Lately there have been a number of emails from friends and blog readers about what homeschool looks like for our family right now. Come on you guys ... you think the logistics of a school with six students and an average age of about three might be interesting? :)
Well, I love hearing how others make things happen too, so as long as you promise not to assume things are always smooth and as scheduled, I'll share. Do keep in mind that this is how our day is going right now. It is tweaked from time to time depending on whether we have a lot of outings one week, and the personality, current stage, and needs of the baby. Homeschooling takes a bit of juggling, but I really love it's flexibility.
How the days go right now:
The nice thing about homeschooling right now is that we only have a couple learning formally. This year we only have a seven year old in Year Two of Ambleside Online and a five year old in Year Zero. Add to that four in the younger set. Lotta action going on there, but I've found attitudes and energy are at their best in the early morning so we work really hard then and try to keep the afternoon more relaxed. No two days are the same, but here's how things tend to run if all goes well:
5:15 am - Nathan and I are up. Yes, it's brutally early, and I'd rather sleep in, but this is the only way I've found to keep things sane and smooth at this point in our lives. I get breakfast started and read the Bible a bit before waking the masses. Laundry loads go in if it's a laundry day. I haven't been real good about getting up on time lately. Am working on that. :)
6:15 am - Boys up and hopefully make their beds. Nate and I diaper and dress the unpotty-trained two. Dan gives the boys' bathroom toilet a wipe down (yes, it's daily by necessity). Noah sets table. Isaac unloads dishwasher - needs lots of encouragement sometimes. Peter gets the Bible from the shelf and brings it to the table. John does his best to help but usually gets in the way. Christian sleeps or hangs out in the Pack-n-Play.
6:30 am - Breakfast. If we're not too late Nathan reads a half a chapter or so from wherever we're at in the kid-favorite sections of the Bible. Under threes don't have to stay, and I help keep the others' attention where it should be. Everyone clears their places.
7:00 am - Nathan to work. Dan clears table. Noah starts math with me while Baby eats and cuddles with me too. Preschool and toddler crowd free play inside with hotwheels, blocks, play-doh, or something similar. NOT all those options at once. Can be contained with baby gates to the room I'm in for supervision if too rowdy.
7:15 am - School starts for Dan. Dan joins us at the table and starts his math. Noah's should be done by now and if he still has energy we work on reading with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Afterward he copies two or three letters perfectly for his copywork. Hopefully the little guys are still playing fairly well inside.
7:45 am - Dan does his copywork of writing out the current verse he's learning in Awanas or from an interesting passage from his lessons. I read one of our "kindergarten stories" (the very best of our picture books like Beatrix Potter, Robert McCloskey, or Mother Goose.) to Noah and the littles.
8:00 am - Noah is done with sit-down school for the morning and is free to play. Usually the boys all head out to the back yard to dig in the dirt, ride bikes, or dress up like Romans. Dan and I read one of his two longer subjects together (twenty-minute passages of History, Literature, or Religion).
8:30 am - Dan narrates back his summary of the subject and then is too worn out to sit longer. He joins the horde outside and I load the dishwasher, switch over laundry loads, or tend to Christian. Christian often goes down for a nap now.
9:00 am - If the weather is good Dan and I read the second twenty-minute passage outside while the boys play. Dan narrates. Hopefully I haven't had to stop and help the little guys behave too often.
9:30 am - Dan, Noah, and anyone who's interested do a group science lesson two or three times a week. At elementary levels this is nature study loosely covering one section of Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study per term. We're finishing up trees just now. Lesson includes looking up the tree, sometimes online, discussing, observing it in person if it grows here, and maybe drawing it or doing a rubbing of it's leaves. This sounds like a lot, but it's mostly organized exploring of the boys' world.
Now if the cat happens to bring home a desert pocket mouse, dead snake, or we find a particularly interesting roadkill, of course we put off the assigned lesson and study that instead. Once Nathan brought home a dead dove in the grill of his work truck. While I'd never kill something just to learn about it, there's no point in wasting what's available. It's easy, relevant, and delightfully nasty. They love it. So that's how we do science.
10:00 am - Dan goes off by himself for fifteen minutes of reading an "easy reader" book like Frog and Toad. If he has trouble focusing he does this aloud to me where ever I'm parked with baby Christian, laundry, or dishes. He'd rather read on his own. Little boys are getting rumbly and often need me nearby while they play to keep things civil. Directing them to a particular activity helps sometimes. So does having each of them choose an activity of their own and having them play by themselves in different rooms.
10:30 am - Dan does five minutes with the Berlitz German "flashcards" on the computer. Afterward he has free play with the rest of the boys while I tend to John or Christian and clean up math blocks and loose pencils. Sit-down school can be done at this point if needed. I keep our assignments on a weekly list with a minimum to hit each day, but if we're on a roll we might get another one in here and have a freer Friday.
11:00 am - Lunchtime. Usually something easy like sandwiches. Little guys are cranky and ready for naps so quick is good. While boys are finishing up eating I read aloud one poem from Dan's current Ambleside Year Two Poet. Every other Monday we put a new art print into the Picture Study frame to look at and narrate. Everyone but John clears his place.
