A Day in the Life: Homeschool Edition

One day recently, AW and I were driving to church.  We passed an elementary school with school buses parked outside.  "Mommy, I wish I could go to school!"  It was the first time she had asked anything like that.

"Why do you want to go to school?" I kept my voice neutral, because I was genuinely curious. She's only three years old, after all.  

"I want to be like other kids."  I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped open.  Peer pressure at that age?  I started listing off all her friends who are also homeschooled. "But B-- isn't," she reminded me. Ah.  Her best friend did start preschool this year, so that explained a lot.  She wanted to go to school with him, as it turned out.  

Although we know a lot of homeschool families, many of the people closest to us do not have experience homeschooling, so I thought I'd share our daily life.  

In theory, I wake up at 5am.  That is, the alarm goes of at 5am, and I hit snooze for an unknown number of times. It's not even a conscious decision.  This morning I managed to get out of bed at 6:30, and almost immediately heard footsteps following me down to the basement.  I groaned inwardly, because I'd been hoping to listen to a podcast or two while I folded laundry.  But I put a smile on my face and was rewarded with help folding laundry from AW, with only one request for breakfast.  

At 7:00, we go outside and feed the animals.  Today, AW collected eggs and fed the rabbits, while I got water for all the animals and checked on the level of chicken feed in their feeder.  Some days, I do this solo if no one else is awake, and some days, the kids help.  Occasionally, I'm rushing out the door and ask Himself to help me out.  

At 7:30, I made coffee and went to check on Himself, who came down and made eggs for everyone except AW. She prefers cereal.  Minor meltdown when we didn't have enough coffee to share with her (sometimes she gets the last 1/2 ounce or so with lots of milk).  We sat down for breakfast around 8:00am.  

Himself and I like to linger over breakfast--the kids go play and we chat over coffee until around 9:00. Then he heads upstairs to work. If the kids aren't dressed (like today), we follow him up, get dressed, and brush teeth. I'm working on teaching them a toothbrushing song to lengthen the amount of time they are actually brushing.  Then we do morning time. 

In morning time each day, we start by singing a greeting.  Then we go over the calendar, sing calendar songs, and talk about the day.  DC has started joining in our Months of the Year dance, and it's quite adorable. Then we recite a couple of things about being Unitarian Universalists, sing some more, and sometimes read.  Today, AW really wanted to jump right into pattern blocks. DC enjoyed them as well.  

While they used the pattern blocks, I read to them from Winnie the Pooh.  Then, AW wanted to go outside, so we moved to the front porch.  They drew with chalk and I asked AW to predict what would happen when we sprayed the drawings with water. Then we had a lot of fun spraying the porch  (and each other) with the spray bottles.  We played a little bit of croquet too (they hit the balls a couple of times).  Then, she asked if it was snack time yet.  

We headed back inside where I made smoothies and read more Winnie the Pooh while they drank their smoothies and made faces at each other.  Yesterday, we had started a family tree project, so we moved onto coloring pictures of the family after snacktime ended.  DC drew his own pictures while AW worked on her project.  

By this time, the kids were done needing my attention, and they headed off to the basement to generally run amok and make a mess. I took advantage of the break to change over the laundry.  Then, I called AW up to ask her if she wanted to make lunch. I recently taught her how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but today was a new challenge: egg salad.  She and DC are both great at peeling hard-boiled eggs, and they both love egg salad.  She counted out the eggs, peeled them, and used a pastry cutter to chop the eggs in a bowl.  "Mom, I have a job for you," she told me when I came back in the kitchen after changing DC's diaper.  "Can you get out the mayo?"  I was a very proud sous chef.  She added just the right amount of mayo (with supervision) and some salt and pepper, then made sandwiches for herself, her brother, and her dad (I ate mine sans bread).  She put out blueberries on each plate, which gave us a chance to compare more, less, and equal.  

Then the kids played for a little while longer while I cleaned up the living room. We read a couple of books. DC is particularly fascinated with a solar system book he chose from the library. He loves Neptune for some reason.  Maybe it's just a fun word to say!  Then it was nap time. Usually AW has some quiet time drawing, looking at books, or talking to her toys, but today she said she was tired and wanted to sleep. Given that she was crying at the thought that I might not let her, I sent her to bed, and sure enough, she passed out.  DC went down too, and I turned my attention back to folding laundry (I had a laundry mountain due to some sustained neglect).  That chore complete, I grabbed a couple minutes to check my email and Facebook.  

The kids woke up and had a snack, and then we headed outside. I whipped up some cloud dough (eight cups flour to one cup oil), and dumped it in a bin that fits in the sensory table that Himself made for DC's second birthday. I added some dinosaurs, and voila!  Entertainment for almost an hour while I read a book for work.    

I figured the cloud dough would get all over the ground. I underestimated DC's ability to get it all over his hair and his sister's hair.  

Given that it was a 90 degree day with high humidity, I filled up the baby pool with a couple of inches of water, and gave some measuring tools and bottles.  They practiced pouring and DC got some good sensory input from the splashing.  Neither of them wanted to come inside.  

But, come inside they did. I had to make dinner and they couldn't play in the pool without supervision.  AW had been asking for TV time, and we recently decided that the kids can have screen time while I'm making dinner...so only after 5pm.  I put on a YouTube channel of nursery rhymes, and made dinner.  Last week, we read Everybody Cooks Rice and we have been cooking our way through the recipes in the book.  We've had a dish from Haiti, a dish from Puerto Rico, and now a dish from India. We made Biryani for dinner, and it was delicious!  Before we eat, we read about the family in the book that inspired the recipe.

And then it was time for bath and bed.  

Sounds idyllic, right?  

Well, I have to say, today was possibly the smoothest day we've ever had.  Everyone was in a good mood.  No one was sick.  We didn't have anywhere else to be, so we weren't rushing around.  I managed to stay focused all day (and I think that put me in a good mood), and we actually did all the activities I put on my list of potential activities for today.  

It wasn't perfect. Beyond laundry, cooking, and dishes, no other chores got done.  There were crayon wrappers everywhere because DC's favorite part of coloring is stripping the crayons.  There were fights over books and balloons, and whose turn it was to choose a book. There was crying over having cake instead of pie for dessert, and of course, not enough coffee to go around.  Bedtime was a disaster, and it took an hour and a half to get DC down for bed, and even longer for AW to fall asleep. 

Some days, I won't be so prepared or on top of things. And that's ok.  This age is for playing.  Reading aloud is the biggest priority of the day.  If I've read-aloud to the kids, I feel like we had a good day.  Another priority is sensory input for DC.  Getting outside is high on the list. Today was a particularly exceptional day.  

It was also a reminder.  

A reminder not to over-schedule myself.  A reminder of the joy of just being with them and not trying to multi-task.  A reminder that I can do this.