I have been hesitant to post any sort of homeschool routine or schedule, because I never had one that I really liked.... until now!  I'm so excited!  What a blessing the past week and a half has been!  Now, I realize that what we do may not fit your family, and that's fine.  However, I always found it helpful to look at what other homeschoolers did.  It gave me ideas and encouraged me to keep working at it until I found something that fit my family.  I hope that by sharing what we do, it may be helpful to you as well.

7am - Boys' alarm goes off.  I try to be up by 6:30am, so that I can have a half hour of quiet time to start my day.  Lately, with my ear trouble and lack of good sleep, I've been waking up to my boys' alarm.  They've been a real blessing to me lately, though, knowing that I'm not feeling my best.  They've been getting up with the alarm and making their own breakfast (just toast, cereal, waffles, and peeling hard-boiled eggs I have in the fridge).  This give me enough time to wake up, sit for a few minutes alone in my room in prayer, and come out as a cheerful mommy!  As soon as I'm up and dressed, I throw a load of laundry in the washer.  And then I wake up Sarah and help her with her morning routine and then get the two of us breakfast.

The kids have until 8:30am to eat their breakfast, clean up their breakfast plates, and get their morning chores done.  This includes brushing their teeth, as well as household chores.  I have a chore chart posted for each child (with clipart for the two that are still learning to read) with what they are to do each day.  When they get all of that done by 8:30am, they get "bonus tickets" that go into their weekly cup.  (I'll have to save explanation on that for a later post).  These "bonus tickets" have been a great incentive to the boys and a good way for me to reward and acknowledge their positive choices.

At 8:30am, we sit down for our morning reading time.  I read aloud to them from the Catherine Vos Story Bible.  On a good morning, this will only take about ten minutes; however, there are usually many interruptions - which God is obviously using to teach me patience - and so it usually takes about 20 minutes or so!  Then, I read to them out of their history read alouds.  While I read our history stories, they usually have a notebook page to color that correlates with the story I am reading.  This gives the boys something to do during our reading marathon! :)

We usually finish around 9:30am, and then I have some one-on-one time with Sarah.  I found that before I was trying to get the boys' school done, but I never got around to Sarah since she isn't officially in school.  By spending time with her first, her little love tank gets filled up and she is more cooperative with me during the boys' school time.  During my time with Sarah, we normally do one lesson out of 100EZ Lessons book and also work on her Kindermusik "homework."  Ryan will work on his art homework from his Class Day and/or his piano theory, while Nathan gets to "play" on the computer either at Starfall.com or playing Math Games.   Sarah and I finish up by 10am, and then it's time for the boys' schoolwork.

I used to try to stick to a half-hour schedule, but I've just learned that for us, that rarely worked.  Instead, I just give two hours to get math and language arts done.  My boys pick which they want to work on first, and it varies from day to day.  Sometimes one will work on their math while the other works in their language arts book.  If they get their work completed by 11:45am, then they get two more "bonus tickets."  So far, they have achieved this goal for the past two weeks.

While I make lunch, Ryan practices his piano, and then they eat lunch and go out back to play.  Lately, I've been letting them play until 2pm.  Yes, two hours of free time!  This is when I exercise, fold and put away laundry, grade papers, check email, and sit outside with my kids.  My husband is usually home from work around 2pm and naps until 4pm, so this is when we do science and reading time. 

For science, we have been doing a unit study on birds.  We normally read out of books I've checked out of the library and then do a notebook page that relates to what we have read.  Today after our reading time, the kids created a "wingspan" notebook page.  Once their books are completed, I will share pictures on here.

Most of the time, our science and reading time takes about an hour; however, if the kids are wanting to read more or be more creative with their notebook pages, then they have until 4pm to work on them. 

So, that's it.  That's a day in our homeschool.  Having blocks of time with a routine in place has worked wonderfully.  Like I said, I used to try to schedule by half-hour time slots, but life happens and we just couldn't stick to it.  Then, I'd feel stressed, which I'm sure the kids felt.  I feel so much more relaxed with our new routine, and even better, we are getting everything done each day!  What a blessing!

I know this was a really long explanation.  I could have just posted a shorter version with the time slots, but I felt it might be more beneficial if I explained what we did during our blocks of time. 

If you have any questions, please post a comment for me!

Blessings,

~ LISA