Let’s be honest, a day in the life today is hardly even what a day in the life will be tomorrow. Our homeschool is constantly changing to fit the needs of our family. With three kids ages 6, 4, and 2 (almost 3) our days can vary quite a bit. But this post will boil down how a typical day goes in our homeschool and why, and also how that has changed in the last year or so. Be sure to also check out this video I put together showing what it all looks like, warts and all (wink).
Let’s just dive straight in!
7:30 AM – Our family wakes up at about this time each day though our household is far from clockwork. So as we go through the day, we have some key times for certain activities, but the rest of our day runs more fluidly with a routine for what happens first, next and so forth but not a lot of set times.
I’m a slow riser. I think it may be partly because I have very low blood pressure and am also usually starving when I wake up, but regardless of the reason, I find it abhorrent to jump out of bed and burst into song like Mary Poppins. Kudos to the mamas that can do that. I wake up slowly, lay in bed for at least ten minutes to get the courage to finally drag myself out, sometimes urged on only by the sound of tiny tots conspiring, or as some of you may know all too well… the silence that brings.
We have one kiddo that is not fond of eating right away when he wakes up but my other two are famished so we generally don’t worry about getting ready for the day first, and we head straight downstairs to start on breakfast. The stairs actually are a much more important part of our daily plan than I had ever anticipated. Herding cats from one level of our home to another is not something I’m fond of doing more than necessary.
Some days if Shug is already out the door or working we will do an audio book or read aloud during breakfast, which also helps if the kids are having trouble focusing on eating. However, my third boy is approaching three years old which is has been the apex of the terrorism phase for each of my boys, so lately mealtimes are becoming overly focused on him. Other days, because of our work schedules we will try to have breakfast together as a family. We are both Realtors and work a lot of nights, weekends, and even holidays, so we try to take time together during the less busy times whenever we can.
After breakfast the big boys clear their plates from the table and have free time to play or do a simple craft while I clean up the rest. Then we head upstairs to do our “responsibilities” which for the kids is spurred on by a little jingle we sing: “Put on our clothes, brush our teeth, and make our bed – Responsibilities!” I’ll be honest, a lot of days we stay in jammies a lot longer and sometimes all day. We pick our battles around here.
10:00 AM – We usually plan our morning activities outside of the house to begin by about 10:00 AM so we are not running too close to lunch time. With my kids’ personalities and ages, I found out (the hard way) that it works best to get outside and active before we dive into more traditional learning. That might consist of going to a park, on a hike, to the library, a meetup with friends, or even just the backyard or a special energy burning activity inside if weather dictates. We have an unfinished basement with a swing built from PVC pipes that they get wild on, and we always enjoy charades, hide and seek, kids exercise videos on YouTube, and fun nursery rhymes and songs that we can easily blast through our Echo when we are stuck inside.
As I’m writing this we are under a “stay at home” order due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It has been a bit longer of an isolation already especially for our family because just a few weeks into the semester all of my boys ended up with Hand Foot and Mouth in a lengthy domino effect. As soon as that cleared up, my middle son broke his leg and was in a full leg cast for four weeks (non-weight bearing for two of those) and restricted to “two feet on the ground” for an additional two weeks after the cast came off. The outbreak hit the U.S. before he was cleared to run and jump, so we have not been quite our usual active selves for at least a couple of months already.
The additional time at home has enabled us to get a bit more done in the mornings than we used to. Additionally, my kindergartener wisely told me a few weeks ago that he preferred to get some of the things he does not like as much (like writing) out of the way, rather than having to do them later in the day. So we have been trying to work a few less popular items like writing, spelling, and math drills in earlier in the day a few times a week. He was totally right about that. I love that at six years old he is already self-analyzing and communicating with me about what makes his homeschool life easier. A few small assignments before lunch each week makes our homeschool afternoons easier for him (and me!).
11:00 AM – This is when we aim to have lunch each day. Generally, my kids are getting hungry at 10:30 AM but a morning snack just does not work out well for us unless we are out and about and push lunch a little later. If Shug is home, we will have lunch with him. Otherwise, it works best to sit the boys at the kitchen island with an audio book while I eat, listen in, and tidy up from lunch and the goings on. We just started the Johnathan Park Audio Adventures on CD a few weeks ago, and it has been wonderful. We also love to check out books from our local library through the Libby app on the kids’ iPad which I make sure to always set on “guided access.”
After lunch, the kids have more free play time. Sometimes my kindergartener will read books to himself or to his brothers on his Kindle Fire which was a fabulous gift from his grandparents at Christmas. It really ignites his love for learning as he is able to search for books he is interested in and delve deeper into things we come across in our studies. I’ll be sharing more specifics on our kindergarten curriculum in an upcoming post.
1:00 PM – We head upstairs for Bible so that I can get my two-year-old down for a nap around 1:30 PM. We do Bible at this time because we have only one television in our house, upstairs in the loft. Yep, there it is again – the stair motivation. I know a lot of other homeschool moms love to start their day with Bible time. I love this in theory too and we do not do it later because it is any less important. Bible is the one thing we do every day and we never skip. But I love using Minno for Bible time with my kids’ ages. Minno is an app and website that we have on our Apple TV. It is like Netflix for young Christian children and includes all sorts of shows, devotionals and more on the website. With all the stimulating things kids can be exposed to these days, I like to make sure at these ages that our Bible time is not dry or boring to them. We do a devotional on Minno each day which gets us discussing a lesson from scripture, applying it, and praying together about that lesson. We also sing the books of the Bible with a great guitar player on YouTube. A lot of our curriculum is grounded in Christian teaching so the Bible and God are part of our daily lives at home and throughout our homeschool. But this is the main time every day when we are focused on the Bible and nothing else.
