Getting back to doing “school” after a summer filled with sun, heat, swimming, hiking, park days with friends, gardening, exploring, building, birding and deer watching can be challenging… or feel about as much fun as a toothache.
However, this year, I took a different approach. First, we broke up our first week. We started on Monday, but had a park day with other homeschoolers Tuesday, and took the day off otherwise. Thursday afternoon, some of my kids spent swimming with our homeschool group. Friday, I set aside for reading aloud, crafting, and playing with friends outside. In total, we did only 3 full days of “school”, although if you’re a homeschooler, you know that finding bugs at the park, birdwatching in the yard, and even dealing with disagreements among grade school kids always turns into a lesson.
As we are easing back into school, our first week of school’s schedule looks something like this:
7am – wake the kids with our classical music for violin
7:30 Breakfast
8am Language arts lesson (reading, phonics, spelling, fine arts) with my 5 year old. Independently she does her handwriting and 5 minutes of quiet reading with her assigned book.
8:30am Language arts with my 6 year old, she then independently does handwriting and 10 minutes of reading in an assigned book.
9:30am Language arts with my 8 year old, (spelling, phonics, vocabulary, writing, reading, fine arts and geography), then he does 20 minutes of quiet reading in his assigned book and handwriting.
10:30am snacks for all; and math with my 6 year old, while 8 year old listens to Musical Multiplication.
11am Math with my 8 year old
11 45am Science or History (2 days a week on each) all together
1 – Read aloud to the kids while they eat lunch
1:30pm – 2:30 Kids read quietly or sleep in their rooms
2:30 Kids play outside
3pm Art projects
Bedtime I read a few chapters of our read alouds, once the toddler is in bed.
Next week will be a whole different beast as we add a few other subjects… but at least the first week, I wasn’t sweating by 9am!!
