004 || Stop Rebuilding Your Homeschool Every Sunday (Do THIS Instead)

If you spend an hour planning your homeschool every Sunday, that’s 30-36 hours a year rebuilding the same week over and over. This year Sarah spends about five minutes a week. In this episode she explains exactly how and why the Sunday rebuild keeps happening even after years of homeschooling.

You’ll hear Sarah walk through her own weekly rhythm in detail, how she handles curriculum with a built-in five-day schedule (and compresses it to four days), and how she uses a list-based approach like Ambleside Online without having to re-plan every week. Plus a puzzle analogy that makes the whole system finally click.

This episode builds on episodes one through three — start there if you’re new.

Links:

•        Free Starter Glue-Print

•        Daily Riches curriculum (free sample week included) 

•        Buds, Blooms + Bees science curriculum

•       Seashore Science curriculum

•        Morning Menus

•        Classy Artist Box (use code HomeschoolGlue for 20% off first subscription order)

•       Ambleside Online (free Charlotte Mason curriculum)

•        Simply Charlotte Mason

•        Episode about Quiet Time

•        Episode 001 — The Hidden Curriculum Running Your Homeschool

•        Episode 002 — You Are Not Bad at Homeschooling

•        Episode 003 — The Real Reason Your Homeschool Still Feels Chaotic

•        Follow on Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Every Sunday night, I used to sit at my kitchen table and feel like I was starting completely over from scratch. Like the week that just happened left absolutely no trace of a plan for the week ahead. And I'd sit there wondering, okay, what are we actually going to do tomorrow? Today we're going to help fix that and create a system so that you don't have to be wondering what you're doing every Sunday night and you have a plan for the whole week and for the whole year. Glue. It's messy, it's sticky, it gets everywhere. But without it, nothing holds. Homeschool life can feel messy too. We have the loud days, the mental overload, so many moving parts. But we don't need is more curriculum or more pressure to do it all. We need something that holds. Simple systems, steady rhythms, the kind of structure that makes homeschooling easier instead of heavier. Hi, I'm Sarah, a homeschool mom of four, and this is the Homeschool Glue Podcast. Each week we have an honest conversation about real homeschool life and the simple systems that help overwhelmed homeschool moms clear the mental clutter, build rhythms that actually stick and create the peaceful lives we are all craving. If you're tired of carrying everything and getting nowhere, you are in the right place. Grab that load of laundry and let's get started. Welcome back to the Homeschool Glue Podcast. If you're new here, I am so glad you found me. We have been building something over the last few episodes, and today we're getting really practical. If you haven't listened to episode one, two, or three yet, I'd encourage you to go back and start there because they really lay the foundation for everything we're going to be talking about, not only in this episode, but moving forward. And I just think they're really great foundational episodes about homeschooling and just really important things to think about, especially when it comes to overwhelm and what's really running your homeschool. Today we're talking about something I think a lot of homeschool moms experience and very few people actually name. And that is what I'm going to call the Sunday rebuild. It's that thing where every single week you find yourself essentially recreating your homeschool from scratch, or even if you have certain pieces, you find yourself once a week going through and doing like an hour or two of planning for your upcoming week. And if you add that up over a whole school year, whether you do a 30-week school year or a 36-week school year, that adds up. Like if it's only one hour a week, that's 30 to 36 hours in a year. Whereas this past school year, I probably plan about five minutes a week. Um, so you do the math of what that would be, but and then once a month, um, which I won't talk a whole lot about in this episode, but in upcoming ones I will. But once a month I do a little bit more, not really than planning, but just like going through and getting supplies ready and stuff like that. But as far as planning out my homeschool week, usually it's about five minutes. If it's a really weird week where we have like a lot of stuff that popped up, then it may be a little bit longer, but five, 10, 15 minutes maximum is all I'm spending on planning on a weekly basis. So you may on a weekly basis be asking yourself, what are we doing this week? What did we miss last week? What subjects are we behind on? How are we gonna fit all these subjects in this week? This is what we have going on. What should I prioritize? How will we fit this in? When am I gonna fit this book in? When am I gonna fit this lesson in? And if you're doing that every single week, for me at least, and I think for a lot of us, it's actually really exhausting to have to rethink that through every single week, especially because that's not the only thing you're thinking about every week. You're thinking about, okay, laundry and meal planning and extracurriculars, and maybe your child's sick or has special needs, or you have a little one and you're constantly thinking