We’ve always been rather creative in the ways we homeschool. While the idea of schooling at home might conjure up images of hitting the books from 8 to 2 Monday through Friday, we’ve never done it that way. Frankly, that doesn’t work for most homeschoolers.
Instead, we structure our lessons to get done in a three day homeschool week, even though the program we use is designed to be covered in four days a week.
Shocker, right?
But it actually works for us and has worked well for a few years now.
Read on to see how we use a three day homeschool week in our family!
Note: We’re adapting BookShark with our youngest child to be a three-day-a-week program, but you could really make this work with any curriculum – as long as you’re willing to adjust a few things along the way.
Need to get more ideas for organizing your lesson plans? See how we use a homeschool binder to keep our objectives front and center during the year!
Disclosure: I am a brand ambassador for BookShark and am receiving free curriculum as part of my role. For details, see my Disclosure Policy.
Why You Might Need A Three Day Homeschool Week
Images c/o: Wavebreakmedia / depositphotos
How can using a three day homeschool week help you? If you think that you can’t homeschool because you’re too busy, compressing your school week can give you some much needed time in your schedule.
Personally, I’m a homeschooling parent who also works secularly. So I need to get our school lessons done for the week in about half of a normal workweek.
Generally, we complete our school lessons during those three days and then I use a couple of evenings and the other two full days of the week to work. That way, I can relax with the family on the weekends, instead of being chained to my computer trying to catch up.
Even if you don’t work, though, using a three day homeschool week can be a good thing. It will leave you with two extra days a week for chores, errands, appointments, or field trips.
How We Structure Our Three Day Homeschool Week with BookShark
If you take a look at our BookShark homeschool binder, you can see that each day’s lesson is completely planned in advance. This is a HUGE timesaver when it’s time to cover the material. Since we do a three day homeschool week, though, I have to make a few tweaks.
First, I put all of the week’s activities for ELA, history, and science together to see exactly what we should be covering. Then I count how many pages we need to read, experiments we need to complete, and worksheets we are expected to finish.
Finally, I just divide all of those activities by three to see how much we should do each day. Pretty simple!
BookShark is designed as a 36-week curriculum, so if you complete four days a week of the program, you should finish your child’s coursework within 36 weeks.
In our family, though, we homeschool year round. So I have a lot of wiggle room on the schedule. This means I can take out a day and make it up during our longer year without falling behind.
It’s working like a dream so far!
Need more homeschool planning ideas? Don’t miss these posts!
See even more ways to organize your homeschool year on my Homeschool Planning Pinterest board!
Do you feel this 3 day school week could be done and still complete all coursework in the given 36 weeks? Iām very interested in adapting our bookshark curriculum to a 3 day week, but we enjoy taking a summer and Christmas break. Do you do any of the extras along with your main course work…such as wordly wise or grammar ace? Thank you for any response!
Hi! I’m not sure how well it would work with a break over the summer. We use a year-round approach, so we don’t usually take a break of longer than a week or two. I also don’t do the extras, at least not through BookShark.
You could always give it a try by getting an early start this school year and seeing how it works for you. š
Wow! I’m researching to write a blog post about time management for homeschool moms, and I came across your post. We do things very similarly! People look at me like I have three eyeballs when I tell them we homeschool 3 days a week, year round.
We love the flexibility, and it’s really not that much more work on a daily basis.
It’s nice to find you š
Hi! I’m glad you found this helpful. Thanks for stopping by!