A Day in the Life

One of the blogs I follow is doing a series where contributors write about what they do during their home school days. Here is my attempt.

Our days are never exactly the same. I have not scheduled an exact time that school work needs to happen. Our schoolwork usually goes in the same order though. We start with our Singapore Math books (E is in Kindergarten 1A and J is in Kindergarten 1B). While I help E do his work, J plays More.Starfall.com with S (he is 2 years old). We try to do two pages of math work each day. While J does his math pages, E and S play Starfall.

After math, J works on his writing skills while E and I do "Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." This book is definitely not easy for E but we are sticking to it for now. I may need to stop at some point and start over because the lessons are getting a bit too much for him. After E finishes his lesson, which usually takes about 15 minutes, J takes his turn and E works on his preschool writing book.

After we are finished with reading and writing, the boys play starfall together for 15 minutes or so while I set up art. We have been using "Letter Shapes" book. It does a neat art project for each letter of the alphabet. After both E and J have finished their letter, we paste or tape them to our huge piece of paper hanging on the wall. I used one of those pieces of brown packing paper we got with an amazon order. It works great!

After we are finished with math, writing, and reading we take a break and play until lunch. After lunch S and sometimes J and E take a nap. If J and E are not napping that day, we play a game and read some books. Right now we are working though a graphic novel "Mouse Guard" and the novel "Rasco and the Rats of NIMH."

After nap I do my Wii Active workout while the boys watch a Netflix show. After I am done working out and showering, we head downstairs and read books. D, their dad, has been reading their ancient history book, "The Story of our World," with them in the evenings along with a chapter from their children's Bible.

In the evening the boys often get a little time to play a game on the Wii or play "Age of Mythology," a computer game, with D. At least once a month we try to have a movie night together. We watch movies on the computer which means we are all camped out on my bed. This means I end up with popcorn in my bed. A small price to pay for a nice time with the boys.

Another activity we try to schedule in once a month is special time with mama. I try to take each boy out on their own. This usually means going to the grocery store together but sometimes is a trip to the library or a trip for some hot cocoa at a coffee shop. The boys love this time (in part because they usually get a special treat all to themselves).