Our Home Rhythm

I think the question I get asked the most as a home school mom, is what a day in our home looks like. I thought I'd share with you what our typical day's rhythm is like. I say "rhythm" and not schedule, purposefully in an attempt to not delude anyone into thinking that our ship runs like a well oiled machine. It does not! We have a home full of children and we live life here in this house. Our kids are imperfect and so am I, so this how many days look in our routine, but there are probably just as many that are crazy and chaotic.

My kids are no longer toddlers, nor are they particularly young children. My oldest is 22 and my youngest is 9. I am not a morning person. I have Lyme Disease, and early mornings and I do not agree with each other, nor am I particularly interested in forcing a relationship that I don't enjoy. So, if you are looking for inspiration to jump out of bed before the break of dawn, you are going to be sorely disappointed in me.

My husband wakes up about 7am and he gets ready for work and then kisses me goodbye. I am still usually asleep but vaguely remember responding to his kiss. I wake up about 8. Its usually 8 because this is the time "do not disturb" ends on my cell phone and it starts furiously pinging next to my head. I generally reach for my phone and spend about 1/2 hr in bed catching up on everything that happened in the 8 hrs I was sleeping.

Usually about 8:30 my youngest two boys, ages 9 and 11 come into my room and as they are pretty noisy, I realize that there is no way I'm going to be able to sleep anymore, so I roll out of bed and get dressed. I throw my hair into a haphazard ponytail and make my way downstairs. I am of the opinion that as in an airplane crash, "save yourself first" totally applies to eating breakfast. With this in mind, I make breakfast for myself as my youngest boys chatter away. (truthfully this chattering actually sounds like arguing over what the other boy chose to request on the Amazon Tap) :D

Once I have sustained myself, I call down my 13 yo daughter and 15 yo son. Ideally everyone is downstairs and dressed by 9 am. While I make breakfast for the kids, they start their chores. We have a chore chart, they earn tickets, and can redeem them for items in our family store, computer time, and actual money. (This part of the day sounds like a recording as I repeatedly say "what are you supposed to be doing") About 9:15 they stop and eat breakfast... smoothies, cereal, waffles, bagels, eggs, oatmeal...nothing fancy. Then they resume their chores and I disappear with a cup of tea into the school room.

Now, this is my favorite part of the day. I sit, only occasionally interrupted,in my school room and read my bible, jot down my daily scripture writing, pray, look over today's "do not forget" list, and basically ready myself for the day ahead.

At 10:00 we all sit down in the family room and start our school day. I like the "Morning Basket" method where I have a bunch of stuff gathered into a basket and we rotate thru different things on different days of the week. We read the bible (Catherine Vos Story Bible), missionary biographies(Jim Elliot), catechism(Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds), poetry (Children's Intro to Poetry), and Shakespeare (Charles and Mary Lambs). We do music study(Mozart), art study (Monet), and geography(the 50 States). We pray together.

At 11am we break up a bit. I have my kids divided into 2 groups for learning. We use Sonlight as the base for our curriculum. Sonlight is a literature rich curriculum utilizing real books to study history, geography, and literature. My 15 and 13 yo's get out their schedules and begin their school day wherever they feel most comfortable working in our home. The 2 younger boys and I head into the school room and work together on whatever subject we are doing that day. Mondays and Wednesdays we do History, Tuesdays and Thursdays we do Science. We don't actually do school on Fridays, leaving it for appointments, field trips and friends.

We break for lunch at 12. We break for a whole hour. We make, eat and clean up from lunch and then there is usually 20 min for the kids to do their own thing.

At 1pm I read out loud for a half an hour from a work of historical fiction that coincides with what we are learning in history. At 1:30 we do math, writing and reading for about 1 and 1/2 hours. I call this independent work because all but my youngest can manage this on his or her own with me close by for a quick question. We are usually done about 3pm. And that is the end of our home school day! After they are done, I generally allow them to have 2-3 hours to just be, do, play, rest.

We eat dinner about 6:30. We do extra curricular stuff most evenings. My middle boys are in scouts, my 13yo daughter goes to a bible study for the camp she volunteers at over the summer, my two youngest boys are in Awana, I lead a bible study every other week, and we have a home bible study meet at our house once a week.

In the past we have also had a day that we participated in a home school co-op, but with most of our kids in Jr High and High School, it felt like we were spending too much time out of our home, so this year I am trying a 1 1/2 hour PE co-op on Thursday afternoons, but not a full day co-op.


And that is what my typical home school rhythm is....