Plotting Your Charlotte Mason Daily Schedule

If you are in the process of creating your own Charlotte Mason curriculum and schedule, you may be wondering just how closely you’re adhering to her principles. 

Let’s take a look at what she says about a typical school day: 

In practice, however, we find that the use of books makes for short hours. No book-work or writing, no preparation or report, is done in the Parents’ Review School, except between the hours of 9 and 11.30 for the lowest class, to 9 and 1 for the highest, with half an hour’s interval for drill, etc. (Vol 3 Page 240). 

How is that possible? The Charlotte Mason method emphasizes reading a lot of books, but how is it that in her schools, all the readings are done “between the hours of 9 and 11:30” for younger kids, and between “9 and 1” for older kids? 

Factors at play in a Charlotte Mason daily schedule: 

Here are some things to consider when plotting your daily schedule for a Charlotte Mason homeschool:  

1. The habit of attention contributes to short lessons 

The answer lies in the power of the habit of attention. Do you remember that in the CM method, we are supposed to read through lessons once, and only once? From a young age, when we’re reading aloud to our children, we train them to pay attention by letting them know we will not be repeating anything they miss hearing. From that time on, they learn that they need to give their full attention. 

As our children grow, we cultivate this same habit of attention by requiring only a single reading, followed by narration. That means that we are able to go through so much more material, because our children are able to listen well and do not require any repetition. 

2. CM students get most of their afternoons free

Another interesting thing that CM students have done in Miss Mason’s schools is that they are usually done by lunch time or a little after. Take a look at what she says: 

From one to two hours, according to age and class, are given in the afternoons to handicrafts, field-work, drawing, etc.; and the evenings are absolutely free, so that the children have leisure for hobbies, family reading, and the like. We are able to get through a greater variety of subjects, and through more work in each subject, in a shorter time than is usually allowed, because children taught in this way get the habit of close attention and are carried on by steady interest. (Vol 3 Page 240) 

Now, that’s not to say that you can’t do school on other times of the day. I know a family whose dad works at the airport and usually comes home late at night, so the whole family’s body clock has adjusted to spend time with him. The kids wake up late in the morning, do their chores, and then start school at lunchtime. 

Perhaps the more important thing to consider here is the principle: instead of packing our children’s days full of “lessons” from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, we need to be aware that part of the CM education is their being able to have free time for more leisurely activities. 

What are the Charlotte Mason subjects? 

Charlotte Mason encourages giving our children a wide variety of lessons, a generous feast, so to speak. This means your weekly schedule will likely include the following subjects: 

• Bible
• History
• Geography
• Science
• Literature
• Shakespeare
• Math
• Art (includes picture study, drawing) 
• Foreign Language
• Music (includes hymns, folk songs, composer study) 
• Handicraft
• Nature Study
• Poetry
• Grammar (for 10 years and older) 

And then, under each subject, you may use two, three, or even more books. For example, in History, you might have a History Spine, a book such as A Child’s History of the World, while you also have a biography of an important person in history, such as D’Aulaire’s Pocahontas. 

The key to remember in creating a daily schedule is that you don’t need to go through every subject every single day. Some of these you may have lessons once or twice a week; others, like Math and Copywork, you might do everyday. 

How much time do you need per subject at Charlotte Mason? 

According to Charlotte Mason, the average lesson length for children in first to third grades is about 15 to 20 minutes per lesson, including the reading and narration. For 4th to 6th grades, this increases to about 20 to 30 minutes per lesson, and then to 30 to 45 minutes per lesson for the 7th to 9th grades. 

This means that the number of pages may vary depending on your or your child’s reading speed. If the assigned reading goes past the time limit for that day’s lesson, we recommend closing the book, doing a different activity, and then coming back to it at a later time, to give your child’s brain a chance to rest and to keep him fresh and alert. 

How to Create a Daily Schedule for a Charlotte Mason Homeschool

In case you need it, we have created a FREE Charlotte Mason Daily Schedule Template to help you out with your planning! 

Alternatively, here are some tips to help you get started: 

1. Collect all the books you will be using for the year. 

Take a look at this example for a student in Form 2 (or 4th to 6th grades) 

Bible: Joshua, John 

History: On the Shores of the Great Sea, D’Aulaire’s Benjamin Franklin, 50 Famous Stories Retold, The Story of My Life, Missionary Heroes

Science: Our Wonderful World, Ways of Wood Folk, Robert Fulton 

Literature: Secret Garden, Men of Iron, Pollyanna, Princess and the Goblin

Shakespeare: Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

Geography: Home Geography 

(Most of this booklist is included in our Charlotte Mason International Curriculum, coming soon to this website!) 

2. Divide the different subjects and books into the days of the week. 

As you can see, we can’t just assign per subject, because each subject usually has several books.

From our example booklist, you can see that for History, On the Shores of the Great Sea is your History Spine, but you also have a History Biography, D’Aulaire’s Benjamin Franklin, and The Story of My Life. Meanwhile, Missionary Heroes and 50 Famous Stories Retold are actually more like History story books.

You can assign them as once lesson for each type of book for different days of the week, say, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. 

3. Assign one chapter from each book onto one or two lesson blocks per week. 

For example, if you have a book with 20 chapters, if you read one chapter per lesson and do two lessons per week, you will finish this book in 10 weeks. 

4. Divide longer chapters into two separate lessons. 

Again, this depends on several factors, such as your or your child’s reading speed, or even if you are alternating reading with your child.

5. Add your “riches.” 

This includes things like Hymn Study, Folk Songs, Picture Study, and Composer Study. You might want to add these once a week, but I like AmblesideOnline.org Advisory Wendi Capehart’s suggestion of doing hymns daily—it really makes a refreshing difference for our family. 🙂 

6. Input the lessons you will need to do everyday. 

Skill-related subjects are best done everyday. This includes things like Copywork, Math, Poetry, Recitation, and Reading Lessons or Reading Practice for beginning readers. 

7. Tweak around until you have a reasonable length of time for each day’s school lessons. 

Let’s be realistic: we may want to emulate Charlotte Mason’s schedule to the letter, but as homeschooling moms, we don’t always have the whole half day everyday free to work with our kids. One suggestion is to adjust your school schedule to fit in your family’s routine. For example, if a family has a dad’s day off on a Wednesday, it’s perfectly fine to make Wednesday a light school day (or even a free day) while adding more work to other days of the week, in order to maximize time with Dad, or perhaps even for taking trips to some nature spots. 

Making a Workable Charlotte Mason Daily Schedule 

Indeed, our goal in creating a Charlotte Mason daily schedule should be to make it workable for our particular life situations. At least we have these guidelines to keep us doing short, focused lessons, and we make sure to supply a generous curriculum for our children. 

But we are cheering you on to be able to implement it, one day at a time, and a plausible schedule is so much better than having a very intricately planned schedule that no one can follow! 🙂 

If you need help, check out this FREE downloadable Charlotte Mason Schedule Template, in Excel file so you can just add your stuff in! Enjoy!