A Homeschool Day in the Life - ages 13 & 7

It's that time of year again! Simple Homeschool  is inviting readers to link up to their "Homeschool Day in the Life". I don't quite know why I get so excited about it. There's something appealing to me about being allowed a peek at someone's life without getting arrested. It may go all the way back to when I watched and secretly enjoyed MTV's "The Real World". "The Bachelor"  only encouraged me in what I knew was smut. And American and/or Canadian Idol? Love it. "Duck Dynasty"? You had me at redneck. So in my defence, this blog linky is way more acceptable than slowly driving through my neighbourhood after dark and looking into lighted windows to see what putrid colours people choose to paint their walls. OK? OK.

This particular day open for peeking in on is a typical Wednesday.

Our family - Wayne, Rachel, Will and Zanna

My alarm goes off at 7am and I'm embarrassed to admit that the snooze button is hit for the next half hour or so. I'm clearly not a morning person.

On the other hand, my 13 year old son's alarm goes off at 6:15am and he gets up right away. Or so I'm assuming.  I'm fast asleep in my warm, cozy bed. But I believe this is the case because he tells me and he has usually accomplished enough by the time I'm on the scene to validate that he'd need that much time.

I'd like to take full credit for having a child who's so eager to start his day and can't wait to learn. But this is a day in real life and who am I kidding? Several years ago, I implemented a schedule that he can see and know what subjects he's expected to do each day. He finds great inner motivation to cross them off his list as soon as possible. The problem has been that sometimes in an effort to quickly cross items off his list, he's done a crappy job. This has meant that I've had to be very diligent about checking up on his work and holding him to a higher standard if he's not holding himself to that standard.

So from about 6:30 to 9:00am he is:

•  reading several chapters of his assigned book for school - currently Son of Charlemangne by Barbara Willard
• eat breakfast
• morning chores
• play legos
• completes a lesson from Teaching Textbooks Algebra
• if he has the time and the motivation he may even do his Apologia Science and notebook. Otherwise he'll just do it later. 

My 7 year old gets up about 7:30am and has breakfast (which takes forever because she's the slowest eater in the history of the world), morning chores, and plays.

We all aim to be ready to go by 9am for our Morning Meeting. Because the span in ages between my two kids are fairly decent, this makes it challenging  to share subjects that I can teach at the same time. During Morning Meeting, the three of us have devotion, work on memorizing the Sermon on the Mount, read aloud poetry and read aloud a chapter from Story of the World. My daughter likes to colour the coordinating picture while I'm reading. Then I ask them both the comprehension questions. After this, it's time to separate and each has their age/level appropriate work.

It's about  9:40 or so and Will's ready for a break. This allows me to work one on one with Zanna.  We'll do Saxon Math 2, the red book LLAL for language arts and All About Spelling.

10:15am - I call Will back and I tag team between the two kids. I give Zanna her worksheets to do from the lessons I just gave her. 
Meanwhile, Will and I have a grammar lesson (Easy Grammar Plus).

10:30 - Dad calls the kids and it's time for them to go with him to the retirement home. He's a pastor and he goes there weekly to lead a worship service for the residents. The kids go along and help usher, shake hands and sometimes play their violins.

Meanwhile, I'm in the house by.my.self.

 I run around naked , eat bon-bons and look at Pinterest clean up around the house and generally catch up on things that didn't get done earlier , i.e.. make my bed, take care of breakfast dishes, sweep the floor. I start working on lunch.

After lunch is finished and cleaned up, Will finishes up his book work for the day. He's got an informal essay letter he's writing for the IEW Continuation Course. We go over his rough draft together and make some notes.  Zanna's back to playing, reading, etc. 

Quiet time is usually between 1-2pm. Both kids are in their rooms and the general idea is that whatever they're doing must be quiet. That may seem obvious given the name but I occasionally must remind my children to keep the noise level down. Both of them like to listen to audio books on CD while playing with their legos, barbies, whatever. Meanwhile for me this is my Bible study time, reading, etc. In other words - my sanity. Today though it's taken up with a phone call with my Mom that lasts an hour and a half. We talk about once a week and between the two of us we've each had a lot going on in our lives this last week that apparently takes a while to discuss!

From 2-4pm is pretty free today. Violin must be practiced by each of them. Legos are to be played with.  Zanna plays with a neighbour friend. Will has a weekly paper route and he'll work on getting half of it done today. I catch up on my Bible time and mop the floor - completely unrelated, I know. 

The kids are allowed to watch an hour of TV from 4-5pm. Looks like reruns of "The Brady Bunch".

 Wayne and I go for a walk.

 I get dinner started once we're home.

We need dinner to be cleaned up by around 6pm so we can get out the door by 6:15 for choir at church. Our choir director is gracious enough to allow us to bring them and let's them participate on top of it. Even though they've been in the children's choir over the years, it's been surprising to see Will especially step up his game. I think it's another example of including our kids in our lives (as opposed to sending them off with their own) and they rise to the occasion. When they're exposed to an environment of maturity, this can't help but rub off on them in a positive way. They're still kids to be sure! But it's exciting to see them rise to the level where the bar's been raised.

We're home by 7:45pm and Zanna gets ready for bed. Will stays for a Bible class at church with Wayne. Wayne drops him off at home about 8:45pm on his way to another Bible class. Will heads upstairs and gets ready for bed.

Once Wayne is home from his classes, the night is ours. Bedtime is 11pm. And the alarm goes off again at 7am. I hit snooze.