The following routine did not come easily. It was hard-won with lots of trial, error, screaming and crying (on both my part and the kids’). It comes after years of stay-at-home-momming through seasons successful and harrowing. It comes after much research and reading into how to do this mom thing better. Some of the more fruitful resources in this respect have been Holly Pierlot’s A Mother’s Rule of Life (if you’re more into courses, you might consider the Create Your Own Rule of Life course by Tsh Oxenreider) and zillions of videos by Jordan Page on YouTube (she’s Mormon not Catholic, but as a mother of 8, her tips for budgeting and productivity are spot-on). A prayerful and very biblical runner-up is Kimberly Hahn’s Graced and Gifted.
The routine below is the system that’s working for us in the here and now. Things don’t always happen in this exact order, but they do generally take place within the timeframes listed. Sometimes we will flip blocks if it makes more sense (that’s the beauty of homeschooling’s flexibility).
With number four set to make her debut mid-summer, I expect this will kaleidoscope into something different with the shifting seasons of family life. Perhaps I will share an update of what happens then. Perhaps I will simply be happy to find a shirt void of spit up in a mountain of wrinkling laundry.
Enjoy!
Morning Block (6:00 am - 9:30 am)
Get dressed
Prayer/journal/coffee
Exercise
Fold Laundry/audio rosary
Unload dishwasher
Grocery delivery
We get milk and eggs and meat from small family farms. For the rest, we usually use Walmart delivery or my husband takes a list to Costco for me. The money we’ve saved since I stopped going to Costco…
Make/eat/clean up breakfast
Kids get dressed
School Block (9:30 am -12:30 pm)
Most of this takes place at the kitchen Island or dining table
School OR Outing/Co-op/Field trip/Apts
We try to limit our days “out” to one day a week for my sanity and to be as consistent with routine.
Morning time
For us this means whichever Catholic prayer and hymn we are learning for our 6-week rotation and each kids picks a picture book out of our story basket. Generally I purchase a few that pertain to religious theme for the month (May’s is Mary) and we pick up whatever the library has on-hand that is related to our current history topic.
A checklist keeps us honest
For a while, we went with my little one’s interests, but we ended up skewing our studies a bit too much for my taste. Now, we work our way through a checklist I hand-write in the morning that is loosely based on the MODG syllabus. (For more on our tweaks, you can read all about our Catholic homeschool curriculum.)
Break, Snacks
We try to keep each subject short and switch the part of the brain we’re using with each activity so we don’t lose momentum by taking too many breaks. But even I can’t pay attention to work for hours on end, so we end up taking snack breaks as needed.
Free Play
Usually the littles play upstairs, build pillow forts, chase chickens, swing, or dig in the dirt outside. For a while my preschool-aged son showed some interest in joining us for table work. I got him a few simple workbooks and he still makes appearances, but as the 2-year-old becomes more interactive they spend more time together creating Magnatile fortresses, playing restaurant, and occasionally pulling each other’s hair out. That last one is the loudest of the three and often a cue for a snack break.
Prep, eat, and clean up lunch
Nap Block (12:30 pm - 3:30 pm)
Speed clean/run roomba
Little one naps
Big kids do chores
Quiet (crafts or TV) or outside time, depending on weather
Writing time
House or garden projects
Dinner block (3:30 pm - 6:30 pm)
Prep and eat dinner
Dishes and set coffee
Family walk/porch and evening tea time
Bedtime block (6:30-8:00)
Baths
Stories and prayer routine
Snuggle time
Our time block (8:00 pm - 10:00 pm)
Shower, couple time, reading, television
What needs work:
This routine is ever-evolving. Right now, if anything on this list fails to get done, it’s almost always the “me” stuff. It’s the exercise, the walk around the block, the evening shower. I recently made the decision to force myself to get ready in the morning before prayers and it’s been shockingly impactful to my overall well-being. It’s like that advice that everyone tells you to make the bed. Seems sort of pointless. Too small to make any impact. And yet, in practice, it makes a world of difference.
One other thing I’m working on is taking a few minutes to make myself presentable during “our time.” (Goodbye, sweatpants. Hello, something soft and feminine.) It’s wonderful to get gussied up for date night, but those opportunities are few and far between. When I treat “our time” in the evening as something special to anticipate and treasure, that time takes on meaning. It is about more than getting comfy and scrolling through the latest on my attention-sucking device. It becomes sacred and helps to renew the feeling of “us” that makes marriage more than mere partnership. And when we take the time to connect, usually the rest of the evening is more interesting as well.
What routines and habits work for your family? How do you adjust them for the shifting seasons of life? Leave a comment!