I recently read a homeschooling book (The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart) that said that you should focus on routines instead of schedule.

What’s the difference between a routine and a schedule? It’s time for some definitions from Google:

A routine is “a sequence of actions regularly followed”

A schedule is “a plan for carrying out a process or procedure, giving lists of intended events and times.”

This is incredibly helpful for homeschooling, because sometimes we have days off. We can’t really meet deadlines and sometimes we end up doing things before deadlines. When the kids wanted to work on their handwriting books and finish them that day, I let them. There are days we spend reading all the time. And then we drop back into our routine (journals, workbooks, etc.).

Sometimes putting dates on everything makes life a little bit too stressful, especially when those dates and schedules are our own expectations in the first place.

I think there are times for schedules. I’ve made schedules to finish books and classes. But sometimes we put expectations on ourselves that we just don’t need and we forget why we are doing things in favor of keeping our schedule.

Schedules are helpful, but they are a means to an end, not the end itself. If schedules become more important than people, than that’s a problems.

Routines can be helpful too, and at times they can be more helpful than schedules because they are in place when they need to be, and then when life happens, they can be put aside while we deal with things.

And when you are behind schedule, since you can’t change the past, then your schedule has simply changed.