about, okay, we got to change the clothes and we got to do this for them, and that's been bothering them. And I got to make sure I talk to the doctor about that medication and this, that, and the other thing. And then maybe you have other commitments, like it just keeps adding on. And so, if we can take some of the stress of the thought power that comes along with deciding things, because last week we talked about decision overwhelm and how having to make a ton of decisions is extremely taxing on our brains. And so if we can streamline our homeschool and make it really easy and spend like a couple hours up front and save ourselves like 30 hours, you know, in the future, it is totally worth it. And it's not only saving you time, it's saving you brain power, which is so helpful and honestly crucial to have that what I called hidden curriculum in the first episode, to have that extra layer of peace in your homeschool because mom's not trying to rebuild homeschool every single week. And so it's not exhausting because you're doing something wrong, and it's not wrong to plan your homeschool every week. And some people really enjoy it. If you really enjoy it, great. Um, maybe just skip this episode. But even if you do enjoy it, it's still a lot of decisions to have to make. So if we can even streamline some of our homeschool, uh, we will be better off and our kids will be better off for it. So you were really never meant to plan every single week from scratch. That is why there are so many open and go curricula out there, because trying to plan that out every single week is exhausting. So exhausting that somebody else did it for you and is getting paid to sell it to you because it's a lot of work. Um, and it's it's just, I don't think it's very sustainable long term, especially as you add in more kids if you have multiple kids, um, as your kids get older, as they're more involved in things, as you're adding on things like credits and college prep or prepping for them, moving out of the house, or graduation parties, all those things, maybe even grandkids, you know, on top of that, or other commitments, aging parents, all of that. Like if we can set up our homeschool in a way that's pretty sustainable, it's so much more likely that we're gonna stick with it and be successful. So today we're gonna talk about why this is a problem and why it's, you know, why we keep doing this and what we can do instead. So, why does this keep happening? Why does Sunday keep feeling like starting from zero, maybe even after years of homeschooling? And I think it comes down to a few connected things. First of all, maybe you don't have a recurring rhythm installed. That would be one reason, and that's what we're talking about today. So when your week doesn't have any kind of repeating structure, when Monday doesn't automatically look like every other Monday for the most part, and you have to decide what Monday looks like every single week, that is exhausting. That is a lot of extra brain power. We talked in episode three, like I said, about decision fatigue and too many decisions. So if you're having to literally rethink almost every subject, that is so many decisions that you're kind of studying your whole week on. And Sunday is supposed to be, you know, the day of rest. And I know a lot of us try to do that. And so if we're adding all these extra decisions, that's not very restful. You might feel more restful after because you're like, oh, I feel so much better going into the week knowing what I'm doing. But what if you could go into the whole year knowing what you're doing every Monday or what you're doing every Wednesday? And yes, things are gonna pop up. I'll talk about that too. But in general, you know what your weeks will look like, what each day will look like. And even to the point where after a few weeks into homeschooling, your kids could set up the homeschool table because they know what books they're reading that day. Um, and you may not even need to look at your planner. That's kind of where we've gotten to the to at this point. Like my kids could say it's Thursday. I know exactly what we're reading today because it's what we do every Thursday. Um, and so it's just so helpful. Another reason why this might keep happening is your subjects may not have a home. So most homeschool moms have core subjects that are pretty locked in. Maybe you have math locked in or phonics. Maybe you even use an open and go curricula for those. So you just turn to the next page, or um you do certain lessons that it tells you to do on certain days, and that may be really helpful, as I'm sure you have seen. So that's great. But maybe there are lots of other subjects like um composer study, picture study, uh handicraft, nature journaling, foreign language, Swedish drill. Like you may not even include all these, but I'm just thinking of like the Charlotte Mason um uh subjects, you know, Plutarch, uh science experiments, art, like all of those extra things that like you really want to get to, but maybe they aren't anchored down to any day. And so either they're really stressing you out, or you're just not getting to them, or you're getting to them sometimes, but not as often as you would like. So because they don't have a home, they don't have anything they're rooted to, they're often the first things that get pushed, skipped, or eventually forgotten. And then Sunday comes around and you're looking at your list, thinking, okay, when