A Day in the Life of

I wake up.  Generally speaking, I awaken when our house is still dark, and the sleepy quiet still hangs in the air.  Our puppy will sometimes beat me to the punch, but if not, I try to have a basket of prepped of Bible study supplies in the master bathroom.  I hide in there until either someone comes to find me, the puppy decides it is time to get up (NOW!!!!), or my alarm rings.

After the dogs have been walked and fed, we sit down for breakfast.  I have a breakfast helper, a lunch helper, and a dinner helper.  This is how my kids are learning how to follow recipes, cook, serve, operate the stove and oven safely, cut, chop, mince, dice...you get the picture.  Anytime we have company over (like this coming weekend) they also learn how to cook for more than just our family of five.

After breakfast, we clean up, do a quick chore of brushing teeth, making beds, and then taking the dogs out again.  This is also when I start a load of laundry.

Now our school day truly starts.  This year, for the first time we have played with our morning schedule, trying new ideas.  For years we have had one on one time, where I work with each of them one on one concerning language arts and math.  This year though, we have started with morning time.  Our morning time looks VERY different from everyone else's.  We have tried other's plans, pre-made, suggested, examples...and it just did.not.work.

I wanted to begin our day with the Word of God.  When we first began earlier this year, we tried simply reading the Bible with maps and background books.  That was ok, but it wasn't working really, their attention was constantly drifting, they would drag their feet on any writing assignments, or narrations, or map work.  I think Bible study is suited to afternoons or evenings as a thing all on its own. It is something special, something that should be treasured, not just a check-off box to get through.

About this same time we also selected a country to pray over and have been learning all about that country - the population, style of government, currency, geography, climate...etc;.  That worked better, but I still wanted something more than just praying over and learning about a country and memorizing Bible verses.

This year, we switched our history curriculum to Mystery of History.  This is a very biblically based curriculum.  So, I simply decided to start with that.  We are really enjoying this.  Perfect fit!!!!  About three or four mornings a week we also work on our country after we get done with history.

After morning time, we meet one on one for language arts and math.

Generally speaking, it is now lunchtime.  We eat and then have quiet time.  Quiet time, due to the health struggles that my kids have, is an integral part of our day.  I have tried eliminating it, and they just need that time tucked into the day.  So we use audiobooks or in the winter months watch movies.


After quiet time comes our favorite, favorite, favorite time of day.  Read-alouds.  We use read-alouds to encompass biographies, science, and history (fleshing them out), geographies and customs from different parts of the world (Give Your Child the World - we use this for a master list).  We also do Shakespeare study at this point in the day (ok so definitely NOT a favorite for everyone, but important).  We try to end the days with any science experiments, art class, music (learning to play the piano), and handicrafts.  If it has been a particularly hard day, we do save those for the weekends.

Since a large part of our day is spent with me reading aloud, I do think it is important that I constantly am monitoring to make sure my kids are actually learning from listening by having them narrate to me, complete a written assignment or a notebooking page.  I know I wrote a post about our folder system, but I cannot find it.  So briefly, I get three manilla folders out a week, write the kids' name, date (example this week's folder will say February 26 - March 2) and inside I will tuck any work they complete for that week.  Quizzes, review sheets, written narrations, notebooking pages etc;.  This helps them keep their work from becoming so overwhelming to them  (a three-ring binder with dividers completely overwhelms them, a spiral notebook loses it's sheets etc;), this system also helps me be able to pull out a specific week if I need it.  Which, I am always surprised how often I need to do this.  They will choose one or two themes from the week and decorate their folder with an example from it - either from a read aloud, a science or history topic, or a math problem.  They can also pluck a folder out and take it with us if we need to go somewhere unexpectedly.

By the time my husband gets home from work, I am tired.  It has been a full day, both with learning and struggles.  I am ready to count down the hours for bedtime in which I get to either read (if my husband is busy) or spend some time with him talking and listening and watching a tv show or movie.