Homeschooling Days...

Love waking up to these faces each morning;)

I recently wrote this summary of our school days before/after baby Jane for my friend Beth to post on her homeschool blog.  Since it is already completely written and ready to go, I figured I might as well post it on my own blog in case anyone reading this (if anyone still does!) is interested in how our school days look (or at least how I would like them to look!!).  

BEFORE

Our typical school day prior to little Janie arriving was basically the following:

8:00 – breakfast and morning chores

9:00 – morning prayer (this is always changing, but currently we are going through Long Story Short), CC Bible memory work, Ambleside (hymn, folksong, artwork, poetry), poetry memory work (Andrew Pudewa's A Word Well Spoken)

9:30 – math (RightStart) & independent work (Wordly Wise, Explode the Code, handwriting, copywork) for Caleb & Noah; Micah gated in his room for playtime

10:30 – snack

10:45 – reading (Sonlight 3 readers) & spelling (All About Spelling) with Caleb; reading (Sonlight 1 readers) and phonics (Phonics Pathways) with Noah; Micah plays with “school toys”

11:30 – CC review with Caleb & Noah; Micah watches Preschool Prep or Classical Baby videos

12:30 - lunch

1:30 - playtime

2:30 – rest time (reading, quiet play or audiobooks for older two; naptime for Micah)

3:30 – Ambleside read alouds

4:30 – piano/special time with mom/free time

5:30 – dinner

The boys hard at work!

I am a very scheduled, type A personality, and so our days basically followed that routine and life was mundane, normal and fairly predictable. And then along came sweet baby Jane...

AFTER

Like I said, I am the type that gets very easily frazzled by chaos and disorder, and predictability is key to my sanity. I assume most of you reading this probably have lots of children as well and are familiar with the haze that comes from having a baby, but I literally feel like I am slowly starting to lose my mind with each passing day since having our sweet little blessing.

I absolutely love our children and even the craziness (most times!), but I have never felt this maxed in my entire life...I feel like I never stop doing things, and yet wonder whether I'm actually accomplishing anything! It's that feeling of starting one thing after the other, but never coming back to, or even remembering what I set out to do. For example, I sit down to read with Caleb and nurse Janie, but have to get up to stop Micah from hitting Noah while at the same time realizing Janie has a blowout and needs a bath, but I have to change Micah first because he is now also smelly! Are my kids really getting what they need to know?? I know the typical homeschooler response to that question is always - “oh your kids are learning tons more than you realize”...but I am starting to question that these days!!

All that being said, our schedule is basically the same as before, but much more “fluid” these days;) It is an incredibly frustrating pill for me to swallow, but I have quickly learned that it happens, and is going to happen A LOT!! I did change a few things to save time and fit my need to sit and nurse. The main difference is that we now do CC review all together after Bible time, and that has been working really well. I have baskets of blocks, train tracks, animals and stacks of puzzles in our living room that the boys will all play with (or fight over) while we do CC memory work. We don't do any games or anything for review, I literally sit on the couch nursing Janie and we quickly go through each fact while they play together. By the end of this time, our living room and dining room is typically covered with block castles and huge floor puzzles (as pictured below), which is great, but yet somewhat stress inducing to leave out while we move on to other school!

These smiles make my day!

A few other changes to our schedule include my decision to start playing our Ambleside music (hymn or classical) during breakfast to kill two birds with one stone. Our school principal (aka my husband) has also become much more involved, helping me finish up read alouds in the evening or on weekends. And if outsourcing is an option we trust and can afford, it has also started to help out quite a bit! Along with CC experiments and fine arts classes, the boys have had lessons in art, piano and sports that, left to my time and ability, would not have happened!

Life is good, very good, and I thank God every day that I have the privilege and opportunity to watch my children grow and learn all about this amazing world we live in! There are days that are long and very, very hard in more ways that I can count, but I would never want to be anywhere other than where I am! I pray daily that God will help me learn to fail in the right direction and give me grace to see the glory in the never-ending grind.

Little miss is growing up fast!