This week I’m writing about simple ways that you can add structure to your homeschooling life.

Look. I know that children — my children — thrive on structure, but as a hopelessly disorganized homeschooling mom, I struggle to give my kids that structure that they crave. It doesn’t come naturally to me.

If my kids went to school, routine would be imposed on our home from the outside in. For example, if my kids went to school, they’d need to be out the door by 8:30 am, and they’d need to eat their lunch at lunch time. They’d need to do their homework before dinner, and they’d need to be in bed by 9:00 at the absolute latest.

One of the joys of homeschooling, though, is that we can do things when and where we please. That makes me happy, but at the same time, that lack of structure can feel like chaos to kids who crave familiarity and security.

Ugh. I mentioned that this doesn’t come naturally to me, right?

Given that, I try to look for easy, doable ways that will infuse our lives with little bits of structure. And you know what I discovered? Creating a seven-day meal plan that we use over and over and over is one of the very most effective and beneficial ways that I can bless my whole family with predictability. Why?

• I waste less time trying to figure out what on earth I’m going to cook that’s going to please at least one of my children.
• I can spend money more wisely when I’m buying the same products more consistently.
• My husband can see what’s coming and plan secret trips out to McDonald’s accordingly. (Honestly, how does anyone not like quinoa???)
• The kids feel so much better when they know what’s coming ahead of time.

That last point is key.

Predictability

Meal times are really, really stressful for us sometimes, and even just knowing which three meals are scheduled for the day allows my kids to feel a bit more in control.

Back when River was preparing for her Celiac test, I made a seven-day breakfast and lunch menu that we repeated for six weeks. It was amazing. Normally meals in our home include a good dose of negotiation because no one ever wants what I’m making. Ever. Not even waffles from scratch with homemade whipped cream. But when I put a 7-day menu plan on the fridge, my kids were far more willing to eat the foods that were listed. I think that the reason was two-fold: they could see that their favourites were coming up soon, which made eating the lesser loved food more tolerable, and there were fewer surprises at the table, which meant fewer explosions.

I loved that breakfast/lunch schedule. Unfortunately, we abandoned it when River started her gluten-free diet again — it was too hard to come up with fourteen different wheat-free meal ideas, and it was too depressing to list scrambled eggs every other day.

I’m not a scrambled eggs fan.

We still eat a LOT of scrambled eggs.

It’s really time for me to do another list up. I generally like to do a solid four weeks at a time, but last year I did a meal plan to last all of 2017. 365 days. It was pretty great, when I used it. But then at some point in the year, we switched to a mostly vegetarian diet and all that meal planning went right out the window. Womp, womp.

Structure in a Meal Plan

On Monday’s introductory post, I mentioned that River went to a Waldorf school where they served the same exact food each day of the week. I looked it up and the schedule is as follows:

Sunday: Wheat
Monday: Rice
Tuesday: Barley
Wednesday: Millet
Thursday: Rye
Friday: Oats
Saturday: Corn

I know homeschooling Waldorf families that serve their kids a bowl of grains every day, following this schedule. That’s a pretty neat way to infuse the week with a sense of rhythm.

Of course, we can’t follow this list to the letter because of River’s gluten-free diet, but I do find it helpful nonetheless in my own planning. I’ve been trying to do more baking for her using a variety of grains. So Monday we might eat rice with dinner, and then Tuesday I could bake a loaf with almond flour. On Wednesday I can make a flat-bread using soaked brown rice and millet, and on Thursday I can just use our favourite store-bought blend that uses chickpea flour and a mix of starches. Friday is oatmeal in the Instant Pot, Saturday might be cornbread (okay, probably corn chips) and Sunday might be quinoa. I like how having a weekly grain schedule reminds me not to rely on one or two grains for all of our meals.

Want to keep it even simpler? Just do Taco Tuesdays or Friday Pizzas. Sunday Sundaes, even. Anything that creates a regular routine is helpful for kids that crave structure in their lives.

I’m planning to bring the structured weekly meal plans back this month now that I know enough meat-free meals to fill out a schedule. But between you and me, I’m probably going to ditch making breakfasts from scratch for a while. I’m absolutely burning out, cooking three meals from scratch every day for picky eats that are just as likely to reject everything that I make. I’m just going to write in Cheerios on the meal plan for every single morning, and as long as we don’t post photos of our breakfast on Instagram, I don’t think anyone will know. 😉

Find more ways to add structure to your homeschool days each day this week with my contribution to the iHomeschool Network’s 5 Day Hopscotch: Five Laid-Back Ways to Add Structure to your Homeschool Days

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Check out the rest of the iHN Hopscotch posts here…