The kids are usually up before me, sometimes as much as two hours. But they know I need my sleep and don't bug me. Eli and Miri have gotten really good about getting Will out of bed, changed, and fed so that helps a ton. They also feed themselves so when I get up (usually between 10:30 and 11:30), they are ready to start chores. As soon as I'm ready for the day, we can start.
If the house is a total disaster, sometimes we will take the day off of traditional schoolwork to get the house back in some semblance of order, but on a typical day, we only work for an hour or so. Right now, it's Josie's job to unload the dishwasher right now, so she does that, while Eli, Miri, and Sarah, sweep and pick up the living room (which is where we have school). Emmy's still in bed at this point and we don't bug her yet. Those are our only morning chores. When the living room is clean, I start digging out the stuff we will need for history and the kids get out the school table and chairs. Then I send someone out to tell Emmy we are ready to start school. If she doesn't come right away, (which is common) we start without her and she has to catch up later.
History is our first subject. Later, I'd like to add devotional (Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, word of the day, song, rules, scripture memorization, etc) back in but I'm saving that for when life settles back down with baby and Dad's new work schedule.
Anyway, so history. We are using Story of the World Volume 3 this year, which covers about 1600 to 1850. We figured out last year that we like lapbooking, so before school started this year, I made a minibook for every reading in the history book. So, at the beginning of every history lesson, I hand out the minibooks and explain what they are supposed to do with them. They get started while I read the day's story. Then we do the review questions from the activity book and I help them finish their minibooks. When they've assembled the minibooks, they glue them to a cardstock lapbook pages which will be wire-bound with the other pages at the end of the year. I keep the finished pages so they won't get ruined before I have a chance to bind them. Emmy is a little old for my lapbooks so she does a narration page instead. At some point in the lesson, someone colors a timeline picture and glues it on our wall timeline.
History usually takes 45 minutes to an hour and, by the time we are done, it's lunch time. So I send everyone to fix themselves some lunch while I eat quickly and fill out my planner page for the day. I also write a post-it note for each of the kids with their independent work listed on it. Then they clean up lunch and we get back to schoolwork.
After lunch, we do phonics and grammar. I get Josie and Sarah going in their respective Explode the Code workbooks and then move on to grammar. We are doing the Winston Grammar program. Each lesson includes a small amount of instruction from me and then a 12-sentence worksheet for them to do independently. Eli and Emmy started the program several months before Miri so they are at different points in the book. In order for me to not have to teach two lessons per day (and to stretch out the program) I teach one lesson and assign the first half of a worksheet, and assign the second half of a worksheet to the other student(s).
At this point, Emmy and Eli only have independent work left, so they go off to do their own thing.
Next is science. Emmy's doing an online science class that goes along with Exploring Creation with General Science. Eli is doing Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics along with the worksheets and lab pages that I made to go with it. Miri, Josie, and Sarah are doing Exploring Creation with Flying Creatures. I made minibooks to go along with this book as well. There is a minibook to go with most lessons. They start their books while I read aloud from the textbook. Then I help them finish the minibooks and glue them on cardstock pages, just like the history lessons. If there is an experiment or project, we do that as well.
Now, unless someone needs to do a spelling test, everyone goes off to do their independent work except Sarah. The big kids write their spelling words or do a test. Sarah and I do Letter of the Week. We sing the alphabet song and the letter song, talk about the letter, and then do some sort of cut, color, and glue activity in one of her mini lapbooks.
After that, I am pretty much done with school for the day, except for being available to help as needed. The kids take one to several hours to finish - it's up to them. They do math, gospel, handwriting, reading and anything else we need to work on. At some point in the afternoon, they do have more chores to do and they have been largely responsible for dinners so that and fee time in the evening pretty much fills out the day.
What did you learn today?
