A day in the life of our homeschool

If you’re visiting through the Not Back To School Blog Hop, WELCOME!

What does a typical day look like in our homeschool? Ummm…. 😉

Way back, fifteen years ago, when Rebecca was 4-1/2 and we were about to embark upon our homeschool journey, I was uber-organized. I bought The Homeschool Organizer and filled it all in. I sat up at the brand-spanking new school table for hours at night getting our schedule all planned out. I photocopied workbook sheets as we began this journey using Rod & Staff curriculum exclusively and planned to buy once for all of our children. When I completed the first half of our school year, I deemed it complete and we were ready!

Except 2 weeks into our school year, our family got sick. Really sick. And those carefully laid plans went by the wayside as we all took days to get well.

I felt so behind. All of that time and effort, seemingly wasted. Looking at our schedule, all of the dates were 2 weeks off. And that really, really bothered me.

I quit using the Organizer. We just started doing our work and ending our school years when we completed the work. That’s the way we’ve done it ever since.

Now, I can’t say that I love this method, it’s just what we’ve done. It would be nice to know where we are at any given time during the year. But, at the same time, I fully believe that life is school and school is life. By far, the biggest lessons we learn are learned through life events.

This year, I want to be different. I want to be more intentional. (intentional is my “word” for this year, after all!) On the advice and encouragement of a dear friend, I purchased a Well-Planned Day Planner.  I have filled it in with all of our important dates like birthdays, holidays, Co-Op days, field trip days, support group events, etc. I have not yet filled in the week’s work as I don’t want to run into the same issue I had way back when that first year. {funny how things stay with you so long, eh?!}

I plan to fill the actual work in once we get started and I see how we are progressing. We always start our school year slowly and add in subjects as we get acclimated to school life again.

It’s exciting to get started with a new school year. It’s also hard to stay focused on our book work. Where we live here in the south, there are LOTS of Civil War era events in the Fall. I like to take advantage of as many of the field trip offerings as possible. This usually means we are not quite where I want to be in our book-work when winter comes, but we have also taken in some great educational opportunities. In our area, winter means cold weather. We use this to our advantage and work a little more diligently to get ahead in our studies. None of us want to still be doing school work when spring arrives!

However, a typical day goes something like this for us:

3:30 am- Honey gets up, wakes me
4:15 am– Honey leaves for work
4:30 to 7 am– I either go back to bed, or work on computer work
7 am-9:30 am– My work time
8 am– Natalie and Mary wake, walk dogs, take care of outside chores, eat breakfast

This is a normal day for us. Adding in school work, swim/gym time, outside activities, etc will all fall into place as the weeks progress.

Did you see the other three posts in this Not Back To School Blog Hop series?  (curriculum week, school room week, and student photo week.)

How about you? Do you use a planner? Do you plan out your entire year or do it by quarters? I love hearing how others “run” their homeschool!

 

{Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I only recommend products that we personally use and love.}