 Simple First Day of Homeschool Ideas
• Daily Rhythm for Homeschool Moms
• Summer Homeschool Schedule Ideas
• Number 1-100 Tracing Worksheets

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