What We Did Today

When people discover I am a homeschooler they usually respond with, "I could never do that." (It makes me want to reach out and hug them and say, "Yes, you can!") It's very rare that the conversation continues and if it does it never moves into the structure of our day. It's sad because I love to talk about what we do.

One of the only people (who is not a homeschooling mom) who has ever asked me, "So, what does your day look like ?" Is my friend, Katie. She is in her second year as a teacher (of high school drama). I don't get many chances, but talking to classroom teachers is something I love to do to. Afterwards I feel encouraged, enlightened and totally ready to keep doing what I'm doing. When I find out someone is a classroom teacher my first thought is actually, "Oh, I could never do that!" So, when a teacher asks me about our day I actually feel honored.

So, for those who wonder what our day is like, here you go (By the way, I am teaching a 4^th grade level student and a K/1^st level student):

6:00 Up with baby, put him back to sleep and go back to bed

7:00 Older boys wake up and argue over something. Their dad breaks it up and takes a shower.

7:40 Baby wakes up happy so he's done sleeping and so am I

8:00 My husband feeds the boys breakfast while I get ready for the day

8:15 I eat breakfast

9:00 We do Bible study together. Read the verses, answer some questions from the Explorer's Bible Study. We're doing Luke and Acts this year. We all take turns praying. This is new for us. It was time to do it as a family.

Today is our last day of our 6 week unit on dinosaurs/creation, etc.

9:30 Read our last page from D is for Dinosaur by Ken Ham (I'm teaching them a pretty strong young earth creation viewpoint, and telling them how evolutionist viewpoint differs) and talk about the word “zeal” as well as how to talk respectfully to people who are different from us. The boys are squirrly for this.

Then we make some dinosaurs out of clay and bake them. Ben chose the Kronosaurus and Jake did the Quetzocoatolus. Tomorrow they will write something about that dino. The baby went down for a nap while my husband helped the boys finish.

We forget to do Math.

10:30 They take a break and build a fort out of blankets and the card table

11:00 We begin what we call "stations."

J's are: penmanship, how to address a formal letter (to a Senator, attorney, physician, etc.), reading, memory verse (bean bag game today), vocabulary (match 50 words on index cards to their spoken definition as a review), and studying a creation scientist from the past (today it was Linnaeus).

B's are: Creative drawing (draw someone you could speak respectfully to and use word bubbles), Phonics worksheet, reading aloud to me (practicing words with the long U sound), memory verse game with J, word review (categorizing words on his word wall), and copying a greenhouse explanation to go with the greenhouse we planted 6 weeks ago.

Baby wakes up. It was a good nap today.

12:15 lunchtime

12:45 They each finished up their last station and then they played I Spy on the computer… because it hadn’t dawned on me that we hadn’t done Math.

1:30 The neighborhood boys, being on early release today, came looking for them and they went off on their bikes to “socialize” while I did laundry with the baby in tow.

Normally in that first block of time I alternate doing Math with each boy while the other one plays on his own, or does a chore for the day. But they both have done more than enough Math for the week, so I'm not worried about it.

It was a pretty good day. Sometimes I have to pull J along if he's in a negative attitude, but today he managed pretty well. B is usually always excited to do everything. They are both feeling the beginnings of a cold today, but the beauty of homeschooling is they can still get at least some of their work done and they don't have to miss. We do as much as they feel up to doing on days like this.

So, that's a glimpse.