Our Home School Day in the Life

Jamie over at Simple Homeschool has invited us to answer the following questions and share our homeschool day. This is what it looked like at the beginning of the year. So you can see how we change things up as we start a new semester.

How old are your kids? 8, 5, 2, 3 months


How long have you been homeschooling?  since birth, but officially this is our fourth year


What does your homeschool day look like? It varies greatly, but here is today:

My early bird child usually awakes while I'm still in my chair having my quiet time. We sit together until I'm done, cuddle and talk a bit, then get dressed as the rest of the kids start waking up. Sometimes the baby joins us, sometimes he's still sleeping, sometimes he's back to sleep.

The kids do morning chores and get dressed while I help out where I can and start breakfast. We eat breakfast, do table chores, then sit at the table for Bible together. I try to go directly from the Bible lesson to my kindergartner's phonics lesson because he is easily distracted. My third grader does her independent work either at the table with us or up in her room if she needs quiet.

When the kindergartner's school is done for the day (it doesn't take long), he takes the 2-year-old upstairs to play while I work with the third grader. We try to have school done by lunch on a home day (this is currently Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays typically).

After lunch and table chores, I try to read or spend a little time with the 2-year-old before putting him down for a nap. After he's in bed, we read a chapter out of our current read-aloud book together, then everyone goes to quiet time.

After quiet time, I try to spend time individually with at least one child. This varies. This week I have used it to help my daughter start a blog as a school assignment, play a video game with my son, work on multiplication tables and sometimes we work on reading or play checkers. Just depends on what is needed and what the child wants to do. I also use this time to finish up any school work with my third grader, particularly if it was not a home day.

When the little one wakes up from his nap, we have afternoon chore time which includes straightening the house, practicing music lessons and any chores that weren't completed earlier in the day. I start to prepare supper and then we start our evening.

On days away from home, we try to contain those activities to before nap time, more for my sake than theirs! This includes doctor appointments, grocery shopping, piano lessons, library visits, art and gym class.

There you have it although I've left out a lot of the nitty-gritty like fights, diaper changes, discipline sessions, feeding the baby, the little one asking, "Hold you?", and bloody noses. Those events just kind of fit in the cracks of a day so it's not too normal.