School At Home - What We Do All Day

We have only a few months of experience, but I'd like to share how homeschooling is working for our family.  I always wondered what it might look like.  We've been asked by some of you to describe our setup.  As I meet more homeschooling families, I sure enjoy hearing how they find their daily rhythms and routines.   

I'll admit that curriculum is one of my favourite things to think about (seriously. a bit of a geek.), so I hand-picked quite a variety of programs to incorporate into our year.  I especially wanted to use curricula that would conquer academic weaknesses and celebrate my children's strengths (i.e. let's find a thorough program to improve spelling (a weakness for all three) and also ways to enjoy lots of art (Linnea), writing (Marijka) and slurping up info through reading (Aidan)!).  I spent time studying the curriculum maps of our Seattle school and made my plans with the transition back to school in mind.  As well, I'll admit, I incorporated plenty of books, activities and programs just because I wanted to!  It's a one-year experiment for me to play with curriculum!

School starts around 8:30.  There's not really a scampering to be ready on time; it's a casual start.  We usually just all find ourselves in the dining room somewhere around 8:30.

We often start with a song or a prayer, and then we look at our morning schedules.  Each child has a list of what activities are scheduled for their morning session.

Our morning schedule briefly lists who does what and in which order.  This way I can balance when each child might need my attention.  It includes spelling (we really like 'All About Spelling'!), math, Bible, typing, journal writing, story writing, piano practice, singing lessons, and Aidan's junior high program (a mostly-independent, research-based history/science curriculum called TRISMS).  Sometimes I throw in some household chores like baking a batch of muffins.  The children might be all over the house (Aidan may be up in his room, reciting the Bible chapter he's memorizing, while Linnea is sitting with me at the kitchen table doing Math and Marijka is in the living room doing a typing program on the computer). 


Our morning session goes from about 8:30-10:30.  When a child is done working through their rotation, they can do spelling games, math games, write a letter, etc. until we're all finished.  (I don't allow reading at this point because it's so easy to get sucked into a story and not feel like coming back to reality.)  Once we're all done, we have a snack and take a break.

We do our one-on-one spelling program in our back room, which is also the laundry room.  :)

I really like how practicing piano can be a part of our school routine,
and not something that needs to fit into our evenings.

Sometimes everyone ends up at the kitchen table at the same time!

About twenty minutes later, we gather together for Geography.  This time we study all together.  We're learning our way around the world, with several weeks on each continent.  I found a variety of excellent resources!  One day we enjoy a read aloud of a great book  from 1929 that tells about the author's explorations around the world.  (It's fun to hear him say, "perhaps one day a man will travel to the moon", or "the population of the world might soon reach two billion!"  It sparks lots of discussion.)  On other days we do some atlas drills and mapping, or we make related foods or read biographies or plan an imaginary vacation.  It's a lot of fun.  

By now it's about 12:30.  We take a full break for lunch.  The kids play, read and check email.  I throw in a load of laundry, start some supper prep and take a quiet time.

It's a good time to practice ninja skills on the playground across the street.

Around 2 pm, we gather again for what we call Afternoon Studies.  These studies are thematic, student led (for the most part) and often involve projects and field trips.  For example, the children wanted to learn more about boats.  We see a large variety of boats every day, and we were naturally becoming quite curious about the different types, purposes, costs, etc.  The kids helped plan what they wanted to learn and how we would spend a week of Afternoon Studies learning it.  We went to the nearby marina, did some sketching, and spent one afternoon in a large boat shop, talking with a very kind and knowledgeable shop owner.  We have an ongoing list of topics we'd like to study in our Afternoon Studies, some coming from our school curriculum back home, some triggered by recent questions, some just for fun.  We're willing to take on guest speakers!  Want to join us?  :)

We have a few outside activities as well.  Aidan takes fencing classes; Linnea is on a basketball team.  Every other week we get together with another homeschooling family.  My friend has a brain for math, and she provides Aidan with a chance to talk the talk and grapple with challenging math ideas.  Kathy also sets out a fun math project for me to do with the other kids.  After math, I lead a writer's workshop for the group.  It's great to spark each other's imaginations and share our stories with an audience.

So that's what homeschooling looks like in this home.  Can you picture it?  It's not a Big Event, it's just normal daily life for us.  I've been in the homes of other homeschooling families now, and I know that each family's answer to this question will be very different.  That's the joy of it all!