What's a typical homeschool day look like?📆
How to set up a custom homeschool schedule, plus 4️⃣ sample schedules and 1️⃣5️⃣ real-life examples, modular learning with a full-time job, as a single parent, traveling the world, and more.
A big perk to modular learning is that no schedule is the same. You’re absolutely free! You can design the ideal schedule for your unique family, whether that means sleeping in, learning at 7 pm at night, or 10 am in the morning.
That said, there are some best practices that have emerged, developed over decades of modular learners (many of them teachers) experimenting, seeing what works, refining methods, sharing resources and support.
We’ve observed that modular learners typically set aside 1-2 hours a day for 1-1 mastery learning and spend the rest of the time in self-directed learning, socializing, tutoring or homeschool programs.
Families homeschool with full-time jobs, as single parents, graduate students, with a newborn, working remotely, or traveling the world. There are options for everyone.
Remember that the best part of modular learning is flexibility, so take these as inspiration and keep experimenting to find out what works for you!
This post is chockfull of practical information for families considering modular learning, so this week, we’ve provided an extensive outline to help you navigate this post and find the questions you’re most curious about.
In this post, we’ll cover..
🧩 1. Typical “modules” in modular learning
1-1 Mastery Hours
Family time
Self-directed learning
Social learning
Full day program
Practical Life
Year-round learning
🐣 2. Why younger kids need more quality time with parents and caregivers
🤔 3. Thinking about scheduling differently: Five alternatives to time-based scheduling
Tasks
Milestones
Blocks
Strewing
No schedule (yes, this works with some kids)
⚖️ 4. Is structure always better? Balancing scheduled and unscheduled time
📝 5. Sample schedules
Kindergarten
Elementary
Middle School
High School
🍰 6. Slices of life: modular learning in action
A film
A podcast episode
🌎 7. Fifteen real-life examples from social media
Making it work for every family structure and work situation
Work structures
2 parents with full-time jobs
Single parent with a full-time job
Stay-at-home parent
Parents working remotely
Parent with a part-time job outside the home
Parent in college or grad school
Siblings
Multiple Siblings
Families with a newborn
Lifestyles
Worldschoolers
Night Owls
Early Birds
Grandparents homeschooling
A typical day in a bespoke education
Setting up a Homeschool Schedule (or milestones) + 4 Sample schedules and 15 real-life examples
What’s a typical day look like? Modular learning looks different for every family. Unlike school, the options of a homeschooling schedule are limitless. Families can curate a schedule aligned with their work schedule, sleep schedule, and childcare needs.
How did this come to be?
In this post, we attempt to classify patterns in modular learning, and we want to make sure that credit is awarded where it’s due. These patterns emerged from decades of homeschooling families passionately experimenting and evolving their methods to build the ideal education system for their kids.
The system that emerged, which we call “modular learning,” is unique in that it’s not a fixed (or perfect) system. It’s constantly evolving to suit the needs of individual families, children, and communities, built to evolve in a rapidly changing world.
People choose to homeschool for a wide variety of reasons, some reactive (e.g. school is bad) and some proactive (e.g. I could do better).
In our post, “what is modular learning?” we describe 5 styles of homeschooling ranging from highly structured school at home, to no structure (pure self-directed learning).
At Modulo, we’ve been focusing on families who have proactively chosen to homeschool because they wanted to optimize learning and social-emotional outcomes for their children.
They were curious about developing a brand new way to support learning that didn’t replicate school. And they had the courage and intellect, to completely question everything they’d been told about what “quality education” meant.
In this line, we’ve been researching the secular homeschooling and unschooling movement, and especially looking at teachers and health care professionals who made the decision to homeschool their kids, because they thought they could do it better themselves, at home.
And we found some common themes.
The homeschooling patterns have emerged from decades of parents focusing on building the ideal education for their unique child. They passed on what they learned to other families in their homeschool communities. And these methods continued to evolve through generations of homeschoolers.
Homeschooling is gaining popular appeal, but it’s still considered a radical choice in many communities.
Organizations that listen, and continually evolve to serve their users tend to be the best organizations. And it’s no small feat.
