Welcome back to the Back To Homeschool blog series! Last week I shared our Homeschool Lessons Timetable for 2023-2024 which you can read here. This week I’ll be walking through my mother’s timetable to show you a look into how I (persistently but imperfectly) balance my time between homeschool lessons, home managing, cleaning, cooking, and even where I spend time for mother culture and leisure.
This page contains affiliate links which means at no additional cost to you when you click through a link and make a purchase, I might make a small commission. Thank you for supporting Our Cooper Nest!
Moms wear many hats, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed to somehow structure my day in a way that I could balance the work of managing our home and homeschooling my children full time. I will be the first to say that there are days when things on my timetable don’t always happen the way and order I have here. It can be hard to be disciplined, and I’ve struggled with this in the past. Having my time blocked out in this visual way, and just getting the things done in those blocks (as simple as that may seem) really has worked well for me. However, there are days when my time is best stewarded when the timetable is set aside. It is never a master in our home, just a tool that serves me in this season of motherhood and homeschooling.
I recently did an Instagram series on home management which further walks through some of the ways I’ve built small habits, overcome enemies of my time, and how I’m choosing to work towards faithful discipline every day, and some resources for you to help work through these on your own. One day I will expand and turn these IG posts into blog articles, but for now, here are the following on Instagram:
As my children are getting older, it made sense for us to have a set time for our homeschool lessons, and therefore, especially during the homeschool year, it made even more sense that my time would also be ordered in a similar way.
Redeeming The Time Given
Since our homeschool block is usually most of our morning, Monday-Friday I have some windows of time for the remaining tasks either in my early morning or afternoons. However, the afternoons have honestly been the timeframe where I have given into idleness, and allowed my children to do the same. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of time for leisure and play, but I knew there was a way to redeem part of our afternoon time more intentionally. Since my children have both outgrown nap time, the afternoons have been a recently discovered, wonderful use of our time to steward new hobbies, nourish our minds with living ideas, and still cultivate a restful atmosphere, set apart from homeschool lessons.
Why A Mother’s Timetable
I like having my own timetable because 1) homeschooling isn’t the only thing on my daily schedule, 2) having my mother’s timetable mapped out before the homeschool year begins really helps me see and trust that other things outside of homeschool lessons can get done because I put in the work to map it out and over the summer I’m able to sort of try it out in our Summer rhythm and 3) I don’t have to feel overwhelmed by trying to cram and do all the things on the weekends.
Categorizing My Timetable
If you’ve been reading my blog or Instagram posts for a while, you’ll be familiar with the categories that I fit into my timetable:
- Mother Culture
- Physical
- Home Education
- Family
- Work
- Home
Mother’s Timetable Walk Through
Over the Summer I’ve been working on redeeming some of the areas in my Mother’s Timetable such as my morning routine and our rest time in the afternoons. We’ve also worked on some home habits that I know will make our homeschool days go a little more smoothly such as the kids’ morning tasks block and sitting to read together every day.
Morning Routine
In my season of motherhood, waking up before my children has been a sure way to get my day going well. My morning routine looks something like drinking water, stretching, reading my Bible, spending time in prayer and journaling prayers, doing a little work for OCN, and opening the curtains. I’d say during our homeschool year, this is pretty consistent Monday-Friday. Right now I wake up by 6:00 AM but I may push that back to 5:30 again if I find I could use some extra time in my Bible or some time in my Mother Culture readings, and just savor the early quiet morning.
Around 7:00/7:30 my children are just waking up, so I’ll begin getting ready for the day by starting my one load of laundry, get myself ready, prepare breakfast, set out our morning collective at the table, and make my coffee. During this time my children will have their own morning tasks which are things like make their beds, get dressed, eat breakfast, feed the dog, brush teeth, etc. By 8:30 we are ready to start our homeschool day (see this timetable for a walk through of our homeschool lessons).
After Homeschool Lessons
As soon as we wrap up homeschool lessons for the day, depending on when we finish, the kids will have their daily chore zone to tackle while I prepare lunch which doesn’t take them any more than 5-10 minutes to complete. During lunch, the kids can choose to listen to an audiobook on their Yoto players or listen to music while I take a few minutes to eat my own lunch and read my own books or listen to an audiobook. After lunch, my kids like to use the time to play with toys, go outside, or get their wiggles out on these scooters. When the weather cools down, we will take a bike ride or walk around the neighborhood or on some days, pack our lunch for a picnic at our park.
At 1:00 I begin my work block time and the kids begin their time of “afternoon occupations” which has evolved from our independent quiet rest time over the last couple of years. I’ll be sharing the details of our afternoon occupations in this blog series so stay tuned! While the kids are settled in for afternoon occupations, I will use this time to work on OCN (Our Cooper Nest) content. Each day looks different, but on most days I try and tackle 3 things from my work list. I use this time to write blog articles, take photos, and batch IG content. In moderation, I also use this time to check DM’s, and emails and engage on some content.
At the end of my work block, we all will each pick a spot around the house separately and read our own books (my kindergartner will look at picture books at this time). 2X a week I plan to cuddle up next to my 5 year old and read our literature selections to him.
