The morning can swallow your time if you don't have a morning ritual in place especially when you’re homeschooling.

You wake up and do a few things like have a cup of coffee and read a book. You’re savoring your quiet time because you know your children will wake soon, and it'll be about 16 hours before you'll be off duty again.

Slowly, one child emerges, and then another, and then another. As they emerge, you spend some time with each child as the morning blooms.

You go into the kitchen to make breakfast. By now everyone is hungry and grumpy. You get through breakfast, and then it's time to clean up.

You look at the clock and panic. It's 11 a.m., and you haven't started teaching a single subject yet!

Sound familiar? (I know, it’s happened to me too!)

THE MORNING RITUAL

This is how your morning will go if you don't set a morning ritual in place. And when you’re homeschooling, you must have a morning ritual if you want to reach your year-end goals.

You also need a morning ritual in place so you don’t end up overwhelmed and exhausted as it will help you pace yourself.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR MORNING

To implement your morning ritual, you’ll need to decide what will get done, at what time, and you need to stay razor focused employing at all time a good dose of discipline.

Decide first what time you will wake up (which also means you need to decide what time you’ll go to sleep!). If you need downtime in the morning, and I strongly recommend this, then make sure you wake up at least an hour early. Two hours would be even better.

Get yourself dressed before your children wake up. Have a cup of coffee. Spend your time doing something that matters to you like reading, exercise, prayer, and meditation. Whatever it is, pencil it in and make sure you have enough time in the morning to do it.

Whatever you pencil in, beginning with what time you wake up, will become your morning ritual.

THE OFFSPRING RITUAL

You want to follow your morning ritual with what I call the Offspring Ritual.

Teach your children to get into the habit of getting up at a certain hour each day and performing their own morning ritual. Your children wake up, brush their teeth, get dressed, put their dirty clothes in the hamper, make their beds, and come in for breakfast by a certain time.

That time is when you call them, but it's good to call them around the same time every day. Eating on a schedule is much easier on the body than random meal times, and having a specific time to eat should be a part of your morning ritual.

So while they're getting dressed, you're preparing breakfast.

After breakfast, the children clean up while you get ready to homeschool.

THE HOMESCHOOLING RITUAL

On some days you might go out for an outing, so the school routine is obviously for the days when you stay home and teach your children.

Do you have a designated school room? It's better if you do, but not everyone has an extra room to spare, especially if you're living in a place where the real estate prices are high.

If you don’t have a spare school room, as I didn’t, then you want to designate an area in your home for school things, and there they live.

It doesn't mean children can't read a book while outside sitting on the grass or do a science experiment in the kitchen, but having a place to put things at the end of the day will help keep everyone organized.

If you do have a school room, you should head straight there and examine your plan for the day. Your homeschool plan should have already been mapped out and reviewed the night before.

Get your mind in gear for teaching, and ring your school bell.

WHAT TO TEACH FIRST

A general rule is to teach your most essential subjects first, the ones that if there were an interruption to your day, you could still relax knowing you'd gotten those finished.

Language arts and math for the morning hours work well.

Give your children breaks every hour to get up and stretch or run around the block or jump on a trampoline. It's not easy for children to sit still for too long, and it's better for their thinking power to get a good dose of oxygen into their brains.

You want to schedule a long lunchtime break when they can eat and then go outside and play for a while.

Let the morning hours be the more intense hours of study, and in the afternoon you can take it easy. Read some history, do a science experiment, read a story out loud.

Let the children have some reading time to read books of their own choice. Let them pursue their hobbies: practice an instrument, do some artwork, or play a sport.

The point is to keep a schedule that you adhere to or the day will slip right past you. If you don’t keep to a schedule, too many times you’ll find that the afternoon has rolled around, and you’ll have barely made it past grammar.

If you're a homeschooler, I'm sure you know what I mean. Create a morning ritual—yours and theirs—and then create a homeschool ritual and stick to it.

Try to finish homeschooling around the same time each day, so everyone has leisure time before dinner including, and most importantly, yourself!

Now, life does not always go as planned, so we have to allow room for the days when things seem a bit topsy-turvy. This is life; it’ll happen.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Instead, figure out where the breakdown was and start again the next day with the intention to do better.

You will.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.