What An Average Homeschool Day Looks Like In Our House

I am now into my eighth year of homeschooling. And yes, our homeschool looks a lot different now than it did when I first started.

This is how an average day looks in our house this year. Once breakfast and chores are complete we move onto our school items. If we had a late night or someone was up sick or any other sort of distraction needs my attention, we will start as soon as we can. We don’t start later than 9am though. Maths is always at 9am and we follow on from there, even if we haven’t gotten to do our Morning Basket together.

7:30 – 9am – we have our Morning Basket/Group time/Circle Time in the comfy lounge room, this includes:

• Praise and Worship
• Bible reading
• Hymn
• Scripture Memory work
• Folksong/French song
• Poetry and poetry memorisation
• French
• Read alouds from various books including Little Pilgrims Progress, CM Geography, Paddle to the Sea
• History – we are studying Ancients altogether

9:00 – 10:00 – Maths time. Everyone moves to the kitchen table and school desk area. I am available during the whole hour to teach and help wherever necessary. Each girl has drills and review along with their maths program. My oldest girl will usually spend the whole hour covering these maths components, whereas my youngest will finish in half that time. Once 10am arrives, we are finished maths for the day. The girls know that if they work diligently during this time, without dawdling, it doesn’t matter if we don’t get a whole exercise finished. An hour of maths is plenty for a day. Tomorrow, we will pick up where we left off.

10am is break time. We all have a snack, I have my Trim Healthy Mama Frappa that has been my absolute favourite morning tea go to since the end of 2014. The girls then play outside until I call them back in. I catch up on messages on my phone briefly, not my laptop though or I will end being distracted there for who knows how long. I relax in my comfy seat and read a chapter or two. At the moment I am reading the Secret Garden. I have never read this story and to be honest, I am finding it quite slow moving (I hope it picks up soon). I will be adding this book to my daughters reading list so I need to read it first so I know what she will be reading. I started this habit of reading a book during our morning break time late last year with Pollyanna. Oh how I love Pollyanna! My girls each have assigned books for their own independent reading, so I am pre reading these books during this time.

10:30/45am – The older two begin their independent checklists, while I spend 30-45 minutes with my youngest. During this time she reads aloud to me and we work on her spelling lessons. I read to her from her booklist which includes poetry, a picture book (because I love picture books and she is my youngest), science, and literature.

11:15am – My youngest completes her independent checklist while I spend about 45 minutes with my middle girl. She also reads to me, and we work on her spelling lessons. She has begun Latin this year so we do this now. Then I read to her from her literature book. And we are working through Australian History – the convicts and early settlers.

12:00pm – She will then finish off anything else from her checklist that needs to be completed. My youngest is usually done by now and will play quietly on her own. My oldest will have completed all of her checklist by now and is ready to work with me. I read to her from her literature book, we cover a little grammar, work on spelling lessons, and Australian History – we are nearly at the time of Federation.

1pm – is lunch time. We usually talk while we are eating, in between chewing of course. Then after we have finished eating I read aloud from I Heard Good News Today, and a huge favourite All of A Kind Family.

1:30pm – is quiet reading time. The older two have their assigned books they are reading, usually classics, for half an hour. My youngest reads to me from one of her assigned books, then she reads quietly for the rest of the time. As she gains more confidence in reading, she will read more on her own during this time. I will then spend the last 20 or so minutes reading from my books which are currently regarding the Charlotte Mason education. I am supposed to be participating in an online book discussion for these two books, however, I am woefully behind in the reading schedule. So at the moment I am just reading what I can in these books, when I can, without contributing to the discussion. Or, I may have a nap if I am particularly tired 😉

2pm – It is time for Visual Latin for my oldest and I. We have just begun this Latin program this year and we are learning so much from it. And having a lot of fun! The other two usually find a craft or game to play, it is the beginning of their free time for the afternoon.

2:30pm – everyone packs up their school work if they haven’t already, then they are free til the dinner time routine begins, unless if we have an extra curricula activity that day.

In previous years I would have assigned an amount of work that we needed to complete and we would work until it was done, which meant that some days one girl may be working an extra half hour or so. This year though, I have a set amount of time to work and if we work diligently, we can stop when the time is up. Thanks to Charlotte Mason! I am finding that we are still completing the workload doing it this way and transition is really easy between our different allocated time slots.

My youngest is usually free from school activities from about 11:30am. And my middle girl is complete before lunch, often with time to spare. My oldest and I are finished by 2:30pm. Because she loves languages so much, she doesn’t mind working on Latin with me after lunch. We actually really enjoy it!

Mondays look very different here at the moment. We call it our Monday Riches! This is the day that we study an artist’s piece of work, listen to a composer and learn about music using Squilt, Apologia’s Who Is God?, create our own masterpiece using Arttango, and conduct nature study in our own yard (we live on acreage so we have a lot of nature to study). Monday is also the day we catch up on housework from the weekend, go grocery shopping and have piano lessons right after lunch. Monday is a very full day for us!

You can follow me on Instagram – ewehopeblog –  and keep up with our day to day school activities.

I would love to hear if this post has encouraged you in any way. Please let me know 🙂