My children go to school one day a week with other homeschoolers. On this day, they take Spanish, Theatre, American Girl (yes, they have a class for that!), and Geography. It’s a great way to still give them opportunities to socialize with other children, and also learn about other subjects. The other days of the week, we stick to a pretty routine schedule at home. This is what our typical homeschool day looks like…
8:15-9:00am Piano practice and their Spanish homework
9:00-9:30am Spelling and Latin (Latin takes about 10 minutes)
9:30-10:30am Math
10:30-12:00pm Writing, grammar, and reading
12:00-2:00pm Lunch/play
2:00-3:00pm History/science (we alternate the days)
3:00-4:30pm Spanish
While it may seem intense, there’s so much flexibility in homeschooling that we really get the opportunity to be creative with subjects and take learning outside of the book. Many times, the girls stay on task, so they finish early. Sometimes, lessons plans get completed earlier in the week, and Friday ends up being a light day and we go on outings or just play (they play, I catch up on housework).
The older two children have much more intense work to do than my preschooler. During lessons for the older girls, my preschooler is usually working on some simple alphabet or counting activities, and the baby is napping during our school time. My baby, Glow, is 3 years old and still naps twice a day! It’s the strangest thing to us, but we’ll gladly take it. She naps between 9-12pm and 2-4pm. She’s been the best at napping, and if she doesn’t get her nap, she’ll start complaining that she’s tired. We are pretty amazed at her napping abilities. When I go to get her from nap, most times, she’s still sleeping! If not, she’s quietly playing by herself. I’ll gladly take it for as long as possible because it allows us to get our schooling done during this time.
I’m very organized with my day, so that helps the flow of things. Things do get out of sorts from time to time, but we usually can make up for it the next day. Every month, I set up monthly learning plans and goals, and that really helps keep me focused.
We mostly follow Classical Education, and while it really emphasizes facts, memorization, and language-based learning, especially in the early grades, I tweak and change it to what fits my kids best, and I give them plenty of opportunities for creativity. The structure of Classical Education is something we do well with, and I believe the learning of facts as a base is very important, but we always extend beyond the lessons to include creative projects. My children are visual learners, so I accommodate for that in our lessons.
