What a homeschooling day looks like for us.
I recently met up with someone who was thinking of pulling her children out of school to home-educate. We met so she could ask questions and find out a little bit more. Right near the beginning, she said ‘I just want to ask, what do you actually do in your days?’ It was one of the first questions I had too. What do homeschoolers do all day?! The more people I meet, the more I realise there is a general assumption i’m stood infront of a blackboard, a group of berol pens strewn across the table, or a picture-perfect scene, regurgitating information I learnt online last night in one of my planned sessions whilst wearing a floor length plaid dress. This is so far from what homeschool looks like for us. But what do we do? Here’s a little insight into a random Thursday.
7.00am- Wake up and read books/draw/play.
7.45am- Porridge
8.00am- Play lego
8.45am- Get dressed
9.00am- Books out and gather around the table. We try and do this 9-10am Monday- Friday. A routine I started when Heppy was about 7 and she was ready for something a little more structured. Sometimes that’s round our table with others and sometimes it’s just us. Currently, Heppy uses ‘The Good and the Beautiful’ workbooks, an American curriculum for Maths and English. These books work great for the season I’m in. They’re easy to follow and pretty prescriptive which I need with Lazarus in the mix. They may not be our forever curriculum, but for now, they’re great. Moses sits mainly for a little bit of phonics work and we play a maths game or I set him a mini challenge. He’s still so young and I am aware of his levels of concentration. He wants to be done very quickly so we’re finding a sweet medium! They both have ‘Handwriting without tears’ workbooks. We’ve just started these- Heppy with the cursive and Moses with the printing power. I will keep you updated on how they go! I got some of the books from FB marketplace as they are very expensive! It’s a bit of a challenge going between the two of them to give them what they need but the morning slot works best as I find it harder to get them to concentrate as the day goes on! We usually end with some reading aloud!
10am- head to our friends for business. We are thankful to have close friends round the corner from us so we join up each week for different subjects. Last term was Victorians and now we’re focusing on business. Today we were heading into town to ask questions to various businesses/shopkeepers etc. We spent the first half hour or so figuring out what we’d ask and making a table ready to take notes and then we headed into town. The kids rated each shop on its window displays, wrote down what services it offered, found its logo, asked what its bestsellers were etc.
12.30pm- lunch
12.45om- lazaus naps
1.00pm- Play. The kids quite naturally go to play whilst I put Lazarus down. Today they headed to play lego with their yotos on and then came down to help me make a snack for the afternoon and after we read together.
2.30pm- wake lazarus
3.00pm - snack
3.30pm -friends come over to play- pond dipping/bouncing on the trampoline—-more lego!
5.45- dinner
6pm-playing/bundling/swinging on the door/famiy connection
6.45- reading the bible/books
7pm-bed
Every day looks different and I sometimes wonder whether we are doing enough, but then I read the importance of play, and I see wonder and hunger and see their happiness and progress and curiosity and know we’ll be okay!
Books we’ve been reading aloud recently:
