Ignoring "Grade Levels" in your Homeschool

Everyone always says, "The beauty of homeschool is that you can work at your child's level."  I completely agree with this but it can be hard to let go of  "grade levels" entirely. There are a few reasons for this:

Homeschooling in a Small Home

I would love to have a big, bright homeschool room and I hope to have one eventually.  For now though, we live in a small two bedroom apartment.  That doesn't leave much space for our school stuff.

 I know a lot of people have school at their dining room table.  That wasn't a very convenient solution for us though.  We don't have a pantry in our apartment so we put a bookcase up in the dining area to use as a makeshift pantry.  There isn't any space in our dining area to store books or supplies, we would be constantly leaving the table to grab supplies for the next subject.  Also, I thought C would enjoy having a space of her own to learn.

Calendar Time with FREE Printables

I hope you all had a great weekend!  Ours was busy, but not with anything particularly exciting.  EXCEPT that I finished up our Calendar Time wall and also made a second set of not so girly printables to share with all of you! 

I have seen some excellent Calendar Time ideas on other blogs, ours is pretty simple for a couple reasons:

• I try to not use too much ink/paper-it is SO expensive!
• C isn't too big on math so I try and do our math in short and sweet segments throughout our school time

Morning Expectations Printable

In my last post about our daily schedule, I said I would have a Morning Expectations printable for you guys soon. Well, here it is!

It is a very basic printable with just a few jobs. The list I made for Caitlyn has more expectations that are personalized to her: put on glasses, turn on the light for her fish, etc. I have included one printable with the labels written in Spanish, as well as one printable with just the check boxes and numbers that you can fill in.


I recommend either laminating or putting it in a picture frame so the child can check off the jobs with a dry erase marker as they complete them.  Click on the image to download











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Our New Schedule

Today marks the first week day that I am staying home with Caitlyn. Unfortunately, it is also the last three days I have to get ready for Thanksgiving! We are hosting this year and my place needs a LOT of work.

Needless to say, I have been very productive today, but more with house work and less with blog/homeschool stuff. I did come up with a schedule that I hope to follow starting next Monday.

I know that in coming up with my schedule I looked at a lot of other schedules online. So I thought I would post my schedule to give you guys another idea. The times I am posting today will be the times I *HOPE* we will follow. As we dig into our schedule I will come back and edit to show how the times work out in real life. Things always go much smoother in my head!

I tried to incorporate a lot of the Fly Lady's routines into my schedule so that I don't forget to take care of our home while doing homeschool. I really hope that this system works out well for me. I would get very overwhelmed if when the day is done I still have a pile of laundry and a sink full of dishes staring me down! I feel better knowing it is in the schedule!

The Bilingual Homeschool's Daily Schedule


Wake up at 6:45:
*Make bed
*Wake up Caitlyn - have her get started on her morning expectations (post coming soon!)
*Shower & Get Dressed - Follow Fly Lady's plan of cleaning restroom each morning while in there getting ready!
*Spend a few minutes with my husband before he leaves for work
*Start a load of laundry
*Breakfast

8:00 Start school time - Calendar Time
(We will be using 1+1+1's calendar notebook printables, they are GREAT. I will probably add some bilingual printouts to those soon)


- Reading time
We use (and I HIGHLY recommend) The Reading Lesson By Michael Levin I will post a review of the book very soon!
For review we use Hooked on Phonics: Kindergarten

- Action Break We will stop and do something to get our bodies moving and her energy out

- Story Time

9:30
- Snack
- Clean up in kitchen while Caitlyn eats, put laundry in dryer
- Printables and activity time
I plan to try using the work box idea here, we will see how Caitlyn likes it! There will probably be a lot of free play and exploration time here as well. While Caitlyn is doing an activity that she can work on independently, I plan on checking off a couple of the jobs off of my daily to do list!
-Action Break
-Work together to put laundry away

11:30
-Lunch
-Bible time
-Play Time 1:15-3:00
-Nap
Some days Caitlyn seems like she doesn't need a nap, on those days, we still plan to have a rest time from 1:15-3:00. I am working on some nap time busy boxes for her. I Can Teach My Child has some great ideas!

Our school day will end with nap. I will use her nap time to finish up my cleaning list for the day and get blog posts up! If you have any questions please leave a comment! Thank you!