Homeschool with Little Ones: The Typical Atypical Day

The iHomeschoolNetwork's NOT back-to-school blog hop is dedicating this week to "A Day in the Life."

Which makes me laugh.

A typical day at our house is atypical.  Abnormal.  Crazy, perhaps.

We started homeschooling in earnest last week, on Monday, doing Kindergarten work with my oldest.  My 2 1/2 year old decided to potty train too.  Meanwhile, my 12 month old developed an ear infection and was super cranky.  Each of those things on their own would've made for a challenging week, but together?  Together they were a combination of disaster, sweetness, and lots of prayer.

So what's normal for us?  We're still not sure yet.

Some days, I'm up at 6 to go running and get showered before the kids get up.  We get school going at 8:30 so that we can finish early.  Other days, we get up at 7 or 7:30, have breakfast and do school in our pjs, and then get ready for the day later on.  We have the rest of the morning to do chores, run errands, or simply play.  My goal is to do school 3-4 days a week, since she's only 4.  But we're still working on the school routine.  With all that was going on for us last week, I was so emotionally & physically exhausted that we had to change it up a lot to make it work.

And honestly, I think that's the way it's supposed to be.

I'm supposed to be flexible.  

I'm supposed to "monitor and adjust," as my education professors termed it.  

I'm supposed to leave room in our schedule for interruptions being a mother.  

School takes much longer than it should because we're constantly being interrupted by a two year old who needs to potty or a baby who needs to be comforted.  And that's fine with me.  Or maybe that's not fine with me, but I'm making it fine with me.  I'm not naturally flexible, but I need to be flexible in this stage of life.  

Our School Day

Our school time, whether that happens at 8:30 or 10:30 am, involves about 10 minutes of handwriting writing practice, 15 minutes of phonics practice, 10 minutes of math, 10 minutes of Bible time, and lots of reading.  You can read more about our curriculum by clicking here.  I'll pull out an easy reader for my daughter to read to me.  I read aloud from a longer book to help my daughter learn to sit still and enjoy longer stories.  I also read aloud and we do an activity relating to one of our Before Five in a Row story books.  These activities are geared towards kids ages 2-4, so it's fun and engaging for both my 4 year old and my 2 year old.

But each of our school activities are interrupted so many times by the kiddos.  Sometimes we take breaks for a diaper change, potty breaks, or just a chance to play and have fun.  At one point, I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor, waiting for my 2 year old to potty.  The fussy baby was in my lap and my 4 year old sat next to me, working on her phonics book.

If you really want to know what a typical day of school is like for us, watch this video.  While taking a break from school, my 4 year old jumped up and started singing her Unicorn version of "If You're Happy and You Know it."   She totally made it up about 2 minutes before I started filming her.



This, my friends, is a day in the life of this homeschooling family.  If I didn't leave time for this kind of crazy fun, then I'd be missing out on what homeschooling is all about.

What does a typical day of school look like at your house?

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