are we gonna do this? And you're feeling guilty for not fitting it in. And then you're like, okay, I'll keep putting it on this day, but I know I'm not actually gonna get to it, but I'm gonna pretend that I'm gonna get to it and just write it down. Um, and that added guilt too makes us feel like we're not good enough. And so if we can create a rhythm that incorporates those things and we can stick to it and have success, or just decide altogether, that's the subjects we're not subject we're not gonna do right now, and I'll revisit in a few months, you don't have that added guilt. Another reason this problem could happen is because you're sourcing content week by week. Now, I'm not saying don't create your own curricula. I'm not saying, you know, if you love like making your own unit studies or creating things for your kids, I am not saying don't do that. I'm just saying that if you're doing that like on a week-to-week basis, that can be adding a lot of stress, especially if life comes up and then all of a sudden you're like a week behind and you're like, oh no, my dad's in the hospital, but I really need to get this unit done and you're rushing to do that. That is so stressful. So if you are, you know, creating your own content. I mean, I do for my homeschool and I also sell it, but I try to get it all done in advance and then use it later. Or I would try to batch quite a few weeks at a time so that it's all streamlined. And then as you get closer to when that's going to end, then you would make a whole bunch more so that you're not having to do this every week because it is so easy as a homeschool mom to have life happen and get behind. And so that could be another reason why this is happening. Um, and then, like I said, nothing is installed long term. So the biggest reason that the Sunday rebuild keeps happening is that the homeschool is set up as a weekly project, not a repeating system. Um, this is, and I'm gonna talk about this in all, you know, areas of motherhood. But if I, you know, at this point in my life, if I had to go back to figuring out our meal plan from scratch every week, having nothing repeated, no anchors, like no plan at all for any meal every week, and I had no laundry system and I had no time block for my day. Like if it was all literally a blank slate, I would be in the fetal position crying because that is so much on a mom to have to figure out all the time. And so if that's you and you don't have any system for any of those, great news. I have a lot of content coming your way to help you with that. Um, but hopefully you have a couple systems of some sort, even if it's just the way our day runs, or I have kind of a system for laundry, or I have a system for cleaning to some degree. And I don't mean system like a 10-part step-by-step, like you're always perfect at it system. That is not what I mean when I say system. I mean just like a plan that is recurring that you can come back to. Even if you miss a day of something, like if I miss a day of laundry, it's gonna repeat and I'll get to it. But in general, I have a system. Um, so if you don't have anything installed in your homeschool long term, you're gonna be planning your homeschool on a weekly basis. And that is very exhausting. So we want to create a shift. We want to build a recurring weekly rhythm. So, what do we do instead? And I want to keep this very high level today because um it may be very stressful to if I get into all the details right now. Um, I more just want to share why this is important and just an overview of it. And I will share a resource later on in this episode that will really help you actually sit down and do this if that's what you're wanting, because you're gonna have to carve out some time. This is not like a super quick thing to do, but it will save you so much time and sanity in the long run, I promise. Um, I've been doing this for a few years now, and it is truly like such a sanity saver. Um, so I'm gonna keep this very high level. The goal is just to shift how you're thinking about your week. If you're not doing it the way I'm going to propose, maybe just get you to think a little bit differently. So instead of planning from scratch, or even I don't even want to say from scratch, because you may be using some curricula that are built in. Or for example, like Ambleside Online. I use, I'm pseudo-doing Ambleside Online. I'm not doing everything. I'm doing a mixture of simply Charlotte Mason, um, Ambleside Online, my own homeschool glue resources. Um, and so I'm doing like my own hybrid. But uh Ambleside Online is a great example of some structure, but still a lot missing that mom has to figure out or dad or whoever. Um, and so it gives you, if you're not familiar, Ambleside Online gives you um it's a free resource for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. It's amazing. Um I've you know I've done conferences now with two with Kieran Glass and Donna Jean Breckenridge. So I love them and I'm so thankful that's out there. But it does still leave a lot to the mom because it's free. Like they shouldn't have planned it all out. And I mean, their main goal was to give you the blueprint and then you can make it your own and and take what take from it what you want. So how they have it set up is they give you all the readings. Like, um, for example, let's say you're reading trial and triumph in year whatever. I'm not following it for the right years, so I don't know