Saturday, January 14, 2012

A Dose of our Daily Life

What does a typical day look like at our homeschool? That just depends on what day it is. Really! We do a little different each day depending on what we have going on outside the home (among other diversions). But on a day when we are home all day (with minimal interruptions) this is how we roll:
---> I usually get up between 6-7am have my coffee and time with Jesus.
---> Lucas is the first up after me. God wakes him up with His gorgeous sunlight.
---> Around 7:30-8:00 (depending on what time they went to bed the night before) I wake the rest of the family up.
---> Breakfast is usually pretty quick then everyone is sent to get dressed, make their beds, and brush their teeth. I throw a load of clothes in the wash and then we get started.
---> School is underway by or before 9am. This is where our schedule has recently changed. We were doing things like THIS up until the last couple weeks. I felt we needed to tweak things a bit because I felt rushed with the little ones.
---> The first few hours of school the little ones spend playing alone or with one another. This is the first year they haven’t been underfoot and it’s been great.
----> So our first hour is spent on Reading, individual Bible/AWANA, and Spelling. Jordan works on his alone while Josiah and I work together.
---> Once this is complete everyone grabs a snack, I put the laundry in the dryer or hang them up to dry, and we head to the living room for our favorite time of the day. SONLIGHT. We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, these books. I am so glad I tried them, we will be using them again!! So in addition to reading the Sonlight history and read aloud's, we spend part of our time praying for each other’s ‘weaknesses’ and reading from Apologia’s book Who is God and Can I Really Know Him. This usually takes an hour or more.
---> Next the boys do their Winston Grammar with my help and/or IEW (creative writing). We love IEW but I haven’t been doing it as diligently as I should have. It’s so easy to just skip this if we’re running behind. I’m really hoping to work this in a lot more often in the coming months. It’s not a real burden to finish it in one year so I’m not too worried. These two subjects can take 15 min to one hour, depending on whether we do both subjects or just Winston, and also it depends on what the assignments are for that particular day.
---> At this point I’m done with the older boys and it’s usually lunch time. We don’t do fancy lunches around here (well, occasionally I’ll fix a real meal, but it’s rare). We usually have chicken nuggets, hotdogs with mac-n-cheese, sandwiches, pizza, leftovers, spaghetti and meatballs, or corndogs. I know most of my homeschool friends would cringe at this but, hey, food isn’t our top priority these days. I have picky kids (got it honest from their dad) and I’m not stressing over it now.
---> After lunch the older boys do their Apologia Science and Math-U-See. They have individual Math of course but they do their science together. They are studying Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day.
---> This is when I start the little kids with their school. We have a morning board that we have been doing immediately following breakfast but since Christmas we haven’t really done it at all. I’m not sure if it’ll fall in the afternoon now or if I’ll try to do it at breakfast. I’m thinking it’d be best to just continue to do it after breakfast. For math they are also doing Math-U-See and we work through their sheets together using the blocks to help where needed.
Last week they finished learning the last of the consonants so we will be starting a new program this week. I’m super excited too because it’s a program that I was chosen to review from TOS. I know God was in this because it’s perfect for our family. PERFECT! So perfect I would have probably chosen it above all others if money wasn’t an issue (not that it’s an expensive program, I just didn’t have any money to spend right now). I just got it in the mail today (timing was spot on, thank you Lord). The program we’ll be starting this week is All About Reading Level 1. Look for my review February 22!
So that’s a typical day in our life…not too exciting but we all love spending our days together. The only way it could be any more perfect would be to have our Daddy here with us.

Head over to the Blog Cruise and see how other homeschoolers spend their days.

3 comments:

Mozi Esme said...

Sounds like a well-balanced day! And nice to see your opinion of Sonlight - I keep being drawn that direction...

Our Peculiar Lives said...

Busy! I admire you moms with a bigger age range of kids - it must be challenging!

Our Homeschool Reviews said...

Looks like a great schedule. We start school between 8:30 and 9:00, but I don't have her make her bed and get dressed, I should, because it would cause less stress later.

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