I’ve wanted to give you a glimpse of what our homeschool days look like for a long time.

It feels like this year has taken a long time to come together in a cohesive way.

I knew this year would be a challenge with EA & MC, my first graders (I have two of them) beginning more difficult work and trying to incorporate in my four year old into some learning time while wrangling my one year old.

I did a lot of tweaking and adjusting with our routine at the beginning of the year.

We’ve finally fallen into a good-enough-for-me pattern.

Simple Homeschool’s day in the life series has also given me extra motivation to get our daily routine written down for you…and for me.

I want to remember this time and come along side new homeschoolers as an encouragement that, yes, this can be done.

Sometimes I look into the years ahead and wonder how in the world I’ll ever be able the handle the new challenges that we will have.

Along with remembering to just take one day at the time and trust God to equip me for that time and those challenges when they arrive, reading how others make it work at that place is a real encouragement to me.

Our “ideal” day {and please remember that this is ideal} goes like this…

4:00/4:30 Mommy (that’s me) wakes up, changes into workout clothes, & stumbles downstairs for coffee

5:00 After a quick check of e-mail I read my Bible, journal and pray

5:30 Walk on treadmill and read.

6:00 I shower and do hair & make-up. The kids start waking up usually around 6:30 and come into my room to hang out while I finish getting dressed. I read through my google reader and sometimes a book on my kindle while drying my hair.

7:00 Jenny usually is waking up so I get her out of the crib and change her diaper before heading downstairs. I begin breakfast preparations and unload the dishwasher. Typically, the kids have an easy morning of waking up and playing together. The girls will often read their Bibles and journal before breakfast.

7:30/8:00 Breakfast

8:00/8:30 Kids go upstairs to do their morning chores. My girls who are six have four chores that they are responsible for completing before we begin school each day. These chores consist of getting dressed, brushing their hair, brushing their teeth, and making their bed. I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all. I am cleaning the kitchen and starting laundry while they’re doing these chores.

9:00/9:30 Begin our school day. Ideally, we would begin school at 9, but realistically, I’m usually tying up loose ends around the house at that time, so we actually begin around 9:30 most days.

9:30-11:30 Bible, Math, and Language

Bible is usually done together. Will and Jenny sit in on this.

We’re using Saxon for our Math curriculum and while I am very happy with it, it does take more “teacher” involvement. During this time Will (my four year old) and Jenny (one year old) are watching an educational program on PBS (most likely Sesame Street or Super Why).

After our lesson from First Language Lessons, I give my girls assignments for their seat work (Bible, Math page, copy work, Handwriting, Explode the Code, and Spelling). They begin working on these assignments and I work with them one-on-one on our Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading phonics lessons and Writing With Ease lessons.

When I’m done with these one-on-one lessons if there’s time left before lunch, I begin working with Will, if not then I work with him after lunch.

11:30 I tidy up the house a bit, check e-mail/social media, and prepare lunch.

12:00-1:00 We have lunch together. Lunch usually consists of sandwiches or leftovers. After lunch, the kids have some free-time to play. If it’s nice they may run around outside or they may play in their rooms during this time.

1:00 Put Jenny down for her nap and keep everyone else quiet downstairs while she settle down to sleep.

1:00-2:00 Work with Will. We read stories, do a phonics lesson and a little work in his Explode the Code book. He just started with book A, Get Ready for the Code. While I’m working with Will, EA and MC are finishing their assignments and/or reading independently.

2:00-3:00 History or Science – We do History on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays and Science on Tuesday and Thursdays. I had such a hard time fitting History and Science in last year and this has really worked for us!

3:00 Jenny wakes from her nap. On Mondays we go to the library. On Tuesdays the older girls get ready for dance class (we leave for that at 3:30) and on the other days they have free time or we run errands. This is the time when I do some blogging or digi-scrapping.

4:00 I begin dinner preparations and the kids help me straighten the house if it needs it…it usually does!

5:00/5:30 Dinner, depending on what time my husband gets home from work. We have family devotions, reading a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible and praying together after dinner.

6:00 Prepare for bed…baths are given if needed and the kids change into their PJ’s. Sometimes they watch the Goodnight Show on Sprout as they’re settling down.

7:00 Bedtime for the kids. (yes it’s early, but it really work for us!!) EA & MC (our first graders) can read in bed until 7:30/8:00. I also read a chapter from a read-aloud selection before tucking them in and heading downstairs to spend some time with my husband.

