A Day at Homeschool

After a week, I’ve settled into a schedule I like.  (If you can even call it a schedule.  I don’t really DO schedules.)  A routine, if you will.  The only REAL times are in bold.  Everything else is an approximate guess.  And BTW, it’s really LONG cause I figured you wanted the details and all my 100% honest, wacked-out commentary, not just the times and events.  Right?

Day in the Life of Ivory’s Homeschool

6:ooAM Off to mass in the clothes I slept in.

~7:00AM Get home, kiss the hubby good-bye, make a tofu shake, and sit down at the computer where I write a post, procrastinate about an article or manuscript, or answer some email…whatever.

~7:30 One or more kids wake up and start bugging me about homeschool or some imagined art project.  Today, (7:27AM…*YAWN*) my daughter wants to decorate the ugly marker box with finger prints and stickers.   I continue to procrastinate and half answer their questions about how to spell something and deny them their God-given right to television.  But, today I gave in so I could finish this post.   I had to figure out how to reassemble the antenna and whatnot so Sid the Science kid isn’t pixelated.

~8-sh? 8:30?  I print out Nate’s Ancient Egypt coloring sheet (his current obsession, takes two seconds for him to choose) and breathe in and out before I invite Callie to choose something.  She takes FOREVER. I have to go through thirty or more google images of coloring pages before she settles on the perfect dragon/unicorn/Egypt/what-have-you…and THEN she has me photoshop it to her specifications.  Thank God, she wants to paint today and not color.

Between now and about 10:30, we do the 3R’s:

• Both kids do their copywork while I set up their math and spelling.
• I leave Callie to further create while Nate and I do his phonics and reading.
• I set out his math and spelling to finish independently, while Callie and I read.
• I set out Callie’s math while I check Nate’s work.
• Zach flits around doing three year old things the whole time and somewhere in there I feed them breakfast.

~10:30-ish  BREAK TIME–We do some origami or I try to make them go burn some calories–chase goats, break ice, but they often just do some imagination play or look at the library books.  I make some decaf, which they all want with cream and sweetener, please.  And…we loll around.

~11:15-esque  We ALL pile up on the couch for subject time, even the 3-yr-old.  I do a Charlotte Mason-ish style homeschool, so that means a lot of out loud reading.  I tried doing a bit of each subject each day, but we hated that.   So, we take one day for each subject.  While one child is reading with me, the other is doing the French work on the ‘puter.

• Monday, we did all our literature and poetry reading with narration and discussion.
• Today, we’ll do all our history.
• Wednesday we’ll do our science reading.
• Thursday, we’ll do all of the geography/biography reading.
• Friday, we’ll do religious studies and art.

Reading and talking about all of the stories takes about 30-45 minutes?  I don’t know.  It’s really nice though.  Lots of blankets and books.  LOVELY.

~12:15-ish Eat and maybe go somewhere, or have someone over.   We spend at least two afternoons a week at the library.  Today, we had a friend over for a few hours (this is when they chased goats and beat the stew out of an ice chunk with a broom handle) and then we all took a lil’ nap.

3:45PM Head to the car line to pick up the neighbor kid from school.

~4:20PM Drop kids off at Grammy’s.  Do a little Leslie Sansone, shower, start dinner, hang with hubby.

6:00PM Get kids from Grammy’s and eat dinner.  Everyone with a happy-plate gets to play the Wii.

~7:30PM  Bedtime stories and night-night.  I’ve been reading Winnie-the-Pooh, but Pooh Corner makes even less sense than the first one.  Tonight, I’m switching to Pippi.  It hurts me not to finish a book, but even if I do voices, I’m the only one paying attention.  Hang with hubby till bed.

*Zzzzz*

Ivory