After Bible I take my youngest into his bedroom for a nap while I let the big boys watch Leap Frog, Wild Kratts, or a show on Minno. They love this time and I’m usually guaranteed not to be interrupted while I tend to the little one. Since he is my last child, I am guilty of hanging on to the precious moments like rocking him down for longer than I did with the others. And I would do it all again.
What happens next has been a bit of a continuous transition over the last year.
Nap times are another big factor in when we do certain things throughout the day. Last year, I taught my kindergartener to read amongst other things during my now two-year old’s nap and four-year old’s quiet time. But by the end of the year, I felt my kindergartener needed more rest time himself at that time, and I had other tasks to complete. So I snuck in a thirty minute quiet time for him at the same time as my middle son, and took that time to tackle work and household duties. (It is simply amazing how much one can accomplish in thirty minutes!) But almost as fast as we got into that groove, another transition was needed because of a condition I have called piriformis syndrome.
Recently, just before my son broke his leg, I had a bad flare up. The long and short of that is, the pain became unbearable and was continuing to get worse. I could not walk or stand up without severe sharp pain to the point where I would cry out. I was unable to sleep or find any resting position of comfort. By some miracle I found a device called the Sacrowedgy which realigns my sacrum and hips and has made my body right again. I have to lay on it completely relaxed and still for at least 20 minutes each day without interruption. With three very young active boys, this means I have to literally lock myself in my room while my youngest naps and I give my older boys screen time or bring them in my room with me to play quietly. (I found out the hard way that having a two-year-old jump on me while I laid on the Sacrowedgy was not a good idea.) I take this time to listen to a podcast and recharge for the afternoon, rather than working/housework/homeschool work.
2:30 PM – After my time on the Sacrowedgy, which usually ends up being about 2:30 PM, I take the big boys back downstairs to the dining room table most days to have a snack and either work on a unit study or reading lesson. We try to save the lessons for this time that require most of my attention or that involve things that are choking hazards or not age appropriate for my youngest. On Thursdays we stay upstairs a little longer with the TV to do a Math-U-See lesson on DVD for each of them with hot air popped popcorn. Anything is better with popcorn, right?! My four-year-old is currently working through Math-U-See Primer and my kindergartener is working through Math-U-See Alpha. I will either work in breaks or alternate with them depending on the subject and how they are feeling. Once my two-year-old wakes up, we usually transition to read alouds for the remainder of the school day.
4:00 PM – I like to be done with school so that I can make quick notes on what we covered for the day, clean up, and start preparing dinner. We usually aim to eat dinner at 5:00 PM and sometimes my kids will alternate free time on Reading Eggs or the Fire, or simply dance and play around me while I am cooking if dinner does not require too much attention.
I have three “easy” nights a week for dinner that I plan for days I need them or when it is most cost effective to do so. For instance, one is for Taco Tuesday take-out at Cafe Rio which has great deals on Tuesdays and free Nino Quesadillas for kids. Another is when we have leftovers. And Friday, is always pizza and family movie night.
After dinner, my kids usually have about an hour to play while Shug and I clean up and check in with each other, and then join them to play or head upstairs early for baths.
7:00 PM – If we are not already upstairs for baths, all five of us head upstairs together to get ready for bed. This consists of jammies, potty, and brushing teeth before reading the next part of The Jesus Storybook Bible all together, praying and tucking the kids into bed in their room. They all share a room and love it. It’s like a never ending campout.
8:30 PM – By the time everyone is in bed and actually asleep it is often 8:30 or 9:00 PM and I have usually already begun working in our office right below their bedroom. (Stay tuned for a post on how I manage my work as a Realtor in the midst of this.) My bedtime varies widely depending on how much work I have to do. The earliest I am ever in bed is 10:30 PM and sometimes it can be as late as 1:00 AM. But this is the year of “boundaries” for our family, so we are working on prioritizing our health and well being and avoiding too many of those 1:00 AM nights.
One thing that makes it a little later for me is that most nights I watch a show on PureFlix or Amazon Prime before I go to bed. I know all the research says blue light so late is not good for you and that more sleep is more important, etc. But I have fought this battle my whole life and I am definitely one of those “can’t shut my mind off” kind of people. If I go straight to bed after working, I will lie awake for hours with my head spinning and getting increasingly exhausted and agitated that I cannot sleep. But hey, what’s the big difference between 12:30 AM and 1:00 AM anyway?!
Then we wake up and do it all again. That is a day in the life of our little homeschool. There are of course a lot of things like field trips, enrichment programs, and certain lessons and activities like ASL, French, Cooking, and Piano that are not a daily occurrence and we work in when we can. But hopefully this gives you a big picture of what we stick to most days.
The last thing that may be worth mentioning is that we do not homeschool the traditional Monday through Friday. Saturday is usually the busiest work day of the week for Shug, so we try to take a family day on Wednesday and then finish up our week of homeschool on Saturday instead (which is usually an easier day, and sometimes we can also skip depending on progress and if Shug is surprisingly around). Homeschool is also more of a year round thing for us as we want to inspire a love of learning and avoid it being a chore that our children cannot wait to get away from for a prolonged break. Colorado requires that we homeschool 172 days a year under our umbrella school and we do many more days than that. So lighter weeks throughout the year as we need them is more our style.
This is a beast of a blog post, I know. As I have been working through these things as a homeschool mom, it is always encouraging to hear more details about why other moms do it the way they do. We should feel empowered to make decisions that are the right fit for each of our own families. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. It is so important for each family to plan around their own needs and priorities, rather than try to fit their homeschool into someone else’s picture perfect schedule. I hope this helps you to develop the perfect plan for your own homeschool.