11:30 am - Nap-time for anybody under five. And no, they don't always want to sleep. Every family is different, but in ours I've found that little guys without naps have way more tantrums and aren't much fun to have around, so down they go.
If we stick to a routine and head for bed right after lunch without anyone having a chance to race around the house and get riled up again, they usually fall asleep fairly quickly. Every couple months someone, usually whoever is three or four, decides they'd rather not nap and we have a week or two of needing to sit near his doorway to return him to bed until the routine is back in place, but usually they settle down within fifteen minutes.
At this point the older boys and I could use a few quiet moments too, so Dan and Noah each choose a place where they can be alone with some good toys or maybe outside, and we all have forty-five minutes or so of quiet alone time. This is when I get caught up on my projects: reading, phone calls, appointment making, blogging, etc. Afterwards is a good time to finish any left over school for Dan and play Battleship, Checkers, or a puzzle with Dan and Noah.
2:00 pm - Everybody has woken up and is hopefully not too grumpy. Big boys are usually back outside tearing around. This is a good time for cuddling Christian, Peter, and/or John, in the rocker with a picture book or three. And yes you can rock three at once if you hold baby and the two preschoolers perch on an arm each. It works, but they have to be good balancers.
3:00 pm - When on top of the day, this is a good time for me to end all school and housecleaning type work and just be present for the boys. It also is a good time to do a quick straightening of the house. This is more of a clearing of the surfaces, we're not talking dusting or windows or anything. I put on fun music - Newsboys or TobyMac are current favorites - and assign the bigger three boys an area each to tidy. They need a lot of redirecting to finish, but as long as the resident one year old hasn't been left to empty shelves it can be done in fifteen minutes. Then it's nice to have a fruit or cracker or tea snack. Afterwards I try to just play with whoever isn't already busy on his own. Hide and Seek, catch with baseballs outside, or Candyland are happening alot lately.
4:15 pm ish - Time to get dinner going. I cook simply right now. No meals that take more than thirty to forty minutes to prepare. Often whoever has been the most grouchy gets to come in and perch on the counter next to me or chop veggies to help. It's fun for me to have just one or two on their own and also goes a long way to ironing out grouchy hearts.
5:00 pm ish - Nathan is home and playing manly games with the boys. They are getting to where I'm afraid to do much wrestling with them, and Dad is the only one who can throw straight or is willing to get out the airsoft gun for target practice so his arrival is the beginning of fun time.
5:30 pm ish - Dinner. The hardest part is getting last the little guys served before the first ones have finished. They are boys though; manners are a work in progress. Afterwards, before kids over two leave the table we like to read aloud ten to twenty verses from Proverbs or Psalms. Sometimes we are working on memorizing a Scripture passage by reading it aloud daily until we all know it. This is a very informal time with a lot more teaching of how to sit still and listen than perfect attention right now. Then everybody clears his own place to the dishwasher or is reminded to come back and take care of it. Dan finishes clearing and wiping the table.
6:00 pm - Free time as a family. Might just be the kids playing whatever they want while Nathan and I clean up from dinner and talk, or we might go outside and play catch or hockey or watch the boys ride bikes out front. Sometimes we watch a movie with popcorn. When there's enough light and the weather's good it's nice to leash up the dogs and go for a walk together. This goes on until the little ones are too tired to be kind or we hit bedtime.
7:30 pm - Bedtime. Baby Christian usually needs me by now so I put him in his pajamas and work on getting him fed and put to bed while Nathan tackles the bigger boys. Everyone under six has to have a witness for tooth brushing and flossing so usually Nathan takes everyone into the bathroom at the same time and only releases ones who are done. This also cuts down on fun and games like the endlessly funny putting of clear hand soap on a brothers' toothbrush.
Eventually everyone is finished and clean and Nathan reads a picture book to the younger set and then everyone heads to bed. After they are tucked in and kissed multiple times and given their sippy cups of water, Nathan sits in the hallway and reads a chapter from our Bible Story book, and then if there's time, a chapter or so from a book he's reading to the bigger boys. Right now we're finishing The Hobbit. While he reads he's able to keep an eye on the boys as they settle in and make sure nobody sneaks out of bed for party-time. By the end of the twenty minutes of reading or so, usually everyone but Dan and Isaac are asleep, and they don't take much longer after that.
8:30 pm - Hopefully everyone is down, though Christian may still be up and playing quietly. Nathan and I finish up settling the house for the evening - we may wrap up projects, watch a movie, or read aloud from a book together. Nathan's been putting in a lot of time studying for an exam for work coming up. But mostly it's just nice to finally have a bit of quiet together.
So that's our day right now. Or what I'd like our day to look like at least. It's constantly changing, which I think is healthy. A schedule is not a good master, so if other things come up we go with them instead, but at least this gives me a rough idea of when things should happen.
So how about you - ever found that breaking your day into a time slots like this helps get you through a particularly busy time of life? Or maybe this is just what happens in a home where two firstborns marry. :)
Photo: Christian Earl, five months old - what a sweetie!
