I've been wanting to do a "day in the life of" post for awhile, but since our days tend to be so varied, any single day wouldn't be a very accurate look at what learning really looks like in our household. Instead, I've decided to share about an entire homeschool week, I think this will be a better way to share about our approach to learning.
We don't have a specific time that we wake up or start our school day. We wake up when we're ready and usually make a real breakfast and get cleaned up and dressed for the day before we get started. I'll spare you the boring daily details and mostly just share about our learning experiences each day.
Monday:
We are currently living in an apartment without on site laundry, so every Monday, we pack up our laundry baskets and some school work and head to the laundry mat after breakfast. Since we're stuck sitting around the laundry mat anyway, it's the perfect time to get a little reading or a couple worksheets done.
This week we brought a history lesson, our U.S. geography binder, and a spelling practice sheet. For history, we are focusing on westward expansion this year, and are currently working on the Moving West History Pocket from Evan Moor. For today's lesson, L, my 8 year old, read a short information page titled The New Frontier, and colored the label for the New Frontier portion of her pocket book. For geography, she colored and labeled a map of Kentucky and looked at pictures of the state bird and flower on my phone. You can read more about how we're studying U.S. geography without curriculum or text books here.
After the laundry was finished, we took a short play break at the park, and then headed home for lunch. After lunch we did a quick hands on math activity, dividing plastic counters into equal groups and writing the corresponding division problem. Then we set up a science experiment about decomposition.
The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing. We watched a few cartoons, L worked on a sewing project, and we made dinner.
Tuesday:
Tuesdays are our busy out of the house days, so we generally don't do any formal lessons, but that doesn't mean we aren't learning. Most Tuesdays, as soon as we are up and dressed and fed, we drive the 45 minutes into town for our homeschool garden day at the community garden. My kids love garden day. Our garden is a third acre lot in a quiet neighborhood in the middle of town. It's packed with raised beds full of all sorts of goodness, like tomatoes, carrots, squash, sunflowers, onions, peppers, and more. This week we harvested carrots and sunflower seeds, prepped a raised bed, and planted several new varieties of carrots, and some onions. My 3 year old and another toddler practiced their colors and sorting skills, by helping sort packages of seeds.
We almost always come across some sort of critter to observe under a magnifying glass and look up in one of the animal guides, this week it was a grasshopper and a garden snail.
After garden day, we headed to the park for a picnic lunch and a play date with some of our homeschool friends. The park had a brand new play structure that had just opened, with a spotting scope and a display of common birds to look for, so both my girls spent some time bird watching. By the time we got home, it was time to make dinner and get ready for bed.
Wednesday:
After such a busy day the day before, we all slept in a little on Wednesday and we took our time getting ready for the day. For school, we worked on another history lesson from our Moving West curriculum. This lesson included a short reading assignment about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road, and a Daniel Boone craft. For geography, we looked at pictures of famous places in Kentucky and reviewed where all the states we've studied so far, are on the U.S. map. L did a short division worksheet and a spelling worksheet while I read a couple stories to the little ones. And we checked and recorded the progress of our decomposition experiment.
We finished just in time for lunch and a little free time before we headed to the library for L to attend elementary craft time. While she worked on building a bird house in the craft room, the little girls and I sat down in the kid's room, and read stories and played with puzzles.
We went home and I had the girls help me pick up the living room and school room and then I let them each choose a T.V. show while I picked up the house and got dinner ready.
Thursday:
On Thursdays I usually don't plan any lessons. Instead, I let L work on whatever happens to interest her that day. Sometimes she has an ongoing project she chooses to work on, and sometimes she just randomly chooses something she's interested in to research. This Thursday she read an article in her Highlights magazine about box turtles. This got her asking all sorts of questions about turtles, so we pulled out her tablet and did a little research. Then we watched a few YouTube videos about turtles. After the videos she decided that sea turtles were her favorite type of turtle, so she sketched one in her sketch journal and listed a couple facts about them.
While L worked, I got out the coloring books and markers for my 3 year old, and I did a little planning for next week's lessons.
In the afternoon L and my 3 year old helped me bake some chocolate chip cookies from scratch. We doubled the recipe and froze half the dough for later. We didn't really need the extra dough, but it gave L a chance to practice some math skills, doubling all the ingredients. After our treat, I watched the girls play on their scooters in front of the apartment and then came in for dinner and to get ready for bed.
Friday:
Friday, we got up and got ready for the day. The girls helped me make pancakes for breakfast, and then we took a short nature hike on the trails near our house. We always bring a basket to collect nature treasures in. That day the girls found some huge acorns, some leaves that were starting to change color, and several pretty rocks to bring home. We also saw a dragonfly and several plant species that we photographed and then identified, using the iNaturalist app.
