Monday, November 23, 2009

Our homeschool days

I am asked frequently how I balance work and homeschooling, and what our days look like. We basically have four types of days:

1. Our "full homeschool" days, when I am focused mainly on school and housecleaning (2 days a week)
2. Our "half homeschool" days, when I do office hours at church (3 days a week)
3. Saturdays that I don't work and we have family day
4. Sundays and some Saturdays, when I work and the kids either go with me or stay home with their Dad

Today was "full homeschool" day, and it looked like this:

  • We all got up tired, around 8 am
  • We had breakfast together and I read a history book about Rome to them
  • They spontaneously decided to build a roman fort out of legos, and played together for awhile with a roman storyline
  • We went outside and cleaned out a raised bed in the garden, and the kids collected worms and grubs
  • They set up a habitat for the worms so they could keep watching them inside
  • We went to the YMCA, and they played in the playcare room while I worked out
  • We went to the library, and the kids picked out new books and movies for the week
  • We went to Goodwill to buy a "disposable" soup pot that I can fill with soup and give to the homeless camp for dinner tomorrow, and the kids picked out sweaters and Christmas nick-nacks
  • We listened to an audio book as we drove around
  • I took them out to lunch at an independent burger place
  • Carbon did his Math-U-See while Hypatia practiced counting blocks
  • I read them a non-fiction science book from the library
  • Hypatia cleaned bathrooms (with my help) and Carbon took out all the garbage and recycling
  • Carbon did his five minutes of vision therapy
  • Carbon and I each practiced piano (I give him a little lesson and then I practice my own pieces)
  • Carbon read me a Bob Book
  • The kids and I made soup together for dinner (they really are good little cooks)
  • Carbon worked on cleaning his room
  • They each got a bedtime story read to them

A fairly typical homeschool day around here.

3 comments:

  1. I was happy to discover your blog today. I was unable to find a contact link. I hope it's OK that I'm contacting you through a public comment. I've developed an educational program for Windows called SpellQuizzer that helps children learn their spelling and vocabulary words without the battle that parents often have getting them to sit down and write them out while the parents dictate to them. The parent enters the child's spelling words into the software making a sound recording of each word. Then the software helps the child practice his or her words. It really helped my children with their weekly spelling lists.

    I would appreciate your reviewing SpellQuizzer in The Curriculum of Love. If you are interested in hosting a giveaway of a SpellQuizzer license I'd be happy to supply a free license to the winner. You can learn more about the program at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com. There's a video demo you can watch at http://www.spellquizzer.com/SpellQuizzer-Demo.htm and a community site where SpellQuizzer users can share their spelling lists with one another (http://www.SpellQuizzer.com/Community). Finally, there's a page targeted to homeschooling families at http://www.spellquizzer.com/spelling-software-for-homeschoolers.htm. I'd be happy to send you a complimentary license for the software. Please let me know if you are interested.

    Thank you very much!

    Dan Hite
    TedCo Software
    Dan@SpellQuizzer.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh, thanks for sharing. I'm fascinated by homeschooling. It sounds like you take an "unschooling" approach.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where do you get the energy to do it all?

    :) Sparklee

    ReplyDelete