exactly. But let's say it's year three and you're reading trial and triumph. They'll tell you, you know, some weeks you won't have that reading and then some weeks you will. And they'll just tell you like week five, read this chapter. And they'll do that for all the books. Like they might give you half a chapter or a chapter, a couple chapters as they get older of certain books to read every single week. They don't tell you what days, they don't tell you how to split the readings if they're very long. It's literally just a column for the week and you are given what readings to read. And so that is so lovely and helpful and it's free. So it's amazing. I'm not knocking it all, I'm just using it as an example of how if you're following that and every week you're just looking at the schedule saying these are all our readings, that still leaves so much for you to figure out. And so um instead of planning from scratch or some kind of um, I will say incomplete structure because you might have like the scaffolding, but they haven't built all the walls yet, you know, um, that's left for you to do. If you're starting every week from some kind of uh not completely finished system, um, you are building a weekly template every week. And we want to take that and now create a template for every week that you can repeat and you can move things around and shift things around as needed, but in general, it's the same framework. Um, and so you'll have the same basic structure every week. The subjects will be assigned to specific days, you'll have a rhythm. There are, you know, especially in the Charlotte Mason world, there are people who do like the timetable and they lay it out by time. I do not do that just because I have a toddler, I have a five-year-old who interrupts. Like, I think if that's how you want to do it, go for it. Like if it works for your family, I am not saying do it my way because it's the only way. I'm just trying to help overwhelmed homeschool moms who aren't doing it anywhere near the way I'm doing it and want help. And so if you're doing something and it's working great for you, keep doing that. But I am way more of the we have a rhythm, it takes as long as it takes. If it's taking too long, we'll cut and go to move it somewhere else. But I'm only moving one thing. I'm not moving my whole week every single week. And so it it creates so much flexibility and freedom where some people, you know, I've been criticized in the past of like having everything planned out, but honestly, that creates freedom because when I'm sick, I only have to move certain things around. I don't have to completely rebuild the week because I'm only, you know, behind a few things I can easily shift. Um, or if an appointment comes up, I'm only moving that day's tasks around. I'm not rebuilding the whole week. And so I find it creates so much freedom and way less brain power in the long run. So let me give you a real example of what this could look like because I think it really helps to see it in practice rather than just hear it in theory. So, in my homeschool, and I'm gonna try to explain this, it can be kind of confusing without having any visual aid, but um, the way I homeschool, and I've been doing this particular system the way I do it for a few years now. So it works for our family. It may not be what works for you. You know, some families have co-op, some don't. Some have, you know, work full-time, some don't. So it's just this is what works for our family. I have a husband who now that he got a new job, has a little bit more consistent schedule, but it still changes somewhat from week to week. Um, and he's not home at all for homeschool right now. So uh anyway, so for me running a business, uh, which, you know, this podcast is part of that, uh, I have to have time to do that. And so I do that at 4 a.m. I do that during our quiet time, which I'm sure I'll do an episode on eventually. And I think I have one from before I relaunch my podcast that you can go listen to if you're interested. I'll leave that in the show notes so you guys can find it. But um, and then I have one full work day where my kids go to my parents' house, and that's usually on Tuesdays. So from like 9 a.m. to three or four, I am able to work. And so that has to be built into our day. We don't have a full homeschool day that day. We also have co-op, uh like a local Charlotte Mason co-op that meets roughly about every other Friday. And so some Fridays we can homeschool fully if we wanted to. We don't want to, but if we wanted to, we could. Um, and some Fridays we just can't because we're at we're at co-op. But honestly, that's like a full homeschool day because co-op is like hardcore school, I would say, for our family anyway, uh, for like three to four hours. And so we aren't doing our homeschool, full homeschool day on Fridays. So that leaves Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, three full days of homeschool where we're doing the full load. And then I do like a four-day homeschool week, but I split mine over five days. So we have three homeschool days that are full, like normal homeschool days where we do all the subjects on those days. And then I take one, our fourth day, and I split it in half. And so on Tuesdays before we go to the kids go to my parents' house, we will do our family subjects together: history, geography, science, that kind of thing, Bible, um, and my daily riches, which I'll talk about later. But just