The Day in the Life of a Homeschooler

Every now and then I like to write up these posts. The first one I did was when the kids were 3 and 1 (and ED wasn’t born yet!)…I’ve done them periodically since then. This is a glimpse of what goes on when we’re actually home all day. It’s not a “typical” day because as homeschoolers each day is different than the day before–at least in our family. That’s what makes our homeschool life so different from the very structured schedule of traditional school.

I chose to do this last Tuesday (a week ago). It is written in the present tense because I jotted things down as they were happening:

7:45 ED and I are up. ED eats breakfast and I read her a quick book. I eat, make coffee, put dishes away and put in a new load of laundry. I also log on to the computer, spending about fifteen minutes posting on Facebook and briefly checking email. I’m really, really careful to limit my time on the computer at this time of the morning.

9:00 LD and DD are now awake. They get breakfast and read books (independent reading).

9:50 I light the fire in the wood stove in the homeschool room. I get out paints for collection (our group time).

We continue working on our canopic jar project. Canopic jars are the jars where ancient Egyptians placed the lungs, liver, intestines, and stomach of the deceased during the mummification process. The previous week we had covered a water bottle with paper mache. When the was dry a few days later, we formed the heads of our jars. Today we’re ready to decorate our jars.

DD’s ancient Egyptian canopic jar was not dry, so she put hieroglyphics on the jar I made. LD and ED painted their jars.

While they worked on their ancient Egyptian canopic jars, I read our Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile  (affiliate link) novel (which occurred 1,000 years AFTER the middle kingdom when King Tut lived and when many mummies were preserved!). A couple days earlier we finished watching the famous Cleopatra movie with Elizabeth Taylor. The kids loved, loved it!

We talked about Nefertiti again (because she was mentioned in our Cleopatra novel).

LD went on to work on his art homework for Wednesday. I switched and read a chapter from Narnia. We’re on the third book in the series, The Horse and His Boy. (affiliate link)

All this looks smooth, but my reading was interrupted numerous times as LD looked for his art book and as ED asked DD to draw her a picture of a pie. Then when DD drew the pie, ED got upset because the pie was too big. After the tears subsided and the picture was drawn in the appropriate size, we returned to our reading.

11:00 DD was finishing up with the paints and I pulled out the Pete the Cat stuff from ED’s workbox. She wanted to cut out the die herself, but made a mistake. I had to wrestle with the computer for 20 frustrating minutes trying to reprint that page.

 

Meanwhile, DD and LD started in on their math…BUT we hadn’t put the paints away. Boomer (our dog) dropped her ball and it rolled through the paint. She then picked it up but quickly dropped it again in another spot. No doubt because her ball tasted funny.

LD and I cleaned the paint off the carpet. We cleaned up the paint project and put it up on a table.

DD and LD returned to their math work.

11:45 ED and I sit down to read and play Pete the Cat games. DD abandons her math for a bit and joins in with ED.

12:20 I start making lunch. LD comes into the kitchen with his math book. He says he needs help on his long division. I don’t really help him, but I’m there for moral support! LD said, “Mom, take a picture of me after doing my division problems!!” He cracks me up!!

DD and ED start playing a Pokemon board game. I interrupt them to get them to put their math materials away.

While the girls are playing, LD and I squeeze in some rehearsal time for his upcoming choir performance.

I now go back to making lunch. We’re all very hungry at this point!

2:15 We all finish lunch. I send everyone outside with dessert and tell them to play outside for a while. I wrote a spelling review sheet (which we won’t get to til next week, but I knew we needed to review this material and wanted it done while it was on my mind).

2:45 I join the kids outside and start stacking firewood. Then I realize there’s an important email from the morning that I need to respond to. I do that and make a couple of phone calls. The kids start building things out of the logs. They needed a path through the lava fields:

The girls pretended the wheel barrow was a rocket ship. Cute!

3:00-4:00 The weather was nice. I do some outdoor chores which includes hauling wood out of the trailer and stacking the firewood.

4:00 I come inside. I work on the computer, fixing blog posts for the morning and tackling a couple other quick jobs. The girls stay outside playing (and playing!). LD isn’t feeling well (he’s still suffering from his asthma attack) and comes inside and lays down to read.

4:40 I start tackling the laundry pile that has built up on the couch.

5:00 I put in a new load of laundry. ED comes back inside. I do a reader with ED. She does some handwriting practice.

 

5:15 I go back to folding laundry.

5:45 DD comes back inside. She practices the piano and then we do spelling together.

6:15  I finish the laundry. The kids put their piles away. I work on dinner. Then it’s the beginning of our bedtime routine…getting ready for bed, books and lights out.

ED is the first to bed at 8-8:15. DD goes to bed around 9pm. LD is the last to bed somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00. He goes to bed quite late these days because three days a week he doesn’t get home from gymnastics until 8:50 pm. Then he eats dinner and gets ready for bed. It takes him a while to unwind before getting to sleep.

Wednesday:

I just want to add in that Wednesday had completely different rhythm since we had to leave the house at 12:30 for art class. Before we left in the morning DD practiced piano, the kids worked together on the worksheet I made on irregular verbs and plural nouns. (I shared that last week). We went over all the answers together. DD and LD worked on and finished their math work. ED chose some Pete the Cat things to work on from her workboxes. (I didn’t jot down what that was, but as I recall she did the button math and handwriting). We didn’t return home until nearly 9pm that night because of all of our activities. Whew! On those kinds of days, I rely on the crockpot!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

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