2013-2014 A Day in the Life of our Homeschool

Well, I feel I am better organized this year in regards to our homeschool/lesson time. I am still trying to get our schedule done to how it will work best for us. The following schedule is the one we are using right now, it has already changed a bit since last week (our first week of school).

Morning Routine

I start my day with at least one load of laundry that I try to remember to start before I even go downstairs. 

The next 1-2 hours are for me to have my quiet time with the Lord, get some blogging done and check work in the girls' workboxes and get the new day's workboxes set up. 

On the occasion that one of the girls comes down early, they may lay quietly on the couch or have some time on starfall.com or something similar.

When I am ready I will set the table for breakfast, usually cereal and juice. 

The girls are to get dressed and are supposed to make their beds (though that doesn't always happen). Sometimes I find them upstairs playing.

When they are all dressed we will have breakfast.

And I will do their hair. (Yes, I do their hair while we are eating. Otherwise it takes all morning to get ready.)

When we are done with breakfast, Harold gets to play,

While we clear the table and,

empty the dishwasher from the load that was cleaned overnight.

The girls then get approximately 10-15 minutes each on the WiiFit Plus.

While they are occupied I will get our school area ready for Gathering Time.

Gathering Time

(Gathering time is what we are now calling our "circle" time. Circle time just felt so... schooly and we are not technically in a circle.)

The children pretend to travel to school to see Mrs. Bearly (that is my teacher name).  Sometimes they take the bus or train (the couch),

other times they may take a row boat.

After they have greeted Mrs. Bearly and I have welcomed them to school, we start our gathering time with prayer. We all take a turn thanking God for at least one thing. 

Then it is time for the Pledge of Allegiance and the Pledge to the Bible.

We then sing the B-I-B-L-E.

During the 1st verse we sign B, I, B, L, E, book, and me. And then we stand up. We sing the second verse and walk around the dining table. They take turns each day being the leader. Even Harold love join in, he thinks it is great fun!

After the children are back in their seat we get ready to do the calendar. We sing "This is the Day the Lord has Made" while one of the children points to the words on our poster. The poster is then opened to do our calendar.

The children used to take turns pointing to the calendar, but calendar has been taking so long, I have decided to see if I can speed it along by being the one doing the pointing while they add the day, month, date, year and season to the poster.

We then sing our "What is the Weather?" song and they check out the windows.

We then move into our letter/sound. There are different things we do each day with our word cards and picture cards. On the first day of a unit either I or one of the older girls will hold the word card and sound it out and they will take turns finding the picture and putting it on our poster.

On other days we take them off or play a "take one away" game, I have also had them hand me the one that rhymes with a word I am saying. We also work on our Words to Remember at this time. 

Lesson Time

I will read them some books based on our topic.

And we have our Bible time from the MFW manual.

At this time we may also have a project and we will learn Spanish.

I am still working out the order of things, but what seems to work best is to have a small snack next.

Then the older two work on their workboxes. This may include student sheets from MFW or additional worksheets I find or make. They also have their math curriculum that goes in one box. 

While they are working on that, I will work with Hannah.

Harold will sit at the table and I will give him activities. 

Putting straws through a paper towel cardboard roll.

And if I stand next to him he may just put things in my pocket.

Putting pompoms in a container.

As the older two finish their workboxes they tag the sticky notes off the box and put it on their All Done sheet.

When workboxes are done they will play with playdough while I make lunch. This is one of the new things we are trying. They used to watch a show while I make lunch.

Lunch Time

Rest Time

Then they relax on the floor and watch their show.

Afternoon Work Time

After the show is done the girls will do their calendar notebooks which consists of writing the date in the calendar and figuring out some information about the date, plus they write the time and record the weather.

Tabitha (and sometimes Amelia) will work on cursive.

Amelia also works on Time4Learning, but I don't have any pictures of that.

I then make dinner and we eat before daddy's leaves for work.  

The girls have after dinner "helpful jobs." If they do these in a timely manner and without behavior issues they get to play on NintendoLand or some other video game. 

And that is a quick look at our "normal" day.