Despite the limited curriculum requirements of a kindergartner, developing a reasonable homeschool schedule is more difficult than it seems. Kindergarten aged children generally have much shorter attention spans so any scheduling you do will need to be flexible.

First, if you're starting off building your schedule with workbooks, take the workbooks' page count and divide them by 40 weeks. This gives you an estimate of how many pages need to be completed per week in each workbook in order to complete them by the end of the year. You can easily purchase a variety of comprehensive workbooks from Amazon that will be more than sufficient for them at this age. For instance, a comprehensive kindergarten workbook with 254 pages divided into 40 weeks will need about 6-7 pages completed each week. A 100 page reading workbook and writing sight words will work out to be 2-3 pages per week. You should always round up and shoot for more pages to give you more breathing room and flexibility throughout the year.

Start with scheduling the larger comprehensive kindergarten workbook. You don't want to just try to do it all in one or two days. Spread it through the week. For 7 pages a week I would try to do 3 pages each on Monday and Wednesday. That leaves us just 1 page for Friday or more if we need to catch up from pages missed earlier in the week. If you're on track for the week, Friday becomes a more relaxed day. Next, we have our reading workbook. We will shoot for 3 pages each Tuesday and Wednesday. Of course this leaves quite a bit of extra time during the week. Now that we've got our rough outline of the week done, lets plan our days.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lets start off in the morning with 2 pages. You can do more or less if it makes sense based on the workbook contents but always shoot for more to ensure you're on pace to complete it by the end of the year. After your 2 pages, take a short 15-30 minute break and maybe have a snack. When you start again, we recommend working with a free and fun learning app like Khan Academy Kids for another 15-30 minutes. Take a lunch break. When you come back after lunch you have just 1 page left and your academics for the day are pretty much done. A nice way to finish off the day is some coloring or art projects.

We still have our reading workbook to schedule though. For Tuesday and Thursday, we should start around the same time as the other days so we have a consistent schedule. Start off and do 1 page in the morning and then have a physical education class. The important thing here is to just get them moving and running around having fun. Go outside and run. Practice trying to dribble a basketball. Practice swimming. When you're done PE, take a lunch break. After lunch, finish the second page of your reading workbook. Like your other days of the week, finish off with something fun like art or music.

Remember to always keep your schedule flexible. Some days just won't work as you planned and you need to accept that and adapt accordingly. Also, as the year progresses you'll notice your schedule isn't working how you thought it would. Adjust it throughout the year to keep your child interested and motivated to learn. Often times when a child is having problems it could simply be a bad schedule. Try doing things at different times of day. Maybe mornings aren't the best time for reading for them. Maybe you're trying to do too much of one subject each day. Try spreading it out across more days so its less work per day for a topic they're struggling with. From the starting point we provide, you should be able to adapt and adjust your schedule to your own child to keep them interested and motivated.