If there’s one thing that homeschool mamas are interested in, it’s what other homeschool mamas are up to! Since I enjoy taking a peek at the schedules, routines, curriculum, and practices of other homeschooling families, I think it’s only fair that I let you take a peek at mine! Today I’m sharing with you my annual Day in the Life of a Homeschooler post.

While I’m not a super disciplined, every minute scheduled kind of homeschooler, I’m not a super relaxed un-schooler either. My curriculum choices and values align most closely with a Classical model, with a little bit of my own relaxed, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants style.

 

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A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler {with a 10, 7, and 3-year-old

I hate getting up in the morning during the wintertime, don’t you? In the summertime, I usually get up early and go for a run. I’m home and have hopped into the shower before anyone else is even awake!

But it’s not summer. Today, summer feels like a distant memory. It’s the end of January, it’s dark, the house is cold, and I always seem to wake up tired and grumpy. It’s 7:00 am and get up I must, so I climb out of bed and go downstairs.

I check my email and get breakfast started while browsing Facebook. Then I take a few minutes to make up my fifth grader’s checklist for the day and head back upstairs for a shower just as my husband is heading out the door for his day at work.

At around 8:30 am, I throw a load of laundry into the washing machine, and then it’s breakfast time. My oldest heard the timer and took the puffed pancakes out of the oven, and someone actually set the table, yay! My kids are pretty good about getting their morning chores done before breakfast, so they’ve already emptied the dishwasher too.

Next, it’s time for what I call B & B or Breakfast and Bibles. We all sit down to eat & read together, even my 3-year-old with her sticky, syrup covered Jesus Storybook Bible.  We eat & read, and then it’s time to clear the table, load the dishwasher and brush teeth & hair.

Starting the Day with Morning Time

We’re actually making good time today, and everyone is ready for Morning Time shortly after 9:00 am! We start with our Thankfulness Journal, prayer, and I read from The Ology. We finish up with a SQUILT (one of our favourite Morning Time resources) lesson featuring Chopin’s Minute Waltz, complete with this Bug’s Bunny video, just for fun.

>> Get your FREE sample lesson from SQUILT! <<

One-on-One and Independent Learning

After Morning Time, my 10-year-old works through her checklist of independent work (which she actually started while waiting for breakfast) while I sit for about an hour with my 7-year-old and we work one-on-one on her math, penmanship, writing, and phonics.

Today is a good day, with only a bit of fussing over her reading lesson. As soon as she’s done her lessons with mama, she happily runs off to play with her little sister.

We’ve got a shortened lesson time this morning because it’s Tuesday, and Tuesday is piano day for my big girls After working with my 7-year-old, I’ve only got around 20 or so minutes left before it’s time to pack up the van and head out for our lessons. I make good use of that time and manage to check my 10-year-old’s independent work, edit her writing draft, AND do a quick spelling lesson with her.

With the driving time, our piano lessons take a full two hours out of our day. My 3-year-old usually goes swimming with Grandma during this time but Grandma has company this week, so she tags along with me to buy groceries while her big sisters are at their piano lessons.

Afternoon – Time for Reading, Playing, and History

Once we get back home, we have a quick lunch and then have an hour of Quiet Time from around 2:15-3:15 pm. I queue up audiobooks & podcasts for my girls to listen to as they play and take a little break myself. It feels good to slow down and be alone for a while during our busy days!

After Quiet Time we all gather together for a snack and our afternoon “learning together” time. Today we’re in Chapter 13 of Story of the World Volume 4. We read, discuss, narrate, check out the wall map and do our map work. I write my  7-year-old’s narration for her on her SOTW Volume 4 Notebooking Page, and my 10-year-old writes her own. My 3-year-old (who happens to be dressed as a butterfly this afternoon) sits with us and colours. Once in a while, she surprises us with what she’s picked up during her sisters’ lessons!

 

 

Around 4:00 pm we put away our books and the kids enjoy some free time for reading and playing. I notice that our homeschool nook is a MESS, and I decide to do a quick tidy of the books, scrap paper, pencils, etc. that are scattered about.  I even take a few minutes to sharpen all the pencils and give myself a blister from the sharpener!

A Quiet Evening at Home

Then I move on to supper prep and kitchen clean-up until Daddy gets home and then we eat together. After dinner, my 10-year-old decides she wants to make a dessert for the company we’re expecting tomorrow night. She’s been itching to make lemon squares all by herself for a while, but it will have to wait for tomorrow because the butter is in the freezer. We check to make sure we have all the other ingredients, and I tell her she can make them tomorrow morning during her independent work time. She’s pretty happy about that!

I love bedtime. Really! The most obvious reason I love bedtime is that I’m looking forward to a few hours of kid-free time. I also love bedtime because, on the whole, they tend to be a pretty peaceful time at our house. If my kids have something bothering them, that’s when they are most likely to talk to me about it. And now that my kids are getting a bit bigger, it seems like it’s the only time of day I get hugs and snuggles anymore.

The biggest reason I love bedtime though is that I love reading with my big girls. And although I feel good about reading aloud to my kids because I know it’s good for them, I also really love kid lit myself, and think it’s good for me too!

After reading a couple of chapters of our current read-aloud, it’s hugs all around and back downstairs I go. My oldest will continue to read to her younger sister for about another half hour, but they usually settle quietly for the night after that. I’m “off duty” from 8 pm on, yay!  Daddy is still reading to our youngest, but he soon joins me on the couch for some much-needed adult conversation and a little Netflix. We stay up a little too late, as usual!

So that’s a day in the life of this ordinary homeschool mama! No two days are exactly alike, but we’ve got a good rhythm to keep us from going off the rails.

Our Weekly Homeschool Schedule

We’ve got an extra relaxed schedule this winter with fewer out of home activities than ever before. We do have our weekly piano lessons and a monthly co-op with other local homeschoolers. My mom also takes my girls swimming during the week, which they love.

Here’s a peek at our weekly homeschool schedule — keep in mind that this is how our week “should” look, not necessarily how it actually does!

>>Do you want to make a pretty Weekly Plan like mine? Get your FREE Homeschool Planning Mini Kit!<<

 

Read all of my Day in the Life of a Homeschooler posts here:

• Learning Mama’s Day in the Life 2015 {homeschooling a 7, 4, & 6-month-old}
• Learning Mama’s Day in the Life 2016 {homeschooling an 8,5, & 1-year-old}
• Learning Mama’s Day in the Life 2017 {homeschooling a 9, 6, & 2-year-old}
• A Day in the Life of a Classical Homeschooler {a peek into the day of 5 families}

You can get even more Day-in-the-Life of a Homeschooler posts from the homeschooler bloggers of the iHomeschool Network.