After our walk, L did a quick division work sheet, filled out a fact sheet about Kentucky for her state binder, and did some free choice reading. While she was working, I turned on a few of my favorite preschool learning songs to sing with my 3 year old and we practiced counting all our fingers and toes.
One of L's goals this year is to learn some sign language, so we all watched a video that showed the signs for common animals and practiced signing the alphabet.
We finished in time for lunch, checked on our decomposition experiment, and then headed to our favorite park for a little play time.
And that was our week!
Our weeks may be pretty relaxed, without a ton of structure, but we manage to squeeze in a lot of learning and some fun life experiences! I love the freedom homeschooling gives us to learn however works best for us and I love how much variety and flexibility it allows us.
If you enjoyed this post, check out:
-A Look At Our Homeschool Plans: 4th Grade
-Homeschool Curriculum and Resources: My Top Picks
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Monday:
We are currently living in an apartment without on site laundry, so every Monday, we pack up our laundry baskets and some school work and head to the laundry mat after breakfast. Since we're stuck sitting around the laundry mat anyway, it's the perfect time to get a little reading or a couple worksheets done.
This week we brought a history lesson, our U.S. geography binder, and a spelling practice sheet. For history, we are focusing on westward expansion this year, and are currently working on the Moving West History Pocket from Evan Moor. For today's lesson, L, my 8 year old, read a short information page titled The New Frontier, and colored the label for the New Frontier portion of her pocket book. For geography, she colored and labeled a map of Kentucky and looked at pictures of the state bird and flower on my phone. You can read more about how we're studying U.S. geography without curriculum or text books here.
 |
| Our decomposition experiment |
Tuesdays are our busy out of the house days, so we generally don't do any formal lessons, but that doesn't mean we aren't learning. Most Tuesdays, as soon as we are up and dressed and fed, we drive the 45 minutes into town for our homeschool garden day at the community garden. My kids love garden day. Our garden is a third acre lot in a quiet neighborhood in the middle of town. It's packed with raised beds full of all sorts of goodness, like tomatoes, carrots, squash, sunflowers, onions, peppers, and more. This week we harvested carrots and sunflower seeds, prepped a raised bed, and planted several new varieties of carrots, and some onions. My 3 year old and another toddler practiced their colors and sorting skills, by helping sort packages of seeds.
We almost always come across some sort of critter to observe under a magnifying glass and look up in one of the animal guides, this week it was a grasshopper and a garden snail.
Wednesday:
After such a busy day the day before, we all slept in a little on Wednesday and we took our time getting ready for the day. For school, we worked on another history lesson from our Moving West curriculum. This lesson included a short reading assignment about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road, and a Daniel Boone craft. For geography, we looked at pictures of famous places in Kentucky and reviewed where all the states we've studied so far, are on the U.S. map. L did a short division worksheet and a spelling worksheet while I read a couple stories to the little ones. And we checked and recorded the progress of our decomposition experiment.
 |
| Daniel Boone craft |
Thursday:
On Thursdays I usually don't plan any lessons. Instead, I let L work on whatever happens to interest her that day. Sometimes she has an ongoing project she chooses to work on, and sometimes she just randomly chooses something she's interested in to research. This Thursday she read an article in her Highlights magazine about box turtles. This got her asking all sorts of questions about turtles, so we pulled out her tablet and did a little research. Then we watched a few YouTube videos about turtles. After the videos she decided that sea turtles were her favorite type of turtle, so she sketched one in her sketch journal and listed a couple facts about them.
In the afternoon L and my 3 year old helped me bake some chocolate chip cookies from scratch. We doubled the recipe and froze half the dough for later. We didn't really need the extra dough, but it gave L a chance to practice some math skills, doubling all the ingredients. After our treat, I watched the girls play on their scooters in front of the apartment and then came in for dinner and to get ready for bed.
Friday:
Friday, we got up and got ready for the day. The girls helped me make pancakes for breakfast, and then we took a short nature hike on the trails near our house. We always bring a basket to collect nature treasures in. That day the girls found some huge acorns, some leaves that were starting to change color, and several pretty rocks to bring home. We also saw a dragonfly and several plant species that we photographed and then identified, using the iNaturalist app.
We finished in time for lunch, checked on our decomposition experiment, and then headed to our favorite park for a little play time.
And that was our week!
Our weeks may be pretty relaxed, without a ton of structure, but we manage to squeeze in a lot of learning and some fun life experiences! I love the freedom homeschooling gives us to learn however works best for us and I love how much variety and flexibility it allows us.
If you enjoyed this post, check out:
-A Look At Our Homeschool Plans: 4th Grade
-Homeschool Curriculum and Resources: My Top Picks
Follow me on:
I love the products produced by Evan Moor - the history ones are so much fun. I used to use them when I was a high school teacher because they were packed full of info and were perfect for a light exercise.
ReplyDeleteEvan Moor has so many great learning products. We really loved their U.S. Facts and Fun workbook we did last year.
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