Our homeschool routines don’t look anything like what you see on Instagram. You know the posts I mean: the morning basket, prepped the night before, with each subject laid out just so. The dedicated homeschool room with a desk for every kid. It looks beautiful, and if I’m being honest, it still gets to me sometimes: that little voice that says maybe I should be doing more.
Here’s the thing though: I’ve done the homeschool room. We had one when we first started, and I loved it. But our family grew, life got busier, and somewhere along the way we ended up homeschooling around our kitchen table instead. (If you want the full story of how our space has changed over the years, I wrote about that here.) And honestly? I don’t know that the room was better. It just meant I was tied to it, stuck in one spot with the kids until school was done. The table lets me prep dinner or get the dishes going while they work. In a season where sports and after-school activities eat into our dinnertime more than I’d like, that table has become something more than a workspace. It’s where we still gather.
So no, I don’t do morning baskets. My kids, preschool through 8th grade, have their curriculum kept in a cabinet, and it’s about as organized as a kid’s desk at school would be, because it’s theirs to manage. I’m not the one prepping it every night. Instead, I give them a list of what needs to get done that day, and they’re the ones figuring out where to start and what tools they need to get there.
I’ll be honest about why: I don’t think handing kids a fully prepped basket builds self-starters. They’re still kids, they still need direction, and this is still a guided process; I’m not just cutting them loose. But putting a little more of the “how” on them, instead of handing it over pre-solved, does two things. It takes the nightly-prep burden off me, since half the time we’re not even home at night. And it leaves room for them to take the day somewhere more interesting to them, instead of just checking boxes I set up.
If you’re wondering what our homeschool routines actually look like day to day, it’s simpler than people expect. We start most mornings around the table after breakfast, no bell, no set start time down to the minute. Each kid checks their list, grabs what they need from the cabinet, and gets to work while I’m still moving around the kitchen. Some days that means one kid finishes early and reads on the couch while another is still working through math. Some days we’re at the table for twenty minutes; other days it’s two hours, because life outside our house that day shapes the pace as much as anything on the list. That flexibility is the whole point. Our homeschool routines exist to serve our life, not the other way around.
If there’s one thing I want another homeschool mom to take from this, it’s that the complicated version isn’t the requirement. I think the more homeschool gets shown as this elaborate production, the more it scares people away from trying it at all. It doesn’t need a dedicated room. It doesn’t need a basket prepped every night. It needs to actually fit into your life, because if it doesn’t, it’s not sustainable, no matter how good it looks online.
If you’re heading into back-to-school season and want to simplify your setup instead of complicating it, I’ll share my list of homeschool resources and supplies. The key is to keep the cabinet stocked with items that drive creativity!
Here’s my homeschool supply list.
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