A Day In The Life Of Our Homeschool 2012-2013

Make sure you check out my blog each Monday in August I will be participating again in the Not Back to School Blog Hop.

This week is sadly the last week at the Not Back to School Blog Hop and this week is Day-in-the-Life Week.

Uh oh...I am supposed to share what a day looks like in our homeschool!!! That may be difficult because our days NEVER look the same.

Because of my husbands current work schedule I go to bed WAY to late...okay even if he was getting off at a decent time I would probably still go to bed too late because I have sleeping issues. Wanna know where the Kathy's Cluttered Mind blog name came from? Well it's because I cannot shut my brain down. It is full of stuff - to do lists, project ideas, homeschool stuff, stress, bills, etc. I have tried everything - going to bed earlier, sleeping pills both prescription and natural, a glass of alcohol, not falling asleep with the TV on, not getting on electronic devices a few hours before bedtime, purging thoughts on paper, reading and nothing seems to work. So the late bedtime of sometime around 2 am, sometimes later, means I wake up late in the mornings. So our day starts sometime between 9-10 am. The kids are up before that time normally around 7 am and they go to bed at about 8 pm. They play, read books and listen to music in their bedroom until I get up to start our day.

So here is how our homeschool day looks:

Breakfast starts when I am up, sometime between 9-10 am. Eating takes forever in this house because I have two great eaters (who eat second and thirds at almost every meal) and who also like to fool around at the table which prolongs meal times. Once breakfast is done its time to start the learning.

First we read several books together that go along with our unit study and then...

I ask, "kids what would you like to work on today (insert several options)?"

And the kids give their replies. Sometimes they choose to work on the same thing and sometimes they choose to go their different ways. Most of the time our unit study stuff is done together as a family.

Last year we tried the more structured schedule and routine. We tried workboxes and it didn't fit our family. We then tried a routine without the workboxes and it still didn't fit us. So we went the more relaxed route and earlier this year we switched to full blown unit study learning with math and reading covered separately. Math and reading are covered many times in our unit studies but because they are incremental subjects we cover them separately as well. Read more about our curriculum here to see what subjects we cover and how we cover them.

Each week we try to take a nature walk and some sort of field trip. Mondays my son has speech therapy so that normally turns into an errand day for us. But the kids are still learning so it is still counted as a school day.

We generally do homeschool stuff from about 11 am - 4 pm. After that the kids can do what they wish which is normally watching educational shows on Netflix or playing educational games on my phone, the Wii or the tablet. This is my time to get some blog posts written, clean or catch up with friends on social media. Dinner is generally around 6 pm and bedtime is around 8 pm. Before bedtime we read a couple more books.

I also take some time to record what we did for the day. I have a spreadsheet that I recently created which I print out and keep in my planning binder. There are blank sections down the left for the dates to be written and the subjects I want to cover are across the top. There are blank sections going across from each date and under each subject where I have just enough room to jot down what the kids covered for each subject that day. Its super easy and allows me to keep a record of what they learned. And NO we don't always cover everything everyday and that is okay.

After the kids go to bed I continue to get some blogging, chatting, planning and cleaning done until hubby gets home. Then we watch a couple of TV show episodes on the Roku. And well you know the rest of my routine I stay awake until 2 am and then we do it all over again the next day!

Thanks for stopping by to take a look inside my cluttered day! 

*Disclaimer - Many of the links found on my side bars and in my blog posts are affiliate links. As a result, I might get paid money and I will most likely spend the money on homeschool supplies or field trips.