I don’t care how long I’ve been at this–every school year I get starry-eyed and ridiculously optimistic about how much we’ll be able to do in our homeschool. I am always convinced that this year is going to be The Best and Easiest Year Ever. I am inspired. I am nostalgic. I am overbuying curriculum like nobody’s business.
Just last week I posted our curriculum picks for the year, and already we are throwing things overboard. (If you want to know, we chucked the language arts curricula and are sticking with copywork, read-alouds, and Fix-it Grammar.)
When I feel overwhelmed–and I frequently do–I go back to a framework that has served us well year over year: The Minimum Viable School Day. Here’s the concept:
Our tendency as homeschool moms is to plan big and then start scaling back when reality hits.
The trick of homeschool planning is that rather than making a big plan that we can’t sustain, we make a small one that we can easily scale up on days or weeks when it really works.
First, here’s what the Minimum Viable Day approach does:
- It helps you define your priorities
- It gives you a scalable base
- It helps you stay sustainable
- It helps you keep your bases covered
- It gives you space to add on for days when you can do more
Just like having core subjects, you should have a core day. This allows for the ebbs and flows of real life–because no matter how well you plan, you’ll never escape the fact that homeschool is never insulated from your real, day-to-day life.
That’s what makes homeschooling hard, but that’s also what makes it awesome.
How do you create a Minimum Viable School Day? I do it with these two learning formats:
Morning Basket
- A gathering time for all ages to learn together. (Similar to “circle time!”)
- A time when topical subjects are covered (language arts, history, science, geography)
- A time when we read aloud from whole books
Table Time
- Separate, leveled activities
- Skill-building activities like math and language arts mechanics
- Any special activities from your family learning curriculum
Morning basket works best when you combine all ages at once. Many families use a family-centered approach that engages all ages with the topical subjects through unit studies or reading whole books. Our most-used resource for this has been The Peaceful Press guides.
Now, plug in the curriculum or subjects you want to cover into these formats. (I posted a framework for choosing your subjects here!)
Can you add on to your Minimum Viable School Day? Yes, you can! That’s what we design it to do. I go into how to scale it up in my course Whole Family Learning Rhythms, where I help you design your ideal homeschool day.
For many years, our Minimum Viable School Day was:
Morning Basket:
- Bible or devotional
- Read aloud from whole books for 30-60 minutes
Table Time:
- 15-20 minutes of math
- 15-20 minutes of a chosen writing activity (such as copywork, letter-writing, or journaling)
Simple, huh? Is that all we did? No! We tackled lots of other things, depending on what was happening that day or week. In our unschooling years the kids did all their own interest-led learning in addition to this MVSD.
(I take a deep dive into these learning formats in this post Our 2 Essential Learning Formats.)
Not every day looked exactly the same, but our Minimum Viable School Day was always there. It was always my fallback on days when I wanted to quit, and still is. Those were our priorities, and that is what we got done, no matter what.
This year is a little different, as we have a bigger spread of ages and aren’t using a family-centered curriculum. Still, we follow a very similar format.
Our Minimum Viable School Day this year:
Morning Basket
- Bible
- Read alouds (for my 5th and 7th grader)
- Picture books (for Levi)
Table Time
- Math
- Typing
- Language Arts (Grammar for my older two, phonics for Levi)
This is the base. We do more than this; for example, one afternoon a week we dive deeper into history, science, and language arts. This is when we make timeline cards, have long discussions, and record things in our school notebooks.
I really wanted math and Bible to be big priorities this year, so we are drilling down on those in our minimum viable day. I have different priorities in different years, and it’s really effective to create focus by prioritizing a couple of subjects.
I hope this helps you simplify and feel less overwhelmed in your homeschool. If you want help setting priorities or taking a deep dive into creating your ideal homeschool day, check out my course Whole Family Learning Rhythms! We cover how to set up a day with learners of multiple ages.
If you’re not sure what subjects you should cover, check out My Simple Homeschool Planning Schema.
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Credit to the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries for giving me the term Minimum Viable Product–I thought it was a great concept and adapted it to homeschooling!
