Homeschool Day in the Life with ages 9, 7, 3

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I don’t know if it was because I knew we were going to do
our day in the life today, or if my body thought 5 hours of sleep was plenty,
but I was up at 4am this morning.  Now, I
don’t make it a habit to get up this early every day, but I do know that my
days go so much better when I do – granted I am about done with life by 7pm!

I thought about going back to bed, but then realized that if
I did, I would be mad at myself later, so I dragged myself out of bed.  Thankfully I had set the coffee pot the night
before, so I could just turn the coffee on, and away we go! 
When I get up this early I most definitely do not take the
dog out.  Nope, no way; I do not want her
getting used to me letting her out at 4am…5am…or even 6am to be honest!  So she curls up at my feet and I start on my
morning time routine – coffee, Bible, and journaling.
I know that everyone has a different morning routine, and
mine can be more involved depending on when I get up, but every morning I read a little of my Bible,
journal a little, and drink two cups of coffee.
I know a lot of people like to start with water or tea, but to be honest
I just need the caffeine drip in the morning.
I blame my mother.

 

Because I am up so early this morning I have plenty of time
to read the Bible.
  I decided a couple
weeks ago to try and read through the Bible chronologically, so I am in Job
right now.
  I also love to use my Write the Word journal – mainly because it is undated which means if I miss a
day, I don’t feel badly about it, I can just pick up where I left off.
Since it is now only 5am, I have plenty of time to get a blog post up – something that I have not been very good at in several
months.  I have this strong desire to
share everything we are doing in order to encourage other moms, but then I
realize that my kids have had the flu off and on since Christmas, and I feel a
little better about letting things slide.
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It is only 6am, and I decide that the dog has waited long
enough.  I put her out, and then I decide
that I have enough time to get on the elliptical.  I know everyone loves to rave about working
out early in the morning – I hate it.  I
have always hated it, and more often than not I will not try to work out so
early.  I need a good long time for my
body to wake up, and I prefer to workout in the afternoon.  But, since everyone is
still asleep, now is as good a time as any.
Surprisingly it is 7:10 and no one is up yet.  This is pretty much unheard of.  My people love to be up early (except Jack,
Jack will stay in bed until 8 or 9 most mornings, and I am fine with
that).  I decide to use up some bananas
that are overripe to make muffins for breakfast.  I get everything put together and then comes
my oldest, ready to help get the muffins in the pan, followed by my youngest
who is now throwing a fit because I am not making chocolate chip banana
muffins.  I cave and the kids put
chocolate chips in three of the muffins.
Into the oven they go.

 

At this point in the morning I try to get everything ready
for the day.  I had already made my list
in my 
bullet journal for what we needed to do, and I run through my lesson plans to make sure I know which books we are using. 
As soon as the muffins come out of the oven, Jack comes
running down the stairs.  He loves
bananas, and proceeds to tell me all the ways he likes to eat bananas.
The kids eat and listen to the latest audio book, Little Britches, and I jump in the shower.

 

We try to “start school” by 9am, but I am late today, which
is funny since I was up at 4am.  Jack is reading Harry Potter and Emma is starting on her math facts practice while I get pot
roast in the crock pot for dinner (I don’t watch This is Us in case you were
wondering).  Jack also has to do math
facts, but he wanted to finish his chapter first.  I haven’t quite figured out how to tell the
kids they need to stop reading in order to do something else, and they use that
against me a lot of the time.  Both kids
use XtraMath.org
for math facts practice – it is free and I don’t have to have flash
cards. 
Our mornings run pretty smoothly and are very much the same
day to day except on the day that Emma has saxophone at the elementary school,
that day we start school earlier so that we can get most of our school out of
the way before we leave for her lesson.
The kids know they need to do Bible, handwriting, math,
copywork, and reading.  This doesn’t take
all that long, and then once those subjects are done, the kids move on to a
break and snacks.  It might take Emma a
little longer to work through math, and sometimes we also do spelling and
grammar during this time as well, but mostly they are done by 10:30am and then
I try to get them outside if it is nice, or they will do Cosmic Kids Yoga or run
around like crazy wild children (the last one is pretty much an all-day
occurrence).
I use this little break time to make and eat a salad.  I am not one for breakfast (besides my much
needed coffee), and usually am reading to the kids during lunch, so this is my
unusual meal time.  It works.  I have been eating a mid-morning salad for
several years now. 
After snacks and a play break I spend some time reading to
the kids.  My kids love to listen to me
read books, which is really nice because I love to read to them (also good
since we primarily use a literature based curriculum).  We just finished Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix yesterday so I don’t have anything new to read to them yet, and
decide to read stories to Lucy while Emma and Jack spend some time upstairs
playing quietly.
Around noon we make and eat lunch.  I will either continue reading with the kids,
or they will listen to an audiobook.  Today it was an audiobook. 

