A Day in the Life of a Homeschool Family

Just a peek into a fairly normal day in our life.  I have better goals then what happened here.  Some days I reach those goals, and some days are much worse then this, so I'd say this is a pretty average day:

5:30 am - Cat wakes me up.  I put him outside and go back to sleep, cursing him for living.  (I'm a devil when I'm woken up... ask Richard.)

6:15 am - Garrett wakes up and makes himself breakfast and watches TV.  Dad leaves for work.

7:00 am - Keira wakes up, makes herself breakfast and joins Garrett.

7:15 am - William wakes up and Libby makes breakfast for herself and William.

8:00 am - I stumble out of bed, eat, get ready and slowly do a little last minute prep work for the day (in between Facebook checks), along with some random piano practice.  I was planning on doing a lesson on history, but I just wasn't feeling it this morning, so I changed it to an anatomy lesson last minute.  Cuz that's how I roll...  :P

9:45 am - We finally get started.  We start with our morning devotional.  Keira chooses the song, and the kids march around the room giggling to "Book of Mormon Stories" while I play it on the piano.  William offers up a short prayer about protecting us from the bad guys, and then we get to our memorization for the week.  I lose it temporarily as the kids' attention spans die and they start goofing off.  Breaks are bad for us!  We forget how to sit still when we break from our routine too long.  *sigh*  Luckily we quickly remember how to act, and I'm happy to say that's the only time I lose it.  Back to devotional time... We've been memorizing the Articles of Faith, one each week, and we are on #12.  Typically we start off on Mondays just reading it and talking about what it means, and then listening to the song.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays we work on memorizing it, and Thursdays they can pass it off for a quarter.  Since we started working on #12 right before we went on break, we just went on memorizing it this Monday.
 
10:00 am (maybe... I lost track of time) - After that we move on, right into Signing Time.  Each day we learn 5 new signs to add to our memory bank.  Today we learned how to sign "something", "wait", "wait long", "draw/art", "breakfast", "lunch", and "dinner".  A little more than usual, since some of them were pretty easy to memorize.

10:30 am?- After Signing Time we just move right into what we call Kidschool.  It's the time of the day where we learn a school subject together, such as science, art, music, history, etc.  All of those subjects can be done together in a "school room" type of learning environment.  Each age takes away something different, and we can apply age appropriate activities after the lesson.
 
Today we did Human Anatomy.  I get out my Singin' Smart book and we learn the first half of a song about bones.

Then we watch a 5 minute YouTube video about bones, watch the black and white1929 Disney cartoon about dancing skeletons, and then move on to some activities they could choose from (depending on age).  Libby chooses to play a bone-labeling game on the computer,  Keira cuts out and puts together a small paper skeleton, while we all do the big activity one by one.  This one takes about an hour to complete.  They love it, so it is a fun hour to let pass by!  I trace each one of them on butcher paper, and then they cut out their own outlines, and draw in bones on their own bodies.  All the while we listen to the Bones song we started to learn earlier, on repeat.

While Garrett and Libby wait for their turns to be traced, they take turns doing their daily reading program on the computer (Reading Eggs).  That's how we multi-task while we homeschool!  ;)

readingeggs.com

12:45 pm - Lunch time!  I make a health shake, and Pita bread with butter and honey on it for everyone.

Time after this is a lot less structured.  It usually is.  On a better a day we could be done with everything before lunch.  Today since I got a late start the kids still need to do their family and personal jobs, math, and Keira needs to do reading.

Right before we're about to break up for math individually, I decide to change things.  Keira has decided to start making a huge fort in our family room!  More like a castle fort!  So, I change plans and turn on Donald in Mathmagic Land (an excellent cartoon about math!!!) and we call the problem-solving-fort-building, and Donald-watching, math for the day.  Sometimes that happens.  ;)  We roll with it.  Because sometimes they do heavy loads of math and little else, so we can afford days where we "play" math!

This is about 3/4 the way done.  It became higher and bigger.

 
After lunch until 3:00 pm - they all complete their family jobs, personal jobs, and reading.  (We usually do family jobs before lunch and make it part of our learning time, taking time to really show the kids how to clean well, but alas, it's that kind of a day.  haha  It got rushed through today.)  They do their jobs and reading mostly on their own, so I can squeeze in a few fluffy phone calls to family and friends while they're doing that.  And of course when they pass off their jobs they're allowed some Minecraft time.  

5:00 pm - 8:00 pm - Dad comes home and we show off what we learned today.  Pizza for dinner, and some family time, and then it's time for kids to go to bed.  Time for some mom & dad time!!!  Yes!!!!!!!


Overall, I'd say today is a success.  There are things that should have gotten done that didn't, and things that took longer than maybe should have, but mostly we enjoyed each other, and learned a lot.  Tomorrow we learn more about bones, do a little more family reading, do better quality family jobs, and math from our curriculum (Life of Fred).




All in a day in our homeschool-ing life!