Our Homeschool Day

We're back to school for the year, slowly settling into a routine. I thought it would be fun to share what our day looks like and where we've made changes from previous years. Disclaimer: not every day goes like this. Real homeschool life is punctuated by many out-of-the-ordinary days, it seems, at least at our house! 🙃 However, I find that even when our rhythm or routine doesn't always go perfectly, it's helpful to come back to.

Things We're Trying This School Year

Already a huge help has been picture/visual schedules for our younger kids. I had ChatGPT help me build these and they've been so helpful. I show our daughter with special needs and our three-year-old on their picture chart what comes next. Honestly, I should have made something like this years ago!

Another new thing for this year is the order in which we complete our work. We used to do our daily subjects like art, history and geography, and science at the end of the day. This year we're trying all of our family stuff together before allowing our big kids to go work in their rooms or independently while I spend more intentional time with the little kids. So far, so good.

Our School Rhythm

We're not exceptionally early starters. It's just what works for our family. We're aiming to start school by about 10:30am. We'll spend roughly 4 hours on school, give or take depending on the day. Since we have older kids who have a greater workload I expect to need 4 hours some days. I'm accepting the fact that it might take longer and require some schedule juggling or "homework" for days when we have to leave the house. If you're homeschooling only little guys it's definitely possible to finish in a couple hours.

Breakfast and Promises Family Bible Plan come first. We listen to the Bible, worship, and pray. Sometimes we're eating breakfast during this time. Having our family homeschool app has been so nice. It's made it easy for me to just sit down and go for this part of our day. When the kids are finished eating they have a few options. Our big kids can work on their Bible verse penmanship or quietly work on their rubix cube, bounce on an exercise ball, or color. I find that offering a little something to do like these options usually makes it so that they're listening more intently versus battling behaviors and trying to get everyone to sit perfectly still. Our little kids have been playing with playdough or using dry erase markers for their morning menu. Starting the day with God's Word, prayer, and worship is one of the most important things about homeschooling to me. It's such a blessing! Just like for my personal day, I notice such a difference in how everything else goes when we start with the right foundation.

Breakfast

We loosely follow a breakfast rotation that includes things like waffles, granola, and toast. It is fantastic! I use it as an outline of what to make next. If I'm not up for flipping crepes I happily skip and move onto the next thing on the list, lol. I've been trying to review what I plan to feed everyone for the day in the morning and starting a bit of prep for all of our meals when I'm up before the kids. This has been super helpful. Something as simple as filling a pot with pasta and water ready to boil for lunch has made my day much easier. It's also very helpful to have a bit of a plan and makes directing older kids to help a lot more streamlined.

Family Learning

Since we use That It May Go Well (the Christian homeschool curriculum we offer for free) we do art on Day 1, History and Geography on Day 2 (although this is also worked in throughout the week through our read aloud), Science/Creation Concepts on Day 3, and review and spelling tests on Day 4. It's such a blessing to have these subjects all together as a family. How these times look varies from day to day — sometimes it's mostly reading, other days it involves a hands-on activity like a science experiment. For our art days the kids don't have as many worksheets to do, which allows us more time to create. For other days it usually involves me reading or doing something with them, followed by a worksheet.

Read Aloud

Since we're currently studying Antarctica we're reading about Ernest Shackleton. I love studying history through the lives of people with our kids — it opens up so many discussions and side studies. It connects the world in real ways and shows the contrast of different cultures. For this unit we also checked out a library book that corresponds. Additionally, we've been reading Farmer Boy (again 🙃), so that's some lighter, fun reading. Honestly, the time we read moves around. Sometimes it's in the morning, sometimes during our family study time when we do History, sometimes at night before bed. I also plan to utilize some audiobooks this year, if needed. We're looking at a busier winter than usual, so I'm thinking that time in the car with an audiobook might be perfect!

Preschool

Our youngest is doing preschool this year, and our daughter with special needs is still doing many preschool activities along with him. I felt like I needed a break from preschool after making our Preschool book, using it several times with our daughter, and making preschool videos. But I knew our little guy was ready! Honestly, I do love preschool! 🙃 Kids are just so sweet and excited to learn at this age! You get the opportunity to ground their little hearts and minds on the Lord and to help them hide God's Word in their hearts. This year we have a bit of a preschool corner with little pillows to sit on. When our big boys were younger we had a similar setup with a rug we sat on, and I loved it. It's definitely feeling sweet to have a little corner space for this.

