Homeschooling on a homestead schedule

Homeschooling on a homestead schedule. Homeschooling and homesteading is kind of like choosing to do life on hard difficulty, our schedule is always swamped. So how do we fit homeschooling into our homesteading schedule?

Homeschooling on a homestead schedule

It’s important to remember that homeschooling doesn’t have to match a public school schedule. Formal homeschooling shouldn’t take 8 hours a day, honestly, if it takes 2 hours a day I’m always surprised it took that long. We also don’t follow the typical seasons of homeschooling. I try to give my oldest summers off, but within a month she’s bored out of her mind and wants to jump back into school.

Especially while homesteading, we give a lot of grace with our schedule. Holiday breaks are a must, but also breaks for harvesting and preserving our garden, breaks when baby animals are born, breaks for hunting. Most of the time we don’t give entire weeks off, but when things happen on the homestead we take a day off from homeschooling. Algebra is just not as important as having all hands on deck when piglets are born.

On a typical day we get farm chores done first, before coffee. Then we have a big breakfast, because of course, when you have a homestead you’re having eggs for breakfast everyday. Then I work on getting house chores done, at least a quick load of laundry in and a quick vacuum around the house, our house always needs to be vacuumed. Between being on a farm and having 4 dogs and a cat in the house. Then I scoop up the toddlers to read a book and the tween does her online curriculum. That normally brings us to lunch time, normally either leftovers, sandwiches, “snacky lunch” or I throw frozen chicken nuggets in the air fryer, because homesteading is about balance and I can’t make everything from scratch.

The problem will always be that days aren’t typical around here. My husband works full time so I’m alone with the kids and the homestead doesn’t like to behave when he’s gone. One day I was just about to make lunch when my 3 year old excitedly yelled that piglets were in the front lawn. Sure enough all the piglets broke out, I had to run outside, corral pigs, figure out how to modify the fence to keep them in, then run back inside to make lunch. Luckily that happened after we were done with homeschool, so it didn’t affect our day other than frazzling me.

You can balance homesteading and homeschooling, it just takes grace and patience. Homeschooling on a homestead schedule is totally doable. Sometimes you just have to let go and put the rest up to God.