These families who made the decision to homeschool to make education better, care so passionately about their children’s education that they are willing to act in opposition to their community, and their own family, to make the choices that serve them best.
It’s hard for us to imagine a more qualified, caring group of founders to shape a new education system - as these pioneering families.
Brilliant minds and bold hearts built this system and continue to shape it every day. These families are truly transforming the world.
All we’ve done here is write down and describe what they continue to build.
🧩 1. Typical “modules” in modular learning
Patterns in modular learning
There’s no one best schedule for every family, but it’s still helpful to get a feel of what this can look like in practice. If you work full-time or part-time, these schedules will also help you see how to fit your work into your homeschooling schedule.
Here are some typical patterns we’ve observed in modular learners looking for a challenging, well-rounded homeschool program that allows for self-directed learning and rich social experiences.
Generally, the modular learning week includes the following “modules”
❤️ 1) 1-1 Mastery Hours
1-2 hours/day
Depending on the child’s age, most children spend 1-2 hours a day of focused time studying math and language arts with the support or a parent, tutor, caregiver, older sibling, or in some cases, if they are very self-directed, independently. Since 1-1 mastery learning is so much more efficient than group instruction, many families find they are able to get through these core subjects very quickly. This intense, focused time allows children to progress rapidly and they often move through several grade levels very quickly. It’s advisable to choose these hours when the child is most energized and focused. Adding on more hours typically does not lead to better outcomes. Much like designers, or any creative profession, a few hours of highly focused work, balanced with more loosely structured time leads to better outcomes than more hours. Working more hours does not make your child more productive.
🐳 2) Family time
1-2 hours a day, mealtimes, 1-2 evenings, 1-2 full days a week
A big perk of modular learning is getting to spend more time together as a family. Research shows that family involved in education makes a bigger impact in outcomes than almost any other outcome. Furthermore, it has a plethora of mental health benefits. Family time cultivates secure attachment styles. It can lead to greater happiness, self-esteem, autonomy, build a foundation prevent drug and alcohol addiction, and build an essential foundation for strong social skills.
Families might choose to spend a family day together once or twice a week, read the NYTimes together at breakfast, eat dinner together every day, watch a documentary together on Friday evening, or read together every night. One of our families in San Francisco takes a walk on the beach every morning together at sunrise, and then comes home and has breakfast. Another reserves Wednesday as family day and uses that day to pursue hobbies together, take day trips, visit museums and cultural organizations or go hiking. It’s nice to set aside loosely structure family time outside of 1-1 mastery learning.
In this day and age, there’s a tendency to prioritize time with peers over time with family, and we deeply encourage families to question this assumption. Time with family is much more critical than time with peers (even when it comes to building an ability to get along well with other children of similar ages and learn to work collaboratively on projects). We explore this in more depth in our guide to “Family involvement in education.”
🧡 3) Self-directed learning
3-4 hours a day
Modular learners tend to have large periods of unstructured time where they are free to direct their own learning. This time might be a little scary at first for families who are afraid that their kids might get bored, or do things that they consider “unproductive.” However, this time to explore fosters creativity, grit, growth mindset, autonomy and allows children to learn executive functioning skills and discover their passions. It also gives children space for experimentation (and failure), which helps send them the message that their family trusts their capacity, and lays the ground for them to cultivate courage and independence. There are ways to make this unstructured time more productive which we discuss in our guide, “giving kids the time and space to teach themselves.”
💜 4) Social learning
1-2 hours a day/ 3-5 times a week
Kids need plenty of time to interact with other children (and parents). Play is, in fact, one of the key ways children learn. A perk to modular learning is that there is much more time to play than 30 minutes of recess, or fitting in friend dates in tuckered out hours after school, or on weekends between homework assignments and studying for tests. Generally modular learners will participate in several afterschool or homeschool classes, at least 1-2 big meetups per week, and smaller get togethers or 1-1 playdates 2-3 times a week. Many families take their kids to the park or playground every day for a few hours. If you ask a modular learner about their social life, they will frequently tell you that the problem is not that there isn’t enough social time, but that there is too much!
