Our School Day- Part 1

I thought I would share what a typical school day looks like in our home. It will take a few posts to share all of it. I hope this gives some fresh ideas to someone. I learned much of this by eavesdropping on the routines of many others and with a lot of trial and error.

My children and their ages at the time of writing this article:
13yrDD
11yrDD
8yrDD
3yrDS

Whenever I speak of working with DD in the morning hours, I am speaking of my 8 yr old daughter.

I rose at 7:20 and spent time alone with my favorite Person. I then made my bed and got dressed, went downstairs to prepare a quick French toast breakfast, opened the curtains, wrote a fun message on the kitchen fridge dry erase board for the kids, started a load of laundry and turned on the computer.

Meanwhile, the two oldest girls rose and had a private time on their beds. They both are reading through the Old Testament with Greenleaf’s guide and jotting down in their journals chapter theme names. Then they made their beds, dressed, cleaned the bathroom toilets, sinks an emptied the trash cans. (a flylady routine)

They woke up their eight yr old sister at 8am as they headed downstairs. She started her quiet time in bed too. This year she is reading through the One Year Bible for Kids and is jotting down one or two sentences about the reading that she especially liked. She also keeps a prayer list.

Then she made her bed, dressed and brought down the Hot Spot basket of items that accumulated last evening and needed to be put away downstairs.

My youngest three yr old DS awoke as well and dressed himself, made his bed and came downstairs asking for supper. ( He always mixes up the meal names)

The two oldest finished breakfast, helped unload the dishwasher and load it, brushed their teeth and started their schoolwork about 8:30ish.

The younger children ate a little later together with mom and helped load their dishes. Eight yr old DD hung out a load of laundry and then played upstairs with her little brother for the next hour. (They have Playmobils and spend many happy hours with them.)

My oldest daughters looked over their new term checklist of books and items to accomplish for the day. They put on our newest folksong as background music, grabbed a stack of books and disappeared into various corners of the house until their scheduled morning break.

It is now 9am. I have one hour to myself. I read my blog comments, wrote emails and then looked over what I would be doing with the young children. Oh yes, I forgot to load 3yr old DS's surprise basket. Quickly I choose a book to read to him and place a bag of large wooden beads and plastic string in it as well as an ABC wooden puzzle.

At 10 am I called them downstairs. I made a big deal over the surprise basket and told him that each day something different would be inside it for him to do for his ‘preschool.’ He sat at my feet and began stringing beads.

My 8yr old DD also has a checklist and I plan to gradually turn it over to her as the year progresses, but meanwhile, I am going over it with her to teach her how to do it. We had her first cursive lesson today. She was very excited. I wrote the letter 'A' on the large dry erase board and had her do the same in the air, then she traced it and attempted to make three perfect A’s on her page. She had to make six before she and I were both satisfied. This took 15 minutes. I had planned to introduce lower case too, but we ran out of time.

I then introduced our new poet we would be studying for the next 12 wks- William Blake. I read the first poem aloud to her. It was about a piper and a lamb. I mentioned that the lamb was capitalized in the middle of a sentence. She thought he may be talking about Christ because of this. This took 5 minutes

Recitations (memory wk) were next. I read Psalm 33:18-22 aloud and we discussed its meaning a little bit. Then I wrote the first verse on the board. She read it aloud and closed her eyes as I erased a couple of words. She read it again. We continued until all the words were erased but she could say it perfectly. This took 10 or 12 minutes.

DS3, proud of his newly made bead necklace and asked me to tie it. He ran around in circles with a stick, pretending he was an Indian. I called him back and got him interested in a wooden butterfly ABC puzzle.

To be continued…