A Day in the Life of our Homeschool!
I wake up at about 7:00AM so that I can make sure Lindsey is up and getting ready for school. (After her first day, she told me that no one had ever gotten up with her when she went to school before. So even though she’s doing great with getting herself out of bed, I’m still going to keep getting up with her.)
Lindsey chat a minute or two while I make tea and she packs her lunch, and then she heads out the door to the bus.
I do a little Bible reading in my favorite comfy chair — with a steaming hot mug of tea, of course. I usually let Kathryn sleep in, so once she’s up, we have breakfast. A few days a week, I squeeze in a walk somewhere in all of this.
After we’re ready for the day, we start table work, which takes less than two hours. We also do lapbook projects, map work, or other crafty stuff. Of course snacks and tea are interspersed throughout. 🙂 I have finally released the idea of starting schoolwork at a particular time of day. Some days we begin table work by 9AM, but some days it’s more like 11AM. Most days it’s somewhere in between.
Lunchtime varies, depending on how hungry we are and how much we’ve gotten done. After lunch, we do some of our weekly readings. Kathryn has computer time, and we spend the afternoon doing anything else we need to catch up on.
One morning each week, we head out the door to Kathryn’s enrichment classes. We do our weekly grocery shopping and errands together that afternoon.
I’m allowing the flexibility to do frequent field trips, park days, and nature studies. I’m no longer hung up on getting a particular number of pages completed in her math book each week. In fact, I’ve even scheduled catch-up weeks (or breaks, if we are close to being caught up) throughout our school year to take the pressure off. This is a big change for me — and it’s quite freeing! I’m such a planner and a box-checker by nature, but that just ends up making me stressed. Record-keeping: yes. Box-checking: no.
What do your homeschool days look like? Share in HOTM’s Not-Back-To-School Hop.
Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »
Thanks so much for sharing this. I really appreciate all you write. This is our first full year of homeschooling. While I actually sat down and wrote out plans this summer and I feel like I have a better footing, I still struggle with being disciplined enough to stick to a schedule (or even an semblance of one). I appreciate your willingness to be flexible so that learning can happen naturally.
Anyway – you always encourage me – with your homeschooling posts, with your adoption posts, with your tweets. Thanks for begin so open and candid and beautiful.
You are so sweet! What an encouraging comment! 🙂 And yay for your first year of homeschooling!
I love the idea of scheduling “catch up” weeks…it has always helped us stay astride our yearly goals. I think it is wonderful that you get up and spend a few minutes with Lindsey before she goes to school. 🙂
I love the idea of catch up weeks! I plan to do 6-7 months of everyday work, then I know I have extra time if needed, or I can finish early.
Flexible should be the name of our homeschool! We never have any days that are the same.
Sounds good! Funny, we spent the last year and a half very similar to what you described. This year though for many different reasons we are moving back into a more structured school day. Well structured for us, anyway.
it fun to see how different yet similar so many homeschool families are.
I like the bit of time you take for yourself to get a walk in the mornings.
Have a great week!
Amber – It’s definitely a fine balance. I have had times I’ve chucked the schedule altogether, and that didn’t work, but giving up on specific times while keeping an approximate this-happens-before-this kind of schedule seems to be working pretty well for us!
Thank you for sharing your day with us! It is hard to begin the same time every day in our home school. I haven’t released it yet, but I am trying not to beat myself up over it either since I battle with fibro and CFS.
I also love the idea of planning for catch-up weeks! I can’t say I’ve ever thought of that before! Hope your school year goes as well as this day you’ve described!
Planning for catch-up weeks takes a load of pressure off for me. I want so much to have a nice schedule, but I never seem to want to be bound to it! Our days will be different this year. I haven’t yet figured out the perfect way to approach them. Just along for the ride at the moment.
This is my first year homeschooling. (We are an adoptive family as well.) I was very intimidated by the idea, and worried about getting it all done. There are many women in our church who homeschool and have been a big encouragement to me. Our “style” is very flexible, and it has been so good for all of us. If I am feeling like we are falling behind I let the kids stay up an extra 20 minutes and we do a bit of school before bed, and they seem to love that. (Any excuse to stay up right?) I… Read more »
I am so grateful to read this. I have to say that your day (minus the fact that my kids are younger and I don’t have one to get ready to go anywhere first thing) is so much like mine. For various reasons we get started later in the day. I hear people say that they start at eight o’clock and are done by noon and I just wonder at it. For a while I strived to “Homeschool the right way” and now I’m so glad that I’ve released that. My son doesn’t even think straight in the early morning,… Read more »
I am so happy to read that sometimes you don’t start school until 11am! That’s us on so many days, too!
I think we have a lot in common!! So glad to find your blog!