Schooling at Home

How about Thursday be kid day. This is pretty much my life for the last and next decade, but I don't desire to bore the lot of you and will try to keep the blah, blah, blah to Thursday. Alrighty?

I meant to write only about our schedule because I am curious about everyone else's hour-by-hour day (that means you!) and always was curious about various homeschoolers' schedules. As usual I got going too long and so I posted the whys about my decision to homeschool on my regular (neglected) blog here.

Here is our week. Each morning the kids wake up a little before 7 a.m. for scriptures. Breakfast making, lunch making, clothes finding ensues. (Man, mornings are better when we do those things the night before!) At 8 a.m. we head out to take Eli to 4th grade at La Center Elementary and by 8:30 we're back home and starting the school day with Beau and August. Every morning, except Friday, we usually start with herb tea and a few seasonal or history books, or a bike ride or walk depending on the weather. Then we head to the playroom where the end is set up with a table and book case for our homeschooling. It is nice because it gives Lou a place to play while the A + B are working and I can bridge the gap between the three of them--which can be exhausting, mostly due to Louis B. Kissinger. They begin with a journal writing and drawing, then grammar and spelling, followed by math. This usually lasts until 11ish a.m. and we're ready to break for lunch and to put Lou to bed.

We have two kinds of afternoons: Tuesday & Thursday afternoons, and Mon, Wed, & Friday afternoons. Tuesday and Thursday are open all day. We get in our history and geography, which is a two-year study of  How Children Lived. My neighbor Paula, who's homeschooling kids are A + B's best friends, joined me, so each month we move ahead through time to a new culture. November is Ancient China--Mulan movie night at my house this Saturday!--and we save Tues/Thurs for projects or field trips, or to catch up on house chores etc.

Monday afternoon 12:30-3:00 the kids take a Reading/Writing class, Wednesday and Friday they have Sprouting Seeds from 12:30-4:00, which has a fall study of "constellations", and Friday morning they go to book club, science class, art and then choir after Seeds. Those are my "breaks", and I wish I could say that I am so stupendously productive during those times, but the truth is I do my best to take a nap, do the dishes, make a plan for dinner, and that's about it.

Everyday, I pick up Eli at 3 or 4 p.m., depending on his Recorder Club or Science Olympiad days, each of which end by Thanksgiving. After school, every day someone had a soccer practice, but that just ended, so it will be nice to be home and done before dinner. We just started piano lessons again on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Spring brings another season of sports, but Winter is quieter.

And that is our daily weekday beat, with some variation for holidays. Now it all looks so boring to read about, I can't remember why I thought it might be slightly interesting. I really do love the time at home together with the three younger kids--they are magical in getting along--but weekends it is nice to let down my school-marm hair a little.

 I hope some of you will let us in on your day-to-day. Marm out.