by Janny Jackson
If you read this post Do These Two Things Every Morning you would know that I am not a morning person, therefore am not a huge fan of waking up before my kids. That being said, I do try my hardest to wake up earlier than I would like to on school mornings. If you know, you know.
Once downstairs, I make my kids a hot breakfast and start prepping for school as they eat. Once breakfast is done and cleaned up, we all go upstairs so teeth get brushed, clothes are changed, beds are made, and hair gets brushed. I help my toddler, the big kids are capable of doing these things on their own.
Back downstairs again, we all sit in the living room for our morning read alouds. I read from the couch while the kids play quietly on the living room rug. Our books vary throughout the week. Most of the time we are doing readings for our lessons for the day (science, history, etc.) and going through a chapter book. I absolutely love reading to my kiddos. I usually will just read to them until I can tell they are no longer staying focused. Some days are longer than others and I’m okay with that for us.
After that the big kids sit at the table and get started on their individual work, while I spend 10-15 minutes with my toddler doing “school”. I never intended to do any type of formal teaching for him as a newly 3 year old, but he has a hunger to learn and I want to feed that desire in him so I give him a bit of my time every day, and it satisfies him. We do some music and dancing, a couple pages in his toddler busy binder, some numbers and letter sounds, and I read a book to him on the couch. He is loving his “school” time with me, and though it does make our day a little longer, I have enjoyed seeing him enjoying learning.
Once I’m done with my toddler the big kids put their individual work away and we work on our group subjects. Those subjects are science, history, and geography, all done on different days of the week.
After that lesson of the day, I move on to one-on-one time with my big kids, after a quick snack, of course. They alternate days with who goes first, and while I work one-on-one with one kid, the other is playing “quietly” upstairs with the toddler. I’m sure you could guess that it’s not always quiet, or a time without multiple distractions, but we get through it.
Usually by this time its time for me to get started with lunch. Everyone takes a break to play while I do that, and once lunch time is done I put my toddler down for his nap. This gives us a pretty good break in between, in which I have my oldest do his daily 30 minutes of reading from his assigned book.
I then make my second cup of coffee in the afternoon as I finish up school with my other big kid (and let’s stay focused and get this done before the toddler wakes up). Who can relate?!
Most of the time we can be done with school by 3:30pm, and have some outdoor playtime before I have to start dinner. This is our general schedule. We have finished school by 2pm, some days go until 4:30pm. It really just depends on when we get started and our workload for the day.
I am thankful for the flexibility and the ability to be able to homeschool my kiddos with an often fluctuating schedule. This is what works for us, for now.
What’s your homeschool schedule like?