I got the idea of posting my days from my favorite homeschooling magazine, Practical Homeschooling. In it they always have a family or two tell about a typical day of homeschooling at their house. I eagerly await that article each month, hoping to find some kind of common ground between me and other homeschoolers. But I think they might be putting their best foot forward, and anyway, it's just one day. I thought a better representation of a typical homeschool household would need to be covered over a longer period of time since every day is new and different. Some are good, some are bad, and some are a little of both.
So here goes:
8:30am Awakened by my 3-yr. old, staring me down with her big blue eyes. She wants to play on the kindle fire but since we're too busy to fix our wi-fi, I haven't been able to update any of the apps and they're all expired. So I tell her no.
9:00 Open my eyes again. She is now standing by my closet (where the kindle is kept) looking out the window. I get up and groggily slip on slippers and head out to the kitchen. I've been sick and I had to take Benedryl twice last night to keep from coughing so I'm still a bit sedated.
9:30 I really can't remember. I must have gotten breakfast for some of the kids. My husband leaves for work.
10:00 Get myself breakfast and read.
10:30 Sit my three oldest boys down at the dining room table to work on their Which Way USA Oklahoma books before their friend comes over to finish it with them. They work on the parts that require the map together once a week on Mondays and we do the other puzzles on our own.
11:00 Leave them with word searches to finish and take the phone into my bedroom to call the bank about a refinance option. Then take the sheets off my bed to wash and go get dressed.
11:30 Wake up the baby and my 15-yr. old, the only two still in bed. I tell the 15-yr. old to empty the dishwasher (last night's chore that didn't get done) before she starts her school work and sit down to feed the baby. One of the younger kids has put on Curious George by now. I try reading.
12:00pm Read emails about some problems at our Parent Partnership and then have a quick meeting with the kids discussing some changes that we will be making while we're there for the rest of the school year.
12:30 Make kids lunch and tell them to get dressed before their friend arrives.
1:00 Friend and his mom come. She and I talk about the Parent Partnership and how we intend to deal with the problems.
1:30 Boys and friend sit down with his mom to finish up Oklahoma book while I take the younger four kids upstairs to play in our bonus room. We vacuum up some popcorn left from a WWII movie night on Friday for my oldest two and their friends and then get out the shape blocks. I haven't gotten these out in years so my youngest ones are excited.
2:30 Play a game of "Count Your Chickens" with my 7-yr. old then work on Mathlink cubes with my 5-yr. old and 3-yr. old while the baby plays with the shape blocks.
3:00 Boys are done with Which Way USA. Everyone plays while us mom's discuss and catch up. 15-yr. old takes a break from her work and goes outside. She catches a frog and brings it in to show us.
4:00 Friends go home. We get ready for swim lessons.
5:00 Swim lessons for 6 of the kids. Baby stays home with 15yr-old.
6:00 We head over to another family's house to return a coat someone left at our house on movie night. That mom asks me to deliver something to another family on my way home. I do. Because I chat with everyone a little and we all live at least 15 minutes away from each other, it takes almost an hour.
7:00 We get home and I start dinner.
7:30 We eat dinner and watch Lego Droid Tales. Everyone sits in the family room/kitchen to eat even though the dining room is perfectly usable.
8:00 My husband finally comes home. He's been out looking for parts for the Pinewood Derby car.
9:00 I shuffle the kids, minus the three older boys who are helping with the car, to bed.
10:00 Everyone's in bed except the baby and the three older boys.
11:00 The baby goes to bed and I try to finish this blog.
12:00am I make myself some sweet potato fries. The boys are still up.
12:30 The baby wakes up and I hold her for a few minutes then put her back in bed. She screams but soon falls back asleep.
1:00 They finally paint the first coat of primer on the car and the boys go to bed. I'm almost done with this blog post.
1:20 I quit working on the blog and go eat my fries. Then I'll go to bed.
As you can tell, we're night people. But one of my goals is to get us up earlier and get everyone, especially the baby, in bed earlier. My other goal is for this daily blog to be a lot shorter, meaning, I don't do as much during the day. It's just ridiculous. And this was actually a relatively laid back day.