uh like an hour, hour and a half of homeschool those days doing our family subjects. And then the other half is on Friday, we will fit in math and phonics most Fridays. Sometimes on co-op Fridays, they don't happen, and that's okay because they work really hard on those days. But on the Fridays when we don't have co-op, we still do math and phonics or grammar and as are like our individual subjects. And then obviously there's like reading, you know, free reading and stuff like that. I'm not gonna get into, but in general, that's our schedule. Um, the like the overview is we do five days, or sorry, four days over five days. Okay, so I'm just gonna kind of walk you through how I do this in general. I'm not gonna get into every single subject, but I just want to give you guys an overview of how I do this. So, first of all, and I did this in the summer leading up to the school year. So if it's the end of the school year when you're listening to this, when I'm recording this, you don't have to do this right now, or you could just implement a little bit of it. Um, or you could just save this, re-listen to it in the summer, and do this for your upcoming school year if you want to do it that way. So, what I start start by doing is figuring out what's going to happen every single day, because that is just easy to figure out and plan for. So, for us, that's handwriting of some sort. For us, it's a mixture of copywork and actual like handwriting books. So, my daily riches curriculum includes copy work for poetry and Bible scripture verses. And so on Monday and Wednesday, we just do that. And then on Tuesday and Thursday, they do a page out of their handwriting book. So that's really easy. We do morning menus every day. That's in my shop as well. So we're practicing the calendar, weather, and then there are certain pages for each kid that I switch out to have them practice spelling or time or shapes and colors and things like that for my littler ones and letter sounds and stuff like that, writing their name, their address, that kind of thing, phone number. Then I use simply Charlotte Mason. We're doing the Genesis through Deuteronomy, they're changing their whole um how they're doing that. For the upcoming, you know, school year, but that's what we are using this year. And so that's actually a five-day uh curriculum. And so I had to sit down and really look at it, look at the readings, look at how long each would take, and combine two subjects uh or two days worth of material into one day. I could have also split one day over a few days, but just with the way it worked, we decided to do there's three days of Bible in there. So we do Bible Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And then there's geography and history. And so we add uh their fourth day, which is geography, we add that on to Wednesday. So we do Bible plus geography, which includes Bible or uh map work and um usually a chapter of a book. And then we usually have like a deeper history reading on Thursday. And so we've taken five days worth and I've put it over four days. So we're still doing that curriculum every day, but I had to kind of modify it because it's supposed to be done over five days, and we're doing it over four days. My Daily Riches curriculum that I created actually used this system to make the riches accessible because I was finding I wasn't fitting them in because of this very reason. And I thought if I'm gonna do all the work to uh research everything and separate it out over days, I'm going to make it look pretty and make it super easy for people to use and make it a curriculum. And so we use that Monday through Thursday, and we literally just follow what it says. We do um on Mondays we do poetry and copy work and um I'm blanking on it right now. Poetry. Oh, we sing our hymn, and then on Tuesdays we do picture study. Wednesdays we do a virtue reading and more copy work and um sing our folk song, blanking on it for a second, and then Thursdays we do composer study. There's also handicraft in there. We actually do handicraft at our co-op, so I'm not doing anything dedicated at home because I just have too much on my plate right now, but um, that's included in there as well as some written narrations, which go along with the artist study or picture study and composer study. And so we do that as well. It also includes Bible, but since we're doing simply Charlotte Mason this year, it has Bible tied to history, so we're just skipping that. But we did that last year where we just read what it said to read on Monday through Thursday. So that's already planned out for me. Um and it's just numbered one, two, three, four. So you don't even have to like stick to a certain day. You can just pick it up wherever you want. And then every day we also of the four days that I split, um, we do math and then we do phonics or grammar, depending on the age of my children. And so those are like the main things we do every day. So I figure that out first. And then for all the things that don't happen every day, I find a home for them and I kind of lay them all out. I spent a couple hours doing this where I'm like laying out the readings, looking at how long each chapter is, and I'm thinking about what's realistic, what seems pretty even, and what could I fit where. And so for us this year, just as an example, there are two books, in addition to like our history and geography books that we're reading with Simply Charlotte Mason. There