We get our reading, writing, and math done in the morning with breaks and snacks. Afternoons is taken up by gym, art, music, science group, etc. We do a reading through history set, so most of our history is incorporated into read alouds and historical fiction. Two kids. The youngest has the option of listening to the history and his books are obviously easier.

I map out our daily subjects/lessons using an online planner, and put it up on the fridge in the morning. My daughter crosses out things as we complete them. I find breaks essential between subjects, and a timer can be very helpful for helping keep your kid on track without micromanaging/battling.

The hardest thing about a routine is building one-- once you've got it, it's smooth, so I think the key for us was to build our lessons from the routine we already have: straight from breakfast we go into a brief "recess" so I can clean up and the kids can get their wiggles out, and then we launch into math. Usually we're done well before lunch, even with 15 minute breaks between subjects, but that's because my oldest is still young. The incentive to finish before lunch is excursions or free time in the afternoon.

I homeschool my 10 yr old son. My teenage girls are in public school. We start our day at 8:30. I teach spelling/reading for an hour. My mom arrives at 9:30 and stays until 12:00. She teaches all other subjects. He has a 10 min. coffee break at around 10:30. Two days each week, he volunteers at a local food pantry for an hour.

One of my closest friends decided to home school her 3 kids starting last year. They are in grades 3,2 and K, or they would be if they were in school.

She runs a blog about it - and routine was a big question before she started homeschooling (she is a qualified educator and used to be the director of a pre-school).

He husband wanted her to put a schedule together and her response was this:

"What if my youngest doesn't wake up till 10am and we wan to have breakfast on the beach? How can you fix a routine around that?"

So I am not holding out a lot of faith in it working out for them this year and am hoping that routine does find its way into the equation at some point.

Here's what we generally do: learning time first, then snack, then active fun time, then lunch, then quiet reading time or finish learning time, then snack, then misc. and time to get ready for dinner/evening sports.

Learning time won't be as long as you think, and if you get it done first thing they will be fresh and you won't have to worry about it for the rest of the day.

Give yourself some time to figure out what works for you and your routine will probably evolve. Wasting time might not be a bad thing either depending on how you do it.

My child loves routine so we write the schedule on a whiteboard every day.

We are also considering homeschooling. Having a difficult situation in our independent school, for a range of reasons planning to keep children out of public school for 2 more years.

Biggest concern is routine. One of my children really needs routine, & I'm concerned we would get caught in a cycle of wasting time, not really having learning time. How do you manage the formalities?