💚 5) Full-day or half-day program
1/2 -2 days a week
Many families choose to engage in a full-day program such as a homeschool co-op, microschool, park day, forest school or field trip day. Sometimes these programs are run by a teacher, and other times by a parent in the homeschool community. Full-day programs can be a nice opportunity for families to get a day to themselves and children to spend time with peers. These programs can range from co-learning spaces, informal gatherings, project-based makerspaces, to looking very much like traditional school.
💛 6) Practical Life
20 minutes to an hour per day
Practical life is a term coined by Maria Montessori, to describe the learning that happens when children engage with household responsibilities such as cleaning, cooking and caring for plants.
Depending on how old they are, kids might spend anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour every day helping with household chores.
Most modular learners make kids responsible for helping with household tasks like doing dishes, walking the dog, helping out with a younger sibling. They’re also given more responsibility when it comes to looking after their own needs (cleaning their room, making their own lunch, etc).
Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.” - Maria Montessori
Getting your child to “opt in” to their chores and their learning schedule is beyond the scope of this post, but families can learn more about communicating with children around learning, and setting healthy boundaries at different developmental stages in our post on family involvement in education or by watching our workshop on “communicating with children” with Bank Street professor, Deb Vilas.
It’s worth nothing that even very young children are often capable of performing many more tasks than we imagine possible.
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”
- Maria Montessori
📆 7) Year-round learning
One significant difference between modular learning and traditional school is year-round schooling.
In a modular approach, learning happens all the time. It doesn’t stop in summer.
A year-round learning approach brings ease to the whole family, as they build a lifestyle and routine that works for everyone. They take breaks from routines as needed without the pressure of deadlines.
Images of screaming children celebrating the end of school and the start of summer always seems a little disturbing to us. Is it right that kids abhor school so much that they celebrate the time off?
Families may be skeptical of year round schooling, because they see school as a demanding task kids need a break from.
In an effective modular approach, kids enjoy learning, look forward to it and don’t see it as a chore.
What’s more, modular learners don’t view learning as something that starts and stops at specific times. Rather, kids are learning all the time, sometimes in structured activities, and other times, organically from the world around them.
In traditional schools, kids generally spend one month on catch-up at the beginning of each semester. A comprehensive review by the The Brookings Institution found substantial learning loss over summer break:
(1) on average, students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning,
(2) declines were sharper for math than for reading, and
(3) the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels. Importantly, they also concluded that income-based reading gaps grew over the summer, given that middle class students tended to show improvement in reading skills while lower-income students tended to experience loss. However, they did not find differential summer learning in math, or by gender or race in either subject.“
From Summer learning loss: What is it, and what can we do about it? (Brookings Institution)
Year round learning means kids are learning at their own pace and continuously building upon previous learning. Kids have a balanced schedule that allows them to take breaks and switch things up when needed.
Parents don’t stop working in the summer, and it doesn’t make sense for kids to stop learning. Students don’t stop learning two months of the year and then play catch-up each Fall.
There’s no big celebration when school gets out in Spring. In modular learning, kids love learning and have an insatiable appetite for more knowledge. Learning is something they enjoy. When modular learning is going well, kids don’t have any need or desire to take the summer off. However, they can certainly take advantage of all the wonderful summer programs and camps available and opportunities to travel and explore.
🐣 2. Why younger children need more time with parents
The younger children are, the more high-quality, engaged time they need with their primary caregiver for healthy cognitive and social development, especially in the first five years of life. As kids grow older (especially homeschoolers), they will also become more independent and need less adult interaction. If parents are in a position to be at home full-time with kids or change their work schedule to spend time with their children, that’s the ideal set-up. An extended family member or caregiver can be an effective alternative. While we understand that daycare is an inevitable solution for some families, we don’t consider this high-quality, engaged time.
The is from a study called The importance of early bonding on the long-term mental health and resilience of children” by Robert Winston and Rebecca Chicot.
“The most important stage for brain development is the beginning of life, starting in the womb and then the first year of life. By the age of three, a child’s brain has reached almost 90% of its adult size…This rapid brain growth and circuitry have been estimated at an astounding rate of 700–1000 synapse connections per second in this period…The experiences a baby has with her caregivers are crucial to this early wiring and pruning and enable millions and millions of new connections in the brain to be made. Repeated interactions and communication lead to pathways being laid down that help memories and relationships form and learning and logic to develop….”