 

After lunch Emma still has some more school to work on, so she
does her reading.  She just started a
biography on Helen Keller and reads me some of the interesting parts she
finds.  She has a spelling test, but I
skip it because it is already quite late, and she spent 30 minutes working on
her story this morning, so I figure she gets a pass today.
Jack and Lucy are upstairs playing at this point,
thankfully.  I am very blessed that my
two youngest have such a good relationship, and that Jack enjoys playing with
Lucy while I finish up school with Emma.
Now it is 1:15 and school is officially done for the
day.  Typically I will put Lucy down for
a nap, but she hasn’t been napping the past few days.  She might really be giving it up for good
this time, which definitely worries me since I usually take a self-care quiet
time while Lucy naps and the kids have quiet time themselves.

 

Today Lucy decides she wants to watch a movie.  I put it on for her, she watches about 30
minutes and then is off looking for her dress up clothes and running around
upstairs trying to coerce Emma and Jack off of their kindles to play with her.
I essentially get nothing done during quiet time today, nor
is it actually quiet.  I try to read some
of my book but that is short lived.  I
do get a start looking through my Sonlight catalog from last year to figure out
what I am going to do next year.
We will be done with school the first week in April this
year (the perks of schooling year round), and so I know that I will need to place
an order for new books soon.  I’m not
quite sure what I am going to do yet, but I am getting there, slowly but
surely.
Rest time is done by 3 and then the kids are playing again
or listening to audiobooks or podcasts, running around, doing all the things
kids do.  I am drinking more coffee
because I am so tired!  And I also have
to start peeling potatoes and carrots for dinner, although I might assign that
task to my budding little chefs.
I had been reading Harry Potter at dinner every night for several weeks, so I need to pick a different
book, so for tonight we chat and enjoy each other’s company – at least until
Lucy decides that she wants to stand on the table, or when the dog decides she
should most definitely lick any food that Lucy allows her to lick, and
subsequently eat.
Lucy is in bed at 7 because of no nap.  Emma and Jack are in bed by 8:15, but they
tend to read until whenever they fall asleep, it is usually by 9 for both of
them, but sometimes Jack likes to stay up very very late reading…
This is just one day of many.  Some days are really quite good, some days we
all have poor attitudes and decide to call it a documentary and art day.  In the winter we tend to do a lot more of our
seat work.  In the spring and summer our
days are spent doing science and more reading.
I sometimes think that a day in the life is not a long
enough time to accurately depict what we do – perhaps I will do a week in the
life someday soon and then we can see how it all evens out each week, with good
and bad days.  This day was a good day,
and for that I am thankful!
What is
your biggest challenge during your homeschool day?



My Previous DITL posts –


Homeschool DITL with 3 littles


Homeschool DITL with ages 7, 5, 1


Homeschool DITL with ages 8, 6, 2

Homeschool Day in the Life with ages 9, 7, & 3

 

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12 Comments

  1. Looks like you have a great week in your homeschool. I always enjoy a peek at what others are doing with their lessons and their children. Thank you for sharing!

  2. Thanks for sharing this, Heather! I always love this blog hop so I can meet new homeschool bloggers (even though I didn't get my act together to share a post myself this year…)!
    By the way, I love your kids' names. 🙂 I have a Lucy, too!

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