Last year when my daughter was in Year 2 we wanted to read many of the free reads listed on AO’s list but didn’t make the time to actually do it well, so this year she has a 30 minute block in our day for Ambleside Online’s free reads plus a few selections of her own choice. On the days I am not reading to my kindergartner, I will read my mother culture book selections or read AO’s free reads on my own.
After reading time, my kids will have the remainder of the afternoon to play. When the weather cools down a little, we will head out of doors (mom too!) in the backyard. While the kids are playing, I will use this time to get my own chore zone done, and then work on some of the home management things that need to be done. Instead of trying to do all these things over the weekend or in the evening at the end of the day, I’ve decided to spread the work out in my week at this time while I am watching the kids play. The tasks in my home management block include meal planning, grocery list making, budgeting, etc. I’ll probably be listening to podcasts at this time, too!
Evening Routines
Before dinner the children and I will do one last tidy up around the main rooms, putting away any of their toys still out, or school supplies that lingered on the table. My kids will also help get the dinner table set, and help prepare the salad if our meal calls for it. Dinner time and the remainder of the evening for family time are very casual, but a time we all look forward to. The kids love catching their dad up to speed with how their day went, what they did in lessons, and what new game they came up with to play. Some nights we will all head back outside and play a game of soccer, or golf, or walk/ride bikes in the neighborhood. On other nights we might play a board game or a few rounds of hide and seek around the house. The theme of our evening family time is together, phones away, mostly screen-free with the occasional Mario Kart Wii competition or movie night (usually reserved for the weekends during the homeschool terms).
Evening Rest Time / Home Evening Routine
By 7:00/7:30 PM we move into evening rest time, which is just a time we use to help the kids wind down for bedtime. Once everyone is cleaned up and pajamas are on, we enjoy a family read aloud together, and end the time “playing” the thankful game (go around and take turns sharing what we’re thankful for from that day). I would like to cultivate the habit of family prayer time here so that is a family habit we are currently working on.
Once the kids make their way into bed, I spend a little time resetting our home and preparing for the next day. My home reset routine includes dishes, taking out the trash, tidying up/wiping down kitchen and table surfaces, coffee prep, and adding a load of laundry to the washer (that way all I have to do is turn it on in the morning). This reset routine takes me no more than 30 minutes, and then I spend the rest of my evening leisurely. On the occasional evenings when I get to meet my local CM book club or have a coffee/tea date with a friend, I will leave the evening routine with the kids to my husband, and prepare ahead of time to reset our home for the next day.
My own evening routine before bed isn’t anything glamorous. It usually involves washing my face, stretching, setting out my Bible and water bottle in my reading spot for the next morning, commonplacing, and then falling asleep.
Home Managing
For the most part, my routines and home managing stay consistent throughout the week. Mondays are spent in the budget, Wednesday I meal plan for the upcoming week, and Thursdays I make our grocery list. Currently, it works best for us to get our groceries during the weekend which we restock our produce 1x a week and do our bigger meal/household shopping every 2 weeks.
Cleaning Routine
Every day I focus on cleaning one area of the house more thoroughly with a list of smaller daily cleaning tasks spread throughout my day. You can read about my general cleaning rhythm here, which includes a free cleaning routine printable that I use.
A Mother’s Glance
On Saturdays or Sunday mornings I like to take the time to plan out my week, both for our lessons in my homeschool planner, and also for my own work (OCN, mother culture, additional home managing tasks) using my Mother’s Glance printable. I love this printable (which is stored in the back of my homeschool planner so it’s all in one place) because I am able to use it in a way that holds all the other little things I need to keep track of each week outside of our homeschool lessons.
Having my routines in place, and a sort of birdseye view of what my day looks like with everything I need and want to get done in a week is very beneficial for me in seeing it through. While I have worked on just a list of to-dos before, I often found that harder to accomplish because of the lack of order that it gave me. Having planned out the days for the things I need to do before the new week begins has been super helpful in getting my lists done, and doing them well since I then only have to focus on the given tasks I’ve planned for at a time. Of course, things come up, and we accommodate, but nonetheless, my timetable has helped eliminate the feeling of overwhelm that home managing can bring, and as a result, I’ve found the ordering of my days as a delight, and a gift.
I enjoy seeing another mother’s time table. Thank you.
Hi! I love this and it’s inspired me. I need a little more structure to our days, and this helped me visualize it in a new way. I have a question, maybe silly, but when things change, or you have an outing, errands to run, or dentist appointments when do you do those? Basically, when do you do out-of-the-home things?
Hi Morgan! So happy to hear that this has helped you visualize your day in a new way! We tend to keep our typical errands on Fridays like grocery shopping and appointments, but if not, I schedule appointments during our break weeks! If something unexpected comes up, we don’t fret about it and just carry on with however much we can get done and pick up where we left off the next day. Most of our circle of friends are also homeschoolers so we tend to get together in the afternoons, towards the end of the week, or in the evenings for dinner time!