I actually wasn’t planning on posting in this year’s link up with Simple Hameschool blog’s “ Homeschool Day in the Life” for a few reasons; 1. I have barely blogged at all in the past year because of technical difficulties with getting my photos to load and I didn’t think this would be any different, and 2. Homeschooling isn’t the main focus of this blog, though it’s a big part of our lives.
So what happened? Why am I sitting here typing this up? Well for one thing, I figured out a way to get some photos to upload, and, while a ton of my recent pictures are still unavailable for use on this space, I was able to take some this morning that I could actually use! And once I realized making a post was actually a possibility I got thinking about how nice it is to be able to look back from year to year on what we were doing and see how things are growing and changing in our family’s life. So I said, what the hey, I’m going for it!
Once everybody is up and has had some hugs and a little time to play, I tell them to get what they need for quiet time. They run to get books, a doll, their crochet or something else they can do while sitting quietly. I put on a CD , usually scripture songs, praise, or something instrumental like classical or Celtic music to let them know quiet time has started. The rules are to sit quietly, not to touch or bother your neighbor, and to ask if you need to get up for the bathroom ( just so mom knows why someone is popping up ). We used to have quiet time just to teach the kids how to hold still for when they would need to, but now we want them to learn to treasure a quiet start to the day, so we started allowing them to bring something they enjoy doing while they have their quiet time.
This all lasts about a half hour while I make breakfast, usually something hot and hearty to keep us going through the morning. This morning it’s biscuits and scrambled eggs ( the chickens are getting busy again!).
After breakfast we tidy up and then we gather to start our morning lessons. We say a prayer, sing a few songs , then work on our scripture for the week. We spend some time working to commit it to memory with verbal work, then we practice our hand writing with the same verse.
Mondays are our day for handwriting, but we actually get more in throughout the week when we do our notebooking for other subjects. On other days of the week we use this morning time to do U.S. geography, poetry, or other subjects, but we always sing and practice saying our verse at morning time.
While the the third and second grader are working on handwriting, I spend time helping kindergartener Ember with some of her own work. She has a set of Rod and Staff kindergarten workbooks she is going through and she also is learning her alphabet , working on a new letter each week. This week is “Oo” .
Hard at work! I’ve seen so much progress with handwriting for both my big girls once we made it a regular thing.
We just try to keep these little guys happy however we can ! Conagher wants to be a part of it all and he enjoys being present during our time together at the table, sometimes he gets pretty loud but we just try to work around it or distract him.
One of Ember’s daily tasks is to decide what weather gnomes to set out for the day, today was a sunny one, and we also set out our winter season gnome since spring isn’t quite here yet. We have been making a new gnome for each season this year and she loves it! I feel like it’s a great way to learn and be aware of the weather and the changing seasons
“O o” is for owl and orange! The chalkboard wall sure comes
in handy!
Next we move on to either Science or History, these are group subjects that I read aloud and then the children notebook about what they learned. We end up doing each of these subjects twice a week and we are making great progress with this technique this year. We also use our note books for storing their handwriting and any other projects. It’s the first year we’ve used the three ring binders for our notebooks and it is a definite improvement!
Today is History. We’ve been using mostly living books for our early American history study. This one is called “a pioneer sampler “ and I like that it’s a story about a pioneer family, but also has great historical notes at the end of each chapter and lots of good illustrations. My mom read this one to me and my siblings so it’s been fun reading it with my kiddos, too!
After we are done with history, it almost noon and we hurry off to town. We hit the post office , grocery store and a few other stops, including the library to make this week’s math worksheet copies. We check out Goodwill on the way home and I score a skirt, book on tide pools ,and a CD titled “ tea time classics” all for 50% off.
When we get back it’s getting late, but the big girls squeeze in some math work while I put away the groceries. Then we’re done for the day. Supper is very snack-ish and then we just chill (and I work on this blog!) while Dustin attends a local volunteer fire department meeting. Some days are more productive school-wise, but I’m happy with this one. I’ll try to finish reading ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ this evening for the girl’s bedtime story. Then hopefully I’ll have something nice and hot to drink while I dig into that library book I grabbed for myself ( Its totally YA fiction and I admit I’m far from ashamed 🤓😄).
Signing off,
Sleepy but happy mom.