7:00-9:00 My husband and I spend time together. We usually have a loose plan of what we want to do. Some nights are set aside as hobby nights where I blog and/or scrapbook and he reads comics, blogs, or does ancestry work. Some nights we watch TV together. And some nights we play games (Super Mario Bros. on the Wii and a card game of Canasta are our favorites).

9:00 We begin heading to bed. We usually read our kindles or just go straight to sleep if we’re really tired.

And there you have it…my day in a nutshell!!

All times given are an estimate rather than exact times. This is much more a description of our daily routine than a set-in-stone schedule that we keep.

Please remember that this is an ideal day. I’m given curve balls all the time and have to adjust as they come. Having a routine and a plan in place really gives us a great starting point and takes a lot of stress out of our days.

And another please…please don’t compare your routine to mine. We’re different people with different personalities and family dynamics. I didn’t post that I wake up at 4:00 to make you feel bad about waking up at 7:00. I’m a more natural early riser than I am a night-owl in personality. Also, that’s the only way I can fit in the things I want to make a part of MY day like Bible reading and exercise. You may have found something else that works for you, and that’s okay!

Do you have a daily routine for your home?

I would love for you to give a brief description (or even not so brief) description of what your day looks like in the comments. If you’ve posted yours, also feel free to link to your post in the comments as well.

Going to the apple farm and picking apples has become one of my favorite fall traditions.

This year we went to Carter Mountain Orchard with a group of homeschooling friends. My husband graciously offered to stay home with Jenny so the big kids and I could enjoy this time together.

It rained our entire way there and I got concerned about weather we would actually get to pick any apples at all, but right before we arrived the skies cleared up and it turned out to be a gorgeous day!

As the name states, this orchard is located on a mountain. As we were about half-way there I thought I probably should have remembered to bring jackets for my girls. And I was right….I SHOULD have remembered that because it was quite cool on the mountain.

But have no fear…we made do and found a new use for our ever-faithful neat sheet!

We had a blast visiting the farm as a family last year, but there are some advantages to going with a homeschool group. As part of the school group package, someone from the farm taught the kids a lesson on how apples develop through the seasons, we went on a hayride, received apple doughnuts and apple cider (yum!!), and were able to each pick a bag of apples.

EA, MC, and Will had fun on the hayride.

And I loved the scenery!

This old truck was parked on the side of the road and I just had to capture this image.

After the hayride, we went apple picking! We went for fuji apples this year and because we visited earlier in the season we found lots of good apples on the trees.

MC said she picked six apples. EA picked ten. And Will claims to have picked one hundred apples, but MC says she “doesn’t believe him”!

My friend Kim tried to take a picture of the four of us, but the wind and my wild hair make that a difficult task.

What a fun day!!!

What’s your favorite fall family tradition?

I’ve been extremely pleased with our homeschool curriculum choices this year…except for one thing.

I decided against ordering a Sonlight Core this year. I went with Story of the World for our history and Bible Truths 1 from Bob Jones for our Bible curriculum. Also, I decided to use many of the Peace Hill Press books (First Language Lessons, Writing with Ease, and Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading) for our Language Arts curriculum. Without those, ordering a Core seemed to be too much.

So, I didn’t.

But we’ve been missing our read-alouds all year.

I had originally thought that we would go back and re-read some reading selections that we’ve missed in previous years and utilize the library more for our reading selections.

But, honestly, that hasn’t happened.

I’ve come to the realization with homeschooling and choosing curriculum that it is impossible to use everything good that is out there…there’s just too much. But you have to decide what is important to your family and make choices to coincide with those things.

Reading is important to me.

I want my children to have a love for literature…good literature.

Reading aloud to them and enjoying books with them is an essential and necessary part of school for our family.

Sonlight provides the best literature choices. I have been pleased with their selections year after year.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and order the first grade read-aloud selections and readers.

As soon as our box arrived and I opened it up to reveal these wonderful books, I knew that I made the right decision.

We began reading our first selection, Charlotte’s Web, this week. I love this time spent enjoying books with my children.

I can’t wait to see their reactions to this classic children’s book and enjoy all the others with them as well!

Our curriculum and plan for this year now feels complete.

Have you added anything to your curriculum after beginning the school year?

How do you enjoy good books with your children?

We are studying Astronomy in Science this year with Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy, which is a part of the Young Explorer Series.

The first weeks were spent learning the basics of what astronomy is and why we are studying it.

We learned a lot about the stars in and planets in our solar system and I am really looking forward to spending this year really exploring our solar system in more detail.

This first lesson ended with with a project to make a model solar system that hangs from your ceiling out of balloons.

