I published a blog post last year when we were in the beginning of our first full year homeschooling our two youngest kids. Since then we've really found our groove. I'm happy to report that our first full year of schooling with both kids was a resounding success and that we are still going forward with our little home classroom for a second year.
People are always curious as to how homeschooling works, and when we first started I combed the interwebs for blog posts that gave a peek into the day of a homeschool schedule. So I thought it would be fun to share what our day looks like, and take a little peek at what we are doing.
First things first, we now have a 5th grader and a 2nd grader. For what it's worth, that means very little in the homeschooling world. For the most part we only loosely stick to grade level for math, but even that is flexible. For instance, this year my second grader is doing the 3rd grade level of math in our chosen curriculum. I think he could do the 4th grade level comfortably, but we don't want to get too crazy. I'll go through our stuff more in depth below, but just know that when I'm picking curriculum I'm more worried about seeing it and looking inside of it, than I am with what level it says it is on the cover. I've noticed that when it comes to 'grade level' standards, as set by our state board of education, that aside from math, most things will hit it regardless. For instance, if a state standard says that a 5th grader should be able to describe the 'scientific method', a 6th grade book will do that too; that's because every elementary science curriculum hits on the scientific method. In fact, to go further with that, every elementary science text I've looked at, from 1st grade through 5th grade, basically covers the exact same thing year after year...the vocabulary just gets more rigorous in the upper elementary grades.
Basically, our school day contains these subjects:
Math
English/Language Arts
Science
History/Geography
Memory Work
Art
Music
Latin
We do math, English, Science, Latin and History every day. We do Art on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Geography on Wednesdays and Fridays. Music happens with piano lessons every Wednesday morning and piano practice every day. The kids also have just added choir on Wednesday evenings as well. PE happens with a mandatory recess each day (45 mins) and whatever else we add in..sometimes it's organized sports teams they play with, or me taking them for swimming lessons or something like park days or trampoline park days. We do typing and computer skills too, but I have programs that they use as a fun thing to do when they aren't doing a lesson with me.
And now I present, our day to you.
8:30 a.m.- Wake up sleepy heads!
9:00 a.m.- School begins
Subject 1:
5th grader does math with me. We are using Saxon Math and today she does a lesson on renaming fractions. Along with this lesson is a 100 problem fact sheet of various multiplication problems. Saxon Math likes repetition. She can do this easily and complains but I say "tough luck buttercup" and make her do it anyway. In three lessons from now she's going to have a fact sheet on simple addition. It seems silly when she's learning fractions right now but Saxon believes that you need to constantly review concepts...even simple ones, to ensure they are committed to memory. She has 25 problems that go with her new concept for 'homework' but I'll let her do those later when I'm working with her brother.
9:30 a.m.- I've switched kids and now I'm doing math with my 2nd grader. While his sister was working on her math he was completing the stuff I've given him to do in his morning folder. I'm not gonna lie...this is busy work stuff, although he still has really crappy handwriting so the handwriting pages aren't totally useless. Mostly this is stuff he likes to do...like writing in his journal and drawing a picture to go with it. This kid inexplicably loves math so I give him insane amounts of math worksheets that he seems to think are fun. Whatever kid...go to town. Anyway, it's his turn for math so he pulls out his book. He is also in a Saxon math curriculum but today he's learning about angles. We use a geo-board to show these shapes and angles. If you don't know what that is then consider yourself lucky because what they really are, are tiny weapons that send itty bitty rubber-bands catapulting through our classroom. We hit his sister once, and she gives us a dirty look. We apologize. He finishes his lesson and I give him the worksheet from the workbook that goes with the lesson I just taught him.
10 a.m.-
The kids switch spots. 2nd grader works on his math homework and the 5th grader brings me her English stuff. Today we are doing writing instead of grammar. She pulls out her book and we start writing a rough draft of a paper she started outlining yesterday. It's an overview of the Middle Ages. She doesn't need much help with this but I slash some adverbs with my red pen and tell her to show me instead of telling me. She hates it when I say this. She complains that she likes the word "fetidly" and I tell her that she can keep it if she takes out one more LY word. She does it. I tell her to re-write the rough draft in pen. After that she pulls out her spelling workbook and we do a quick rundown through her words and she defines a few of them with help from a dictionary.
10:40 a.m.-
Kids switch again. 2nd grader grabs his English book. Today we are learning about helping verbs. I make him repeat the definition of a verb and I make him place emphasis on the 'shows a state of being' part. His grammar lessons are short but really good. We use First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, and I can't say enough good things about it. After he is done with that we grab his spelling stuff and he does a crossword puzzle with those. I realize he doesn't know how to do a crossword puzzle and feel like I'm failing in all things homeschool. I give him a quick tutorial and we are back in business. Sometime around now the puppy starts barking in the family room, from inside his crate and the 5th grader jumps up to go let him out. I know it's because she doesn't really want to finish the paper she's working on. But I let her, because no one has time for poop in the crate.