are two books I pulled from Ambleside Online that I wanted to read with all of my kids, and that's Trial and Triumph and Parables from Nature. So we're not really following their schedule. Um, we're reading them in a much more compressed time frame than they have in their schedule. So we read Trial and Triumph on Monday, we read one chapter. And so on Mondays, I know just to get it out. Like I don't even have to look at the schedule, I just know. And then um, we were doing Parables from Nature, I believe, on Wednesdays, but those can get kind of long. So now I split it up over four days. So I just read a couple pages each day, and that gets us through one chapter every single week. For individual books, so I took the Ambleside Online, you know, list for each of my my third grader or sorry, my second grader and my fifth grader, and then I picked a few books that I really wanted them to read for things that we weren't really hitting through Simply Charlotte Mason or other subjects. So right now, and there are a couple extra that we've already finished, but I just took one book every uh for each of our three full homeschool days. So my each of my girls has one book that I'm mainly reading with them at this point. So on Monday, I just know to get out Understood Betsy for my second grader, and I know to get out age of fable for my fifth grader. On Wednesday, I kind of just made that an animal theme without even really realizing it. So my third grader reads um, I keep calling her third grader because she's gonna be a third grader and I'm planning it. My second grader grader reads uh the Burgess Animal Book every Wednesday, and my fifth grader reads Wild Animals I Have Known. And on Thursday, my second grader reads Seabird, and my fifth grader reads great inventors and their inventions. So I plan that out at the start of the year, so I don't have to figure it out every week. We literally do it on those days, and we have since September. Um, Tuesdays are when we do what we're doing, my homeschool glue, buds, blooms, and bees science this year. And that has a very adaptable schedule. Um, you can tell by my resources that I keep this in mind for moms because I know planning can be really hard, and so I try to make it as simple as possible. And so we fit that in on Tuesdays before they go to my parents' house. It's a great time to fit in science together. We do nature journaling typically on Thursdays. Um, and there are other subjects like uh art we do, which I kind of look at as different than handicraft because we're more learning art technique and um, you know, stuff like that. So not just technique, but the different elements of art. And so uh we use the classy artist box. I have a code for a discount, I'll leave in the in the uh show notes for you guys, but if you're interested, but that's a subscription box that comes every month. And so we try to fit that in on Fridays and we don't have co-op or any afternoon, I or every any afternoon that we're free or any morning when we kind of get done with school a little bit early. If like the readings were kind of short or my kids were just super on top of things or something, we'll pull that out. So that's our rhythm in a nutshell. There are things I didn't include, but I just wanted to kind of break it down, um, starting with the things you're gonna do every day and then really planning out when you're gonna do the things that don't happen every day, because that's really what I think most of us find ourselves replanning every week and then kind of throwing a lot of it to the wayside because it's stressful to have to plan all the time. So let's just talk practically about curricula that has its own schedule and how to fit that in. So this is something I get asked about a lot and I think it's worth addressing because most of us are working either with some kind of curriculum that's been built in, um, or with a built-in schedule, I mean, or uh has no schedule at all. And maybe it's just a list like Amblesite Online. And so I just want to talk practically about how to fit both of those into a weekly rhythm because I'm doing all of the above. Like I have some that are created for me, I have some that I created, and I have some where it's like a loose schedule, and I have some with a schedule that I have to adapt. And so uh here's how I handle them. If you're using a curriculum that comes with a schedule and it works for you, just plug that in. If it says Monday or day one, fit that in on Monday. Um, if you're able to, if you're able to ful go with the schedule, then go with the schedule. If you have to combine things, decide now how you're gonna do it. Because most curricula have kind of a rhythm built in themselves. They've kind of done this system for their curriculum. And so take simply Charlotte Mason, for example. It is the same rubric, the same, you know, structure every single week. Bible on day one, day two, day three. You've got geography on day four, and you've got history on day five. Um, and so I just took that and looked at the readings and said, okay, what two days could I combine? And so that's what I did. I said, we'll do Bible and geography on Wednesdays. Wednesdays will be a little bit longer. But then I put nature journaling on Thursdays to kind of balance it out. I didn't try to put everything on Wednesday because Wednesday was going to be a little heavier. And so I really think about that. Um for something like, you know, my