Saturday, February 11, 2012

A Typical Day

I love reading what  other homeschooler's days look like and thought it might finally be time for me to share what a fairly typical day looks like for us.  So here's today: Friday, February 10th, 2012.

7:30 John climbs into bed with me for a quick snuggle.

7:45 Up and having coffee.  Gabe and John are reading Asterix.

8:10 Lily is up.  She heads to the couch with a book and a hot chocolate.  Usually I'd make her get moving a little earlier but I know she went to bed with a sore throat and needs a little more time this morning.

8:15 Make a coffee cake for breakfast ( this is a treat I've been craving for awhile).  Shower, get dressed while the cake is baking.

8:45 Take all 3 and go do our paper route while the coffee cake is cooling.

9:30 Home again.  Breakfast.

9:40  Start our official school day.  John starts with French on the computer (Rosetta Stone).  Gabe starts with Language Lessons, we're learning about commas today.  Lily starts with Writing with Skill.  They then rotate with Gabe doing typing lessons on the computer, John doing his math and Lily stills finishing writing.   When Lily is finished writing I teach her math lesson (a short one today: polygons) while Gabe reads and John does a dot to dot on the iPad.  Then it's onto Gabe's math (subtracting) and reading with John.  After everyone has finished their math we sit together and read our history lesson from Story of the World on the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.  Gabe and Lily fill in pictures, vocabularly words and short narrations of their history while I warm up lunch.
(I used to teach all the math at once, then move on to grammar, spelling, ect.  I finally got smart a few weeks ago and started teaching Lily's math while the boy's do handwriting or something else that doesn't require help.  Then I switch and do the boy's math together.)

12:15 Lunch - leftover homemade Mac and Cheese with slices of orange pepper. Lily, John and I play a game of Uno while finishing our lunch.

1:00 Quiet reading time for all.

1:45 Boys convince me to read two chapters of the BFG.

2:00 Time to fold and put away laundry. (Washed and dried during the morning)

2:30 Back downstairs to finish up our history and any other loose ends. Lily hops in the shower as she didn't have time in the morning. And then puts her laundry away before joining us. Lily proofreads her history summary, then does some decorating in her history journal before moving on to update her history timeline. Gabe and John both want to work on learning to type (I think they must just want to play on the computer since we've been going all week with no computer/TV time) so I set each of them up.

4:10 Lily has a quick doctor appointment.

5:00-6:30 Gabe has Judo. We decided to try the older student's class today.  Gabe has been really frustrated by the younger boys.  Success!  The focus of the older boy's is much better so Gabe didn't experience the frustration he's felt in the younger class.  It was a hard workout and Gabe finished feeling exhausted and hungry.

6:45 Home to dinner.

7:30 Gabe and John into bed.

8:15 Lily settled into bed with her book.  I stayed and read a chapter of Wrinkle in Time.  This is a great way for me to introduce books that Lily doesn't normally like or are too hard.  She had tried reading Wrinkle in Time to herself and didn't like it but is enjoying having it read to her.