11 a.m.
I keep the second grader because 5th grader is still in the backyard with the dog. He grabs his science book out and we read the lesson together. He reads one page, then I read one page and so on and so forth. I like to make him do this because it kills 2 birds with one stone. I changed up our science curriculum this year because I wanted a regular ol' science text book. This is one thing that I have discovered about myself...I am not a fan of most homeschool science curriculum. I will say that buying text books that were published for public schools costs a small fortune. Grace's book alone was 125 dollars. That didn't even include the teacher's edition. Grant's was cheaper but that's because I inadvertently ordered the California edition. We finish his lesson which included a wonky experiment where we cut paper towels into the shapes of leaves and then soaked them in water to see which leaf shape would dry faster.
11:30: 5th grader returns and manages to do everything but finish her paper, and now it's her turn for science. 2nd grader is reading
Sideways Stories from Wayside School to himself in a bean bag in the corner of the room. 5th grader and I review what we learned in the last lesson about organelles in animal cells. We look at some animal cells under a microscope. 2nd grader wants to see animal cells. 2nd grader joins our lesson. We get off topic and wonder why animal cells don't have cell walls so 2nd grader googles it. It's because cell walls need to keep the leaf stiff. Cool. 2nd grader wants to look at his spit under a microscope. We look at it. It looks like a rainbow. 5th grader wants to look at dog drool. We look at that. Still looks like a rainbow. I tell her she needs to do the lesson review questions at the end of her science lesson. She hems and haws and says she will do them later. I relent. It's lunchtime and I'm hungry
12-1p.m.- Lunchtime and recess.
12:50.
We go to a movie theater because we are seeing Pete's Dragon with another homeschool mama and her kiddo. I would have felt guilty about this last year. I don't this year. AT ALL! On the way home we listen to all our memory work for the week that goes along with Classical Conversations, which is a homeschool program we belong to. Memory work is just that...memory work. It is not connected to anything else, but they commit it to memory for future use as they progress through school. They sing the history sentence over and over which goes like this:
"Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son, Richard the Lion-Hearted, fought the Turks for Jerusalem,
during the time of the Crusades,which occurred from, 1095 to 1291"
3:30:
We get home and do history. We use
Story of the World which is phenomenal. I have absolutely nothing but wonderful things to say about it. It is that good. It has no negatives except that it has an ending. That is the only negative...it's not a book that never ends. This year we are doing volume II, the Middle Ages. Today we are learning about how Augustine came to England to be the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Then we learn about a monk who is making furniture in a monastery. The monk becomes the main character for a little while and tells the reader about how they copy the book by hand.. Grant remarks that it was a good thing Gutenberg invented the printing press. Grant is obsessed with Gutenberg bibles. We all know this but we still listen to him tell us about his dream of buying a Gutenberg bible. I let him fantasize for three more minutes before I tell him it's time for art
4:00-5:00:
We re-watch part of a new documentary series I bought on the advice of a super smart friend, called HOW ART MADE THE WORLD. It was produced by the BBC so you know it has to be good. We are learning about how the human form has often been portrayed in extreme or outlandish ways throughout history. We are focusing on the time period when the ancient Greeks started sculpting statues which were supposed to show the human body in a state of perfection. We draw our own version of a perfect human. We talk about how magazines try to make women look perfect and ultra skinny and how that makes girls and women feel. Grant says his wife doesn't have to be perfect and he will tell her she is perfect anyway so she doesn't feel bad.
Evening: Complete homework that wasn't finished and practice piano
8:36 p.m. I realize we forgot Latin today. It's totally because of the movie. Still don't feel guilty.
Right Carol? We are winning at momming.
Anyway, if we'd remembered to do Latin we would have done a lesson from SONG SCHOOL LATIN BOOK 2. We used level 1 last year and loved it. It comes with a CD with songs to help memorize the different grammar and rules and it goes right along with our Latin memory work from Classical Conversations. We like it a lot.
So that's it in a nutshell. That's what our day looks like. It's not glamorous but we are doing okay. I don't think I've screwed them up....yet. I still like to read about all the better moms than me who have been doing this a lot longer than us and don't forget things like doing a whole subject. However, maybe someday some newbie will find this and realize that "Hey, I can totally do that!" and yes, you totally can too.
(We finally finished our paper sans "fetidly"...thank goodness for small miracles).
:)
