Typical day

I’m in the middle of reading Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days and I’ve been thinking about what our days are like. I also had a nice discussion with a woman at the stables last Friday. She was wondering about what resources we use and how we go about doing school at home. I decided to actually write down an average day just to prove that we aren’t normal!

Here is what Monday looked like at our house…

Since the time change was yesterday we were all up by 8am! That is an unusual occurrence for me, I usually get up closer to 9am. I’ve given up getting the kids out of bed so they get up when they want, which is usually after 9.

8-9am I spent reading email and blogs.

The next hour I spent getting dressed, making the bed, getting a list of books together for Paul so he can go to the library for me, printing out the planning sheets for school, cleaning off the kitchen counter, washing dishes, and hanging up the wet laundry from yesterday.

At 10am the kids put away the Legos they were playing with so they could start their schoolwork. I needed to make bread so I started that while they worked on their individual stuff. While the bread was rising I checked the stuff Lorna had already finished and got her working on some overdue thank you notes. Between kneading the dough and letting it rise a few more times we worked on science and history together. We finished up with catechism work and prayers. By this point it was after 1pm so I left Malachi to finish his thank you notes while I cleaned the bathroom. Lorna decided to move her horse riding to the afternoon since it gets dark so early so she went out to ride Ginger. After I finished cleaning, the bread was ready to go in the oven and Lorna was ready to start her afternoon chores.

I got off easy today since there were leftovers from last night for lunch today. So at 2pm, I sat down to eat and read a bit. Malachi was still working on those notes so I helped out a bit before I finished lunch. The kids ate lunch after I did because they were busy with their own stuff. From 2:30-3:30 I read some more email and decided to start this blog post.

Paul got home relatively early, 3:30, with the load of library books. From then until Paul left for his night job at 5:30pm I read one of the books he brought home. At 5pm the kids were finished with their chores so we put in the movie we got in the mail from Netflix. About an hour into it I started making dinner. Once the movie and dinner were finished I went back to my book. I started getting ready for bed around 10 pm. The kids finished up showers around this time as well, getting to bed around 10:30pm.

I finished my book and started another one until Paul got home at midnight.

This is a pretty typical day for us. The kids don’t have set times to go to bed or get up and they have chores that help the house run pretty smoothly. I have a lot of time to read or sew because I don’t have access to a vehicle during the week so I am home all day without any errands to run. I frequently read 5-7 fun books a week and check my email numerous times a day. I sometimes feel guilty that I have so much time for my own amusements but I don’t have many of the same opportunities for adult conversation that others do so these things help keep me sane. I used to try to clean a lot more but realized it’s useless to try to keep things picked up. The house is so small that it is really impossible for it not to be cluttered. One benefit of it being so small is that it is a quick job when I do go on a cleaning spree.

An average day for school is only about 2-3 hours. We are using fewer and fewer textbooks every year. I started out really regimented but have relaxed a lot over the past few years. Even though "school" is only a few hours we all spend a lot of time reading and doing things that could be counted as school related.