The purpose of this model was to get a feel for how big the planets are compared to one another and where they are placed in relation to the sun. These model planets were not as round as real planets and the distances between them were not realistic.

Our first job was to sort the balloons by size so I could pick the right ones to blow up according to how big they were supposed to be.

One thing that I really liked about this project was that it used materials that we had on hand, or had easy access to. We used balloons of various sizes and colors, scissors, thumbtacks, ribbon, markers, measuring tape, and construction paper.

For each planet we tried to pick a balloon with a color similar to the planet’s color. We used a drawing in our science book to help with that.

I blew up the balloons and had MC help measure the approximate distance around the balloon. (shown below)

Mercury – 1 in.
Venus – 2 1/2 in.
Earth – 2 5/8 in.
Mars – 1 3/8 in.
Jupiter – 29 1/2 in.
Saturn – 25 in.
Uranus – 10 5/8 in.
Neptune – 10 1/4 in.
Pluto – 1/2 in.

For Saturn’s ring we made a circle out of construction paper to fit around the balloon for Saturn and attached it with tape.

We blew up the largest balloon I could find to represent the sun. Unfortunately the largest I had was green. Since the point of the project was to get a feel for size more than color, I went with it.

We tied a string to each balloon and used a thumbtack to hang the balloons from the ceiling in correct order.

There was only one mishap during the project when I blew Jupiter up too big and it popped. Saturn also popped after they were all hung up on the ceiling and had to be replaced.

My girls really love looking up and saying the names of the planets. I am so proud that they know the names of all of the planets in order.

They came up with their own mnemonic device to help them remember them.

My Very Excited MaryCatherine Joined Sister Under Nancy’s Pillow

We included Pluto as a planet in our solar system, but we have discussed that there is some debate as to weather it is a real planet. We did hang it with a different color ribbon to represent this.

This was such a fun project for all of us!!

Have you done any fun science projects this year?

Post linked to: Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family

Our Bible lesson yesterday called for the use of two cookies…one large and one small.

We’ve been studying the story of Abram and Lot and how Abraham unselfishly gave Lot the first choice of land.

In an application lesson on being unselfish, the plan was to ask my girls which of the two cookies (large and small) they would choose.

Well, I couldn’t use just any cookie for this lesson.

I wanted to make a special cookie for my girls, but as I began making plans I discovered that I was out of butter and I knew better than to use a stick of margarine in cookies. I learned that lesson in my first year of marriage.

“Oh, well…” I thought, I would just have to substitute an Oreo and break the second one in half.

Lame!

We had a terrible morning of homeschool.

Everyone was cranky.

As I was looking around the fridge to come up with a plan for lunch I discovered one lone stick of butter…YES!!!

It was just what we needed to turn the day around!

So as the children ate their lunch, I busily made up a batch of peanut butter oatmeal cookies and even decided to add in some chocolate chips that were calling me from the pantry.

The cookies were delicious!

Our Bible lesson was taught.

Smiles returned to the faces of all of my little ones.

I even had a plate of cookies sitting on the counter for my husband to have when he came home from work.

I made the third dozen of these cookies smaller than the others for our Bible lesson. To do that, I made round balls by scooping them with a teaspoon. Also, these smaller cookies only baked for about 8-9 minutes.

And speaking of that Bible lesson…which cookie would you choose?

I chose to Story of the World volume 1 (Ancient Times) for our history curriculum this year.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks studying the ancient Egyptians.

After finishing our study of mummies, we went on our first homeschool field trip of the year to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. There we were able to explore their room of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, including a mummy!

I am truly amazed at the information that my children are learning this year!

They can tell me facts about the ancient world that I’m not sure that I ever learned in public school. If I did, I surely didn’t remember them!

I love that with homeschooling we can really delve into a subject and really explore it.

I also love that we can go on field trips that give my children a real life look at what we’re learning.

While at the museum we learned that they have a special Ancient Egypt exhibit coming to the museum from Britian in November. Even though we are finished with this unit, I think we’ll me making a trip back to explore this larger exhibit. What an amazing opportunity!

When we came home from the museum, EA decided to do some further research. She got out one of the library books that we had checked out on mummies and drew this picture and narration.

How awesome is that???

I mean, just how many first graders know what a sarcophagus is?

{just in case you’re wondering…it’s the coffin that the mummies were put into}

When I was a public school teacher, we were restricted to taking only one field trip a year.

Our field trip to the art museum to explore their Ancient Egypt exhibit was only one of many trips that we’ll take this year in homeschool. In fact, we already have four trips in the works for the fall.

Do you have field trips planned for your homeschool year?

Post linked to: Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family