Workbooks

Our big boys are largely independent for the remainder of their day, with help needed at some points. They are allowed to choose which order they work on their unit writing project (a huge part of Language Arts for TMGW), their grammar worksheets, and their math work pages.

Math

Both of our big boys are using Math U See again this year — total relief. They generally do two math pages a day, with the exception of Day 4 when they do their tests. Although TMGW Rainbow is set up for an optional 5th day, we are choosing to read the 5th day Bible portion on Sabbath. It just works better for us personally to have a 4-day school week. For our daughter and youngest son we're just doing preschool-level math that's built into our preschool workbook, and adding things like wooden math manipulatives, counting, and adding work with beans.

Lunch

I'm aiming to make lunch mid-day. With some prep in the morning it's easily fit in after preschool. Our little kids have pretty much been done with school by lunchtime; our big boys have more work to do after this, but it helps to feed everyone before they're starving! We also have a lunch rotation that helps with planning. I like rhythms/cycles for the majority of our meal planning. It's easy to skip a day if you have leftovers and pick back up. Truly, having a flexible, rotating plan has been so helpful.

What About Snacks?

Yep, lol. Our kids eat just as many snacks as your kids do. So, if you're curious about some of our favorite snacks, we dedicated a whole post just to that: Homeschool Snack Ideas.

Is Every Day Easy?

No, every day here is far from easy. We actually had a pretty rough first day back to school this year. It's tremendously helpful if I can manage my own stress, but alas, I'm human. It seems some days homeschooling four kids feels like enough to lose patience. Praying for more Fruits of the Spirit for myself. I remind myself regularly that we created a curriculum founded on God's Word, but it's only worth how well I can live it out to our children. It's easy to get frustrated. I find homeschooling pushes a mix of buttons that can easily trigger impatience, perfectionism, and pride in me. It's easy to let challenges feel like a reflection on us personally. Truly, the only help I know for this is the Lord. His new mercies every day, and enough humility to apologize to our kids when we get it wrong.

After School, Be Mom

When we're finished with school it's nice to snap out of learning/teaching mode and do something fun. Often there are still amazing learning opportunities, but they feel more casual. This time of year we're still in the thick of harvesting and processing. I love it. We continue teaching and doing valuable things with our kids when we close the books and say that school is over for the day.

What About Extracurricular Activities?

I love the opportunities that homeschool affords to families and children! The things our friends participate in are as diverse as they are. We're honestly a bit "boring" when it comes to enrolled activities. We've done a Lego class and music lessons in years past, but this year hockey is the only thing we plan to sign up for. As a large-ish family who doesn't want to be gone from our house all day, every day, we pretty much let each child choose one thing to sign up for.

This year will likely be the busiest we've been since starting our homeschool journey. We're both excited and a tad nervous for that. All three of our boys will be playing hockey, just at a house/B team level, but it will still be more on-the-go time than we've had before! Hockey is an excellent winter activity — I appreciate that the season runs during our dark/boring time of year. My husband played all growing up, so he's blessed to help out and bond with our boys. He also has the opportunity to help coach at the high school level this year, which will be a fun challenge.

I'm reminding myself as we prep for a busier season that when we're out and around others we have a wonderful opportunity to show the love of Jesus. We aren't meant to live isolated lives, although admittedly sometimes that is easier! When we participate in things that connect us with people we probably wouldn't otherwise know, we have the chance to be missionaries right in our own backyard. Many people are hurting. Many families truly need the love of Jesus. As I was prepping the things our family physically needs for this upcoming season, I felt strongly the importance of also spiritually preparing ourselves, knowing we'll need the endurance to shine the light of Christ in a dark place.

Happy Homeschooling!

Enjoy your time with your kids. I was reminded today that we only get to live each day one time. My mother-in-law always says, “The days are long but the years are short.” It’s so true!

"And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail." — Isaiah 58:11