Ever since I wrote this post about our homeschool schedule and promised to do a “Day in the Life” post…I’ve been TRYING to take pictures of a day in our life.
Wow…I didn’t realize how tricky that job would be. The days of our lives are um…eventful. Especially during soccer season. I had a hard time taking a picture journal of one entire day.
Long story short…I couldn’t make it happen. SO…instead I decided to use all the pictures I’ve taken in the past several days of our lives to give you a feel for what our days look like. You’ll see that they really don’t look very much like this schedule…ever. That’s okay…that’s the beauty of homeschooling and being flexible and letting go of the idea that everything will be blissful and perfect and charming when you are a parent. (That was me doing a little self talk…telling myself that it’s okay to let some things go and realize that not everything will be blissful and perfect and charming as I parent my children.)
Here are all the boys eating pancakes for breakfast. Even though our days can look quite different when it comes to the schedule…we always work to make time for our Breakfast/Bible Reading time.
After breakfast we try to do some of our “together” work. On Mondays and Wednesdays this is usually the time we work on our Geography Packets. On this particular day, the boys were learning more about the natural resources in each state. Guess what? Nebraska produces a lot of corn. Bet you never knew that, huh? :)
I let the boys choose a quiet activity while I read History to them. Of course…the day I took this picutre they decided to color. Probably because I had mentioned in this post that my boys almost NEVER sit quietly and color. Had to prove me wrong, didn’t they?
Next, the boys work on some of their individual work. Here, Elias is working on his handwriting. This can take anywhere from five to twenty mintues. Five if I don’t remind him that the point of working in a handwriting book is to LEARN TO WRITE NEATLY. Twenty if he uses his handwriting book to learn to write neatly. ehem
Elias (2nd grade) usually needs help with his math…so here we are working on it. A special thanks to photographer Justus. And I suppose after looking at this picture it’s apparent that I don’t usually take the time to do anything with my hair on a typical school day? Yeah, it’s not in the schedule.
I actually got some Pre-K time with Malachi on this day. I sort of sat in the middle between Elias and Malachi and worked with both of them at the same time.
Asa hides out in an upstairs bedroom to work on his math. We found that it cuts his math time in half if he’s alone in an upstairs room vs. if he’s down in the kitchen where there are always lots of distractions.
One day after Justus finished his independent work…he mixed up cookies for a post-season soccer party he was to have with his team. The party wasn’t until the weekend, but we talked about how busy our upcoming weekend was going to be and decided to make them mid-week and freeze them. MAYBE he’s learning to plan ahead? Maybe.
Sometime in the afternoon everyone sits down for reading time. From the quality of this picture…it kind of looks like I make everyone read in the dark, doesn’t it?
Elias was sitting across the room and I couldn’t get all of the readers in one picture. This cutie is going to town with chapter books this year!
By the time school was over one of the days last week, Malachi had managed to empty the contents of two (or three) toy bins. Here he is (ever so cheerfully) picking up 300 toys. sigh
I think this picture sums up our days quite nicely. I took this last Wednesday right before I tried to cook dinner in this mess. It was our last 70 degree day before we knew it was going to get cold. SO…I left the dishes and the rest of our school work and all afternoon we worked outside to pull in all of our peppers and tomatoes and okra and potatoes. Oh, and we went and picked apples at someone’s farm too. After working for HOURS outside, then bringing it all in…here’s what the kitchen looked like. Shew!
This picture with Malachi and the produce is much cuter than the whole messy kitchen picture. See…that box there is tomatoes. We picked three bags of apples…three buckets of peppers. Somehow the potatoes didn’t make it into the pic. Just when I thought I was done canning for the year…woohoo more applesauce and salsa! :)
Some of you have asked how long our school day takes. Every day is different. Sometimes reading History takes ten minutes…sometimes it takes an hour. Usually we are finished by 2:30 or so (if we start about 9ish). That’s with taking a lunch break and a short play break. Often it depends on how focused the boys are on their independent work.
And there you have it. A day (or so) in our lives. Although there were lots of things I didn’t show you like lunch and dinner and evening and cleaning up and answering the phone and going to soccer games and sliding down the stairs on sleeping bags…
Really, you should all just come for a visit.