🤔 3. Thinking about “scheduling” differently
5 alternatives to time-based scheduling
One of the ideas we discussed in the section on mastery learning is that any child can master a concept if given enough time. What’s important is not time spent but mastery of concepts.
As in any approach, no one is a purist - and usually integrates a combination of methods to structuring modular learning.
Many kids prefer to-do lists to work through at their leisure, but some value a schedule.
Experiment, and see what works best for each of your kids - and for you?
Here are some ways different modular learners structure learning.
1. Milestones
Some families choose to focus on milestones rather than tasks or time. Milestones can help ensure students are learning for mastery and have activities to keep them learning and give them a sense of achievement.
2. Tasks
Many modular learners focus on daily tasks rather than daily time slots for learning. Some families have a jar of tasks or milestones that students can select during each work period. Others use a planner, checklist, or a stack of index cards.
3. Blocks
Some modular learners set aside 2-3 hour blocks of time where students have the option to engage in a variety of activities. Blocks can be essential for parents who work remotely. If students have clear boundaries around blocks of time when parents are working, and they’re learning, family time, and 1-1 parent-led learning, it prevents interruptions during work periods.
4. Strewing
Creating an environment to support learning
In addition to being a cool vocabulary word, strewing is a concept in modular learning that parents use to refer to setting up their child’s environment with a variety of learning tools and resources. Rather than having blocks of time, tasks for milestones, some families focus on creating an environment that’s ripe for learning. Lesley Grossblatt, Chief Product Officer of KQED and unschooling mom, wrote this great blog on “Sparking Independent Learning With Strewing.” She gives examples of different objects families can place in a room to help inspire children to direct their own learning.
Be aware that your child is always in an environment that impacts their learning, whether you are intentional about it or not. By choosing tools and creating a space that supports learning, you can impact the shape that self-directed learning takes.
5. No structure (unschooling)
Many modular learners will laugh when asked if they have a schedule. As people have different preferences for scheduled and unscheduled time, routines can fall together naturally - or not. As long as families try to get to their 1-2 hours of mastery learning in every day and make time for social interaction, there’s no need to have a regimented schedule.
⚖️ 4. Is structure always better?
Finding the right balance of scheduled and unscheduled time
Everyone has different preferences for structured vs. unscheduled time. Some children are highly self-motivated and will have no problem teaching themselves without any prompting, while others strive with clear boundaries around their day and tasks.
Some research on homeschoolers and standardized testing suggests some degree of structure is the best choice to optimize learning for most kids. However, this may also be because parents who care more about academic outcomes tend to implement schedules more often. And standardized testing is a highly limited method of measuring learning.
Different children have different needs when it comes to scheduled or unscheduled times, so that’s also important to keep in mind. Some kids thrive on structure, while others are highly self-driven and thrive on unstructured time, devouring books, writing, and planning projects without any prompting.
Like anything, find out what what works best for your individual child, instead of comparing them to others. Be wary of jumping to conclusions “my kid definitely won’t get anything done if they don’t have a schedule,” or “younger kids need structure” before you’ve experimented. For example, many children teach themselves to read, while others won’t without help. Give space to learn about your child and you might be surprised.
We dig deeper into finding the right balance of structured and unstructured learning in our post on self-directed learning.
📝 5. Sample schedules for Kindergarten, Elementary, and Secondary
As we explain in our section on childcare, families can homeschool well with two full-time jobs, with multiple siblings, as a parent with a part-time job, as a stay-at-home parent working on a degree, or with a newborn. We’ve provided use cases for all these scenarios.
As tempting as it is to imitate what others have done, hopefully, these schedules will instead serve to inspire you to curate a plan that works well for your own family. If you do get into a rhythm that works, please let us know, and we’ll share it with other families to inspire them too!
Here are some sample schedules we’ve set up for families at Modulo.
We’ve color-coded them to help give you a sense of the different modules.
1. Kindergarten (age range 3-6)
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