Not Back to School Blog Hop - A Day in the Life

This week at Heart of the Matter Online is the last week in the Not Back To School Blog Hop. The theme is A Day in The Life. I haven't quite figured out what a "typical" day looks like yet, but we documented our day today and would like to share it with you.

6:30 a.m. - Mom gets up and gets a huge cup of coffee first thing! I try to do my daily Bible reading before my son gets out of bed and hopefully get showered and dressed for the day.

7:30 a.m. - If the kids aren't up, I wake them up at this time. They both have to make their beds and get dressed, then head downstairs for breakfast. We do our devotions at the breakfast table.

After breakfast comes chores. I got this chore chart idea from Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. It works very well in our house. I load up the "to do" pockets the night before and those are the chores for the day. Once their chores are completed, they put them in the "done" pocket.

Miss B's chore today was gathering the towels in the house and getting them in the wash. G Man's chore was to check all bathrooms and restock with toilet paper. This sounds like a little job, but it really comes in handy (especially when you are the only one home and are in the downstairs bathroom and need toilet paper!)

8:30 a.m. We generally begin official "school" at this time. Each of the children have a crate (workbox) with their assignments for the day. For my daughter I put a checklist on her clipboard the night before of what needs to be accomplished that day. She has several things she can get done independently - and if she has a question or needs to wait for me she has some things in the crate to keep her busy.

My son's crate is similar to this, but he doesn't have a checklist for his Kindergarten work. I am thinking, however, that I might institute that with him in the very near future! Each of the children does math, grammar/language arts, handwriting, history, spelling, and reading in the morning. My daughter also has to practice piano and complete her Bible study. Of course my kindergartner gets a lot of my attention, but after about an hour of intensive work with me he can then read, work on lapbook pieces independently, play with puzzles, manipulatives, etc... or have computer time.

10:30 - We generally take a break and do a song with lots of movement, have a snack, and play outside a little. Today after our snack the kids wanted to try and teach the dog some tricks on the deck. Works for me - they did it together and were having fun.

11:00-12:30 - We finish up any work that wasn't done in the first morning block. Today I spent that time giving my daughter a spelling test, working on handwriting with my son, and playing a fun chain review game (more to come on that in a later post!) about the US Constitution.

12:30-1:30 Lunch and read-aloud time. Most often we do our science reading or library book reading during this time. Today we started our study of the human body so we read The Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body.

1:30-2:30 - quiet time for my son (he generally falls asleep - he still needs about an hour nap each day) and my daughter reads quietly in her room or we finish up any read-alouds that are specific to her curriculum. If we have planned ahead and our work is completed, sometimes we go the library or to play with friends during this time - today we went swimming with a new homeschooling friend and it was lots of fun!

Our afternoons and evenings are usually filled with ball practice, tennis lessons, piano lessons and church activities. I also give private piano lessons two afternoons a week, so the schedule gets tricky. I'm also hoping that Fridays will be our day for field trips or big art activities.

This schedule is by no means a hard and fast rule. I'm learning that FLEXIBILITY is the key to happiness when homeschooling. Tomorrow I know we will spend lots of time in the morning on learning about the human body, because the kids were so interested in it today. My kids will also be part of a local Christian homeschool group each Thursday afternoon. When good opportunities arise I like to be able to juggle things around to take advantage of them.

So, back to the end of our day:
8:30-9:00 - We try to have the kids in bed by this time. My husband and I do a read-alouds each child at bedtime. This is one of my favorite times of the day.

10:00 - dad goes to bed (he gets up at 4:15 a.m. to hit the gym - yikes)
11:00 (or later) - mom goes to bed - I have to blog and catch up on a couple of shows I like, you know!

That's our day in a nutshell - I can't wait to get to some other blogs and see what a typical day is in their homeschool!