buds, blooms, and bees or my seashore science, where I give you two different um schedules, or you can make your own. Um, so there's a two-day-a-week schedule, there's a one-day-a-week schedule. But there's also flexibility in that where we don't always do all of the experiments or activities when we're doing science. We might save that if it's gonna take a long time for an afternoon or a weekend. Um, so you can kind of plan that out and and kind of cut up your curriculum and not actually cut it up, but in your mind, cut it up and say, okay, this is gonna fit here and this is gonna fit here. You don't have to follow everything um exactly as laid out. You can map it out how it works best for your family. Um, so that's how I do it with something that has a predefined schedule. I just assign that schedule to certain days. If you're doing something like Amble Side Online, where maybe it has a start of a structure, but then you have to like actually figure out when you're doing each thing. Um, I would do like I do, where you just assign those things to a day. So I assign certain books to days. And so I literally every night of the night of a school night, like a Sunday night or a Wednesday night, I set up our homeschool table after supper. Like I clean up the table or we clean up the tables family, and then I set out everything. And I don't even have to look at my planner because I know, okay, tomorrow's Thursday. I need seabird, I need this, I need that. I know exactly what I need because I've been doing this plan for so long. And so it just is really nice if you can assign it by date. Now, if you have long readings, you might want to break that up and say half a reading on this day and half a reading on this day. Um, or like we did with uh Parables from Nature, I just read a few pages every day because uh it is very long and it's kind of a hard book for my kids. And so that's giving them enough. Um and like I said, you don't need to plan this out like hour by hour, minute by minute. I don't plan that at all. I just assign subjects to days, and we can probably get into if you guys want to, uh, more structure if you're wanting, but I think this is plenty for most of us, and that way uh you can kind of take the day as it comes, and that way you have flexibility. And okay, my toddler's really cranky today. We're gonna move the readings to nap time, or he is in a good mood. We are gonna do all the readings right now and save math for a little bit later when they can do a little bit of uh of it on their own. It gives you lots of flexibility and you don't have to feel like, oh my gosh, I planned every minute and I can't stick to that because I think that's pretty unrealistic uh with little kids and just kids in general and a home and all the things that come along with it. Um, and so hopefully that's helpful. Um, I just wanted to share a little bit about Daily Riches here because I know a lot of moms are in the same boat that I was a couple years ago, where you're like, I want to fit in picture study. I want to learn about Monet and Da Vinci and uh, you know, Rembrandt and all of those. And I want to do composer study with my kids, and I want to do copy work and I want to do handicraft and I want a good system for Bible, and it would be so nice if it was just like done for me so that I don't have to think about it and we're not reading as much poetry as I'd like. Um, I literally was that mom, and I was like, what could I do to make this easier? Because this is stressful. Not only is it like even if somebody gives you the plan of like these are all the artists and these are the paintings, uh, you still have to do the research. You still have to figure out which ones you're doing on which days, uh, you know, that kind of thing. And that is when you add up picture study, composer study, uh poetry, I added in virtue readings and Bible, handicraft, like when you're adding all those, that takes so much time. Take it from somebody who knows, because I've now created three volumes. And then uh if you wanted copy work that matches those, so you're copying down things that are actually quality, like Bible verses and poetry. It's a lot of work. And so I decided I'm gonna do the work and I'm gonna make it beautiful and I'm gonna put it together so any mom could just buy it, print it out, or get it printed, and put it in front of her kids and just open it and go. It has QR codes, so you don't even have to think about that. You just pull up the videos for um any of the video read alouds because I also found picture books that fit with all of the things. There's biographies, short biographies for the artists, the poets, and the composers. There's little bits of like little paragraphs about the the art for the week and the musical piece for the week, there's virtue readings, so you're reading lots of like folk tales and things like that that teach great lessons for your kids. There's Bible. Um, it's all there. And so if that is something like you've been listening to this episode and you're like, man, she keeps talking about picture study, and I feel guilty because we're not doing that, but it's just too overwhelming. Um, definitely check it out. I have three volumes made now, and I have a whole resource that will walk you through where to start. Um, if you just start with volume one or volume three or volume two. Um, and you can try out a week for free of all three. It's all included. So I'll put that link in the show