A Day in our Homeschool Life
#1
Over the years our homeschool days change. Here begins a series of "Days in our Homeschool Life" where I dig into my journals and find what I shared about our routines and our days back then.
June 2005I love routine. I believe the kids do better with routine – I do better with routine. It does not take much though to make me change my mind and do something else (I’m a Sanguine at heart who has learnt the benefits of the discipline of routine – most of her days!)
Please keep in mind that this is our normal day - It is so easy to compare and contrast – and usually we come up the worse for it. We live in the tropics of sorts, we live a rural lifestyle where Peter is off before dawn to start work. He doesn’t work in terms of the clock, he works in terms of sun up and sun down.
Okay… there is all my qualifying comments!
We work in blocks of time.
I wake somewhere between 4.30 and 5.30am. I consider the time before 6.00am as my time and use this to read or scrapbook usually. Then I have my Bible time, exercise etc...
My children wake between 5.00 and 6.00am. Their first block of activity is to dress, do the bedroom, have their personal time with God, chores, and 12ds goes for a bike ride. I am in the process of training the younger two to read their bibles and pray as a daily habit.
By 7.30am everyone has had breakfast (though not necessarily together) and we spend the next block doing chores. I find that if we work on the house together then we not only learn the skills necessary but we can then move onto other things together.
Depending on which day of the week we start our Table time between 8.00 and 8.30am. Table time is our Discipline Studies – Math (Math-U-See), Language (LLATL), Typing, Foreign Language (Rosetta Stone), Writing (Writing Strands). Each child has their own necessary subjects depending on their development and load.
10.00am We have morning tea, talk time and Family Discipleship time. This consists of reading the Bible, discussing, praying. Then we move into our Character studies (Character First) and then we have a Bible study (no curriculum in particular but use whatever tools are best for whatever subject we are studying). This whole block takes 1.5hours and sometimes the children have a notebook page/activity to complete afterwards.
We then spend an hour doing our Discussion studies – History and/or Science. I work with the younger two (8dd and 6ds) with Five in a Row and the older two (12ds and 10dd) do their notebook pages for whatever book or lessons they are working on. They are using Diana Warings History as a reading list and occasional assignment. Plus Joshua is using Answers in Genesis material for an overview of Chemistry and Jessica is using Eagle Wings Science.
Lunch and chores
We have an hour reading for the older ones, reading and room time for the younger two. I spend this time either catching up, or scrapbooking.
Mid afternoon is spent on personal interest projects – with a special focus on creativity. This is our new block that we are trying to get disciplined about.
After 4.00 it is free time for the kids, and office work, checking books/lessons for Mum, computer time etc…
Dinner is at 6.00 which we are trying to re-establish to be around the table to be followed by a read-aloud. Followed by dishes, reading time in bed and lights off at 8.00pm
This is our days for 4 days of the week, on Fridays we spend more time on life skills and creative pursuits. Our weekends are full of physical activity, more creativity, more reading, friends, and sometimes even writing!
Live life with your kids!
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