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A Day in the Journey {so far}

Not Back to School Blog Hop

This month I have been participating in a blog hop called the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop. It's been so great to get inspiration from others' school rooms, to read about all of the many curriculums being used and to see pictures of the great kids who have the pleasure of being schooled by their biggest supporters.

This final week of the blog hop we are asked to present "A Day in the Life" of our homeschooling day. This has been the first full "normal" week we have had. So, I will do my best with what we have done so far.

5:15 a.m. ~ *gulp* ~ Between then and 7:00 a.m., I go for a run, get in some coffee and computer time, shower and get ready for the day.

7:00 a.m. ~ Dawson starts his morning (semi-begrudgingly). During this time I am taking our sophomore to school and getting our other little two up and ready for their school. He showers, eats breakfast, tidies his room, makes his bed, gets dressed, fixes his hair, brushes his teeth, does his daily devotion and does whatever chore I have for him to do.

9:00 a.m. ~ When I've got all the other kids to school, we get started. We grab a cup of coffee and head upstairs.

* Literature/Bible: We sit in our upstairs living room, or in the living room downstairs, and read our Bible lesson for the day and then answer the provided discussion questions. Then Dawson works on scripture memorization. Right now he is studying the story of Joseph in Genesis and memorizing Psalm 24.


* Vocabulary/Spelling/Writing: We go to the school room and our desks for this. We talk about our spelling rule and do our spelling assignment. We add our vocabulary words-of-the-day to index cards. And then Dawson does a writing assignment based on the Bible lesson we are reading. This week he is writing on the Elements of Literature, starting with character, then plot, etc., and doing spelling words based on the "i/e" rules.


* Social Studies/Science: These lessons are also based on the Bible lesson we are studying. Currently we are studying Ancient Egypt and the desert. We have done mapping and globe work and he is making a diorama this week. There are also cooking assignments. He reads books we check out from the library each day and writes 5 Facts from what he reads. {I will do a separate post on our 5 Facts assignments soon.} Every day is different, but has to do with our basic lessons.

10:00-10:30 a.m. or so ~ We take a snack and drink break because what's coming up a little later is the hardest part of our day.

10:30 a.m. ~ Fine Arts. Dawson loves art so I try to incorporate some kind of art project every day. Sometimes it is included in another subject, like mapping or making a diorama for science. Yesterday we made a cave painting depicting the important things in Dawson's life. But some days he will just draw. We will be participating in Sketch Tuesday and he is currently going to be drawing out of an Ancient Egypt book of drawing.

By 11:00 ~ We dive into Pre-Algebra. We are using Saxon Algebra 1/2 this year. We can both understand it, so that's a bonus. We discuss the day's lesson and then he does the 30 problems in that lesson. I grade it and then he re-does the problems he missed. (I'm hoping that by having to re-do problems, he'll just take his time and get them right the first time.) He gets two grades in the grade book every day for these assignments. This pretty much takes us a full hour.

Noon ~ Lunch time!! I give Dawson a full hour to eat lunch and watch t.v. and veg out. He desperately needs this! And, I can get some housework and things done during this time.

1:00 p.m. ~ Back at it! Now we do our "unnecessaries", or the subjects that are unnecessary in my opinion (like typing, Spanish and personal reading). I have this attitude because on Thursday afternoons we volunteer at our elementary school and a lot of times on Friday afternoons we are doing errands. So I don't want us doing necessary subjects in the afternoon. He does still tend to work in his personal reading earlier in the day, or before he goes to bed, if we are going to be gone in the afternoon.

* Typing: I plan to have Dawson spend 15 or so minutes a day practicing typing. This little chicken-pecker totally needs this. But we haven't seemed to get to it yet.

* Spanish: We'll be doing an assignment every day ... hopefully starting soon. Again, our other subjects tend to take us to almost 3:00 p.m. and we haven't gotten to start Spanish yet.

* Extra Projects: Some days we will watch videos about things we are studying. Currently I have two about Ancient Egypt for us to watch and one on deserts.

* Personal Reading: Dawson has to read every day for 30 minutes. He logs his time in a Reading Log. Currently he is reading The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series. He is on the first book, The Capture.


3:00 p.m. ~ My goal is for us to be DONE for the day, both for his sanity and mine! In my quest to be done by 3:00 each day, we've had to skip doing Typing and Spanish. Hopefully we'll start getting to those things soon.

There are some evenings that we do school, like our field trip to Philbrook Museum. But for the most part I just want Dawson to be spending time with his friends, getting outside, whatever gets his energy out so he is ready for the next day.

And so far that has been our schedule. It totally works for us so far. He has said that what we are doing is much better than public school. That was the goal!!! {And I can't believe how much he is learning already! Kyndal had a school project last week and it included biomes. When I said the word he said, "Hey, we studied about that this week!" Insert mom's smile here. And, on Monday when I told him he had 15 minutes left to read he said, "How about 20? Then I can finish 3 chapters." Warm my heart!}

Comments

  1. sounds like a good schedule that is working out great for you guys :)

    are you going to see the guardins movie it comes out on my bday so we are going as a family to see it that weekend :) my oldest loved reading the series. it is a great series

    ReplyDelete

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