This comes from a guest post on Homeschool Hub Utah
Introduction to Our Bilingual Homeschool Routine
What does a normal week look like for your family? What’s one thing that has gone really well? What advice would you give another homeschool mom who is looking for more community?
Thank you, Britany of Homeschool Hub, for this opportunity to share my bilingual homeschool routine! I’ve used your website before and found it super helpful!
My background: I am an American mom married to a Korean husband. I love the Korean language, have been studying it for over 10 years, and even majored in it in college. My research emphasis is on raising bilingual children. I have a business where I help multicultural families pass on the Korean language naturally to their children, but since I know a lot about how to raise bilingual or multilingual children, I can help out anyone who is hoping to raise bilingual or multilingual children; it doesn’t matter what the language is. Feel free to message me with your questions or needs! I get a lot of joy from raising my kids and love how much I learn and grow every day from being their mom.
A Typical Week in Our Bilingual Homeschool Routine
A normal week for my family looks like this:
I get up early in the morning and work on my business, Korean at Home, or clean the house, depending on what is needed. I work while I supervise my little ones as they sleep. Recently, we added Korean private lessons to our morning. My daughter is taking two lessons in the morning per week, and I take two lessons in the morning per week. My daughter’s Korean tutor suggested that I take Korean lessons to sharpen my Korean, as she suspects that will improve my children’s Korean as well. So far, it’s been super fun, and with only a few lessons, I already see myself speaking in a more sophisticated way. If you want to try it out for your own family, you can get 50% off your first private Korean tutoring trial lesson for your children (or you!) using my affiliate link here! I plan to do lessons for about three months, while my daughter will do them year-round.
In the morning, I also make sure to set up homeschool for the day. I gather supplies, make copies, and gather the needed books. We are currently doing Memoria Press with some Korean added in.
About twice a week, my daughter does preschool sports in the morning. I love that she is able to get some exercise and have fun in a class setting. On those days, we enjoy getting out and then make sure to hurry back home to dive right into homeschool.
For morning time, I add in Korean. When we do calendar time, I make sure to also do it in Korean. When we count how many days of school we are on, we count in Korean. We talk about the weather in Korean.
Then we get into learning to read and phonics. After that, we do math, followed by copywork or recitation. These are all in English.
Once those are done, we move on to enrichment. This covers a variety of subjects, and we are just following the Memoria Press curriculum. I love that it is open-and-go so I can focus my efforts on other things, such as the Korean curriculum or making healthy meals.
If we get through all our homeschooling for the day, I then add in Korean. We usually do get through everything with plenty of time and energy for Korean, as we usually start our homeschool day early enough in the morning.
When it comes to Korean, I fit it in according to our time. If we have a lot of extra time, I will read some Korean books to her. Then I usually start my daughter out on one page of Korean writing practice. Once she completes that, I have her work on a Korean reading and writing learning app for about 15 minutes. After that, if she didn’t have an online private lesson in the morning, she has one in the afternoon. When she doesn’t have a private lesson in the afternoon, I usually complete a short lesson with an interactive activity based in Korean culture.
If you decide afternoon slots work better for your schedule, don’t forget you can grab 50% off private Korean tutoring trial lesson for your children (or you!) using my affiliate link here: https://preply.sjv.io/5k04YN
Of course, I have a 3-month-old, so all of this is done while feeding him, holding him for naps, or doing other tasks. We try to stay flexible while still maintaining excellence in our homeschool. I only have two kids, and my daughter is just in kindergarten. Also, we get to choose when to take breaks in school. For example, it was recently Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), so we took off two days to celebrate it! It is one of the biggest holidays of the year in Korea, so of course we had to celebrate it!
I wasn’t always this organized or on top of our home learning! I had to lean into learning from other moms who have been through my situation before. I usually learn a lot from YouTube, blogs, or especially Facebook groups where other homeschool moms are. I learned ways to level up my consistency, efficiency, and overall productivity. I am also in a stage in my life where I am living with my parents. This can be helpful when my mom holds the baby while I cook dinner.
In the evening, once my husband gets home, we speak Korean together as a family. We also speak Korean on weekends. Again, I wasn’t always consistent in this, but recently I am gaining more capacity to be able to stick with my language goals and make it happen. I would say to anyone who is struggling: just focus on being consistent and then leveling up in little ways over time. As time passes, your capacity for things will grow!
After dinner, we get ready for bed and go straight to sleep so we can all get the rest we need and start early the next day.
Finding Community and Language Resources
On Saturday, my daughter attends Korean Weekend School, also known as “Hangul Hakgyo.” This is such a great opportunity for my daughter to speak Korean with other adults and children. She is able to put into practice all the Korean she is learning at home, learn from other adults and children naturally, and make friends with other Korean Americans and children with Korean heritage. It has been such a blessing to our family to have this valuable resource of the Korean community.
On Sundays we also used to go to a Korean church. While we don’t go anymore (we attend a nearby church in English), if anyone is looking for more Korean community, this is another community source that can be so helpful for meeting Korean-speaking families and building community.
One thing that has gone really well when it comes to homeschooling is deciding that I am going to be consistent in doing it day in and day out. Getting things done and getting up early to do it really helps, and having an open-and-go curriculum and a checklist works so well for our family!
One thing that has gone really well when it comes to Korean is having a framework to organize the whole process. Each month, we focus on a different topic and dive deeply into it using natural acquisition strategies. If you would like to learn more, check out the Korean at Home Immersion Roadmap, where I share more about it. It’s free!
The KAH Immersion Roadmap Includes:
- 10 Natural Acquisition Strategies: Simple, research-backed ways to weave Korean into your existing daily routines (no fluent teaching degree required!).
- Monthly Activity Prompts: Thoughtfully planned play ideas to spark inspiration and keep language immersion fresh all year round.
- Flexible Implementation: Adapt every strategy to fit your family’s unique rhythm—use it as a complete guide or a launchpad for your own ideas.
Advice to Other Homeschool Moms
If I were to give advice to a homeschool mom who is looking for community, I would say:
When it comes to raising our children, we can’t do it all on our own, even if we might think we want to. This is especially true when raising bilingual children. In raising my children to speak Korean, I had to face the fact that I couldn’t do it all alone. I am not a native speaker, and so I had to rely on others. This wasn’t easy, but once I brought in more resources, my daughter grew in leaps and bounds.
My final advice to homeschool moms is to put your spouse first. As a homeschool mom, I know how much you care about your kids, but make sure to take care of your spouse too. If they are well taken care of, they can contribute more to your kids’ success. This is especially true in a multicultural and multilingual family. When I am taking better care of my husband and tending to his needs, he tends to spend more time with the children, and this time is so vital when building up their Korean skills. Language is best learned through spending time with attachment figures!
Shout out to Britany for her amazing blog helping us build up community!
For homeschool community resources in Utah, visit Britany’s blog Homeschool Hub:
50% off your private Korean tutoring trial lesson for your child or you using my affiliate link:
Thanks for reading about our bilingual homeschool routine!
What does your bilingual homeschool routine look like? I’d love to hear!
