Apr 03 2009
What are Home Schooling Days Like?
Most families of school aged children have a definite schedule that they have to adhere to. It is not normally treated with joy, but rather with fear, because if they aren’t at certain places, at certain times of the day, every day, at least five days a week, 12 or more hours a day, then there will certainly be consequences. For example, if the children are even a minute or two late to a class, they are punished, even if it was the fault of their worn out mother. There are exceptions to every rule, but I run across more tired, irritable public schooling families than I do home schooling families.
At my house, if the children don’t wake up on their own, I wake them up between 8 and 9a.m. Unless we have an appointment, there is no special reason to get up at that hour, but I feel like everybody is at their best at about that time. They take about an hour to do their activities of daily living, eat breakfast, and find whatever it is that they need for “school” right then. Since I work from home, I have the table near the computer so that I can prompt them and help them with their work while I do my own work. During that time, we have several interruptions from the baby, but she is an educational lesson on her own, and there is nothing wrong with frequent, short, breaks.
We work this way until about lunch time. After eating lunch, we run our errands such as paying bills, grocery shopping, or going to the bank. By the time we get finished, it is usually time to get ready for an after school activity such as Girl Scouts or twirling. Since I am involved in almost all of their after school activities, I have been able to work those schedules around so that they are over not much longer after their father gets home from work.
Once my husband gets home from work, the children help with the baby while I make supper. After supper, we either run more errands, listen to music, read a chapter book out loud, work on other lessons that we didn’t make time for earlier, watch movies, read independently, play a board game, or use the computer. Therefore, evenings are just as busy and productive as our days.
Because the best laid plans are known to fail every so often, there is no real hard and fast schedule. We try to just treat each day as a new day, and look for the educational opportunities in everything that we do.
Have a Great Day!
Laurel Santiago
