Our Homeschool Day

Life With My 3 Boybarians has been hosting a month long blog hop. I posted about our curriculum on the first week, then missed the next two weeks but here I am for this weeks theme. A Day in the Life of... Visit Darcy to see what other moms do during their day too. It is always fun to see what others do and get ideas that can work in your own homeschool. Or if you don't homeschool yet and are interested to know how homeschoolers do it, this is a perfect way to find out.

If you were a fly on the wall on a typical day while we did school you might have noticed how much time we spend working on a subject together at the table. Unit studies and lapbooks are great for spanning all the grades. Also important people in history (like Da Vinci) are fun to study together. We do our Bible time together first.

Even Little G stays at the table during this time. She has a small white board to write on and a color page to color. When we have out our Bibles, she pulls hers out too. If you keep your littlest with you, they will quickly learn what is expected and when they see the older ones having fun they will want to be a part of all of it.

Right now we are working on memorizing the verse that is the focal point of our school year.

Teach me your way, O LORD,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
Psalm 86:11 ESV

But I want this verse to be more than just something they memorize I want it to be something they understand for themselves. So today, we discussed what the word “teach” means and then from there we discussed what the word “know" means. Then we discussed what it is we want to know and where to find it. Here is a pic of the board when we were done today.

At dinner time, the kids tell Daddy what they learned. It helps reinforce what was learned and keeps Daddy involved. It also promotes a lot of discussion at the table. I also try to keep the stuff on the board for dinner time so that the kids can look at it all day and have a reference for discussion.

After we are done with our group/circle time, we take a break to clean up and get what we need for the rest of the day. If it is close to lunch, we don’t do any more until after lunch is over.

Then we do one-on-one time. Math, and reading are our mainstays but we also do the other subjects as needed. (If we aren’t doing a unit study in a subject, then we do the book work instead. Little G does stuff like felt board, sorting manipulatives, or other quiet play stuff during this time. I am still trying to get this part tweaked a bit because she loves being involved with what the kids are doing.

I rotate through the kids and those not with me, do independent work like printing/cursive, math drill worksheets, folder games or computer time.

The subject matter varies from day to day and the time spent together and one on one does too. However, this routine works well for us and we will keep doing it until it stops working. Then we will try something else.