notes if that's something you guys are interested in. Um, but I just wanted to give a little shout out to that because that has been our absolute favorite part of homeschooling. Um, and we're going into year three now of using it and loving it. So I don't want to leave you with a big system to build. I don't want you to leave this episode like, oh my gosh, now I have to rebuild my whole week. First of all, if you're listening to this when I'm recording it in April, now may not be the time. If you're close to ending the school year, you know, just finish it out. Maybe take a couple books and assign them today's, but you don't need to reinvent the wheel. But just kind of table it and think, okay, that's a goal for the next school year. And I have really great news. I'm just gonna put this out there. I have something really big coming up that could really help you with this. I'm not sharing all the details yet, but just keep listening to the podcast. Make sure you're following me on Instagram at homeschoolglue because you'll be uh learning about it very soon. But I will be uh, I'm coming up with something right now. I'm working on something that will walk you through this. So if you want extra help, definitely stay tuned. But either way, just table this until the summer and set aside an afternoon where you don't have your kids hanging on you. Maybe go to a coffee shop or lock your door and have your husband watch them or send them to a friend's or whatever and get all your homeschool stuff and lay it out around you on your bed or your desk or your table or on the floor and really sit down and figure out where could all these puzzle pieces fit. That's kind of how I look at it. Each one's a puzzle piece. Some are bigger, some have five puzzle pieces because they have five days worth of work, some just have one, some are just a little, little tiny piece, some are a corner piece where it like fits with other things. And so you can sit down and kind of map out your puzzle and create the puzzle of your homeschool and how it all fits together. And the great thing is it's not like an actual puzzle because you can move the pieces around and they'll still fit. Um, I just came up with this puzzle analogy on the fly, but uh hopefully you can picture what I'm saying that uh it's a it's a fluid puzzle. Some pieces fit in other places and you can rearrange it as needed. So um, yes, hopefully that's not confusing. But when you get to this uh time, just go for it. Go all in. I have a whole guide uh that I'll share in a second that will help you as well. So if you're wanting to do this now though, um just pick one subject to start. Maybe pick, maybe you have your everyday subjects figured out and you do them every day and you don't need help with that. Great. So if you're kind of like, okay, but there's all these other subjects that I'm having trouble fitting in, just pick one and assign it to Monday. And then in a week, add another one to a different day and just keep doing that until you know you have a rhythm installed and you can try it out and then shift it. Uh, you don't have to have anything set in stone. You can move things around, but it's really nice to just move one or two things around and not every single part of your homeschool every single week. So before I let you go, if today's episode resonated with you and you're ready to start building a simple weekly rhythm, or you're like, okay, I kind of like what she's talking about. I need some more systems and rhythms in my life, but I don't even know where to start. I am so excited that you're thinking that because I have created what I am calling the starter glueprint. And it is a PDF that's very detailed that I'm giving away for free because I am very committed to helping overwhelm homeschool moms find systems that stick. And so it walks you through what I would uh start doing if I didn't have any systems or any rhythms in my homeschool or my home. It walks you through the foundational systems that I would put in place first if I were starting from scratch. So it includes a brain dump to clear out the mental clutter, a weekly rhythm template so that you can see mine and actually map yours out. Like I have an actual thing you print out and you can map out your week there. It's very handy. And some other tools that are amazing. Um, and I'm not gonna get into them here, but if you're interested, you can check it out. Just go to homeschoolglue.com slash start, homeschoolglue.com slash s t- and it'll show you uh how to download that. But I hope that blesses you and I truly do hope this episode inspired you and gave you some practical things to think about when it comes to the mental load and uh reducing that mental load by not having to reinvent your week every single Sunday. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you next Tuesday. Happy homeschooling. I pray this episode blessed you and gave you something useful that will make homeschooling easier or more fulfilling. If this episode made you feel seen or gave you one thing to change this week, would you please share it and leave a review? That's how more homeschool moms who are struggling with overwhelm can find something that actually helps. You can always find me on Instagram at homeschoolglue where we talk simple systems, rich learning, and the real version of homeschool life. You don't need to do it all, you just need systems that stick. I'll see you next week. Happy homeschooling.