Comments on: Share your homeschool day in the life with us – one last time!

By: Jamie C. Martin

Jamie C. Martin

In reply to Cassie Horstman. Beautiful reel, Cassie! Amazing to see how you juggle work and homeschooling - thanks for sharing! ~ Jamie xo

By: Jamie C. Martin

Jamie C. Martin

In reply to Rachael. Beautiful day, Rachael! And I feel you on the early riser. My Jonathan was always like that, and even into his teen years (which his pediatrician said she didn't know was biologically possible lol)! How special to have other homeschool families nearby for playtime. You're doing an amazing job for your baby boy! Thanks for sharing, Jamie xo

By: Jamie C. Martin

Jamie C. Martin

In reply to Shannon. Whew, Shannon! Your day takes me WAY back and makes me wish I could over for a few hours and let you take a nap. :) This is a beautiful homeschool day, and I just love the idea of "Time of Wonder." You're doing an amazing job!

By: Jamie C. Martin

Jamie C. Martin

In reply to Brittany. What a beautiful, interesting day, Brittany! I wish I could visit you for 24 hours and experience it all! xo

By: Cassie Horstman

Cassie Horstman

Here is a post from a month or so ago. I did a small glimpse into the day of a full time working homeschool mom.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1A78ucLZtA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

By: Rachael

Rachael

I am not a morning person. At all. But my 6-year-old son is. Really is. He’s up by 6:45 every morning. I loathe getting up that early. So I try to have things out and ready that he can do on his own. On a good day, I can convince him to get dressed, eat breakfast, and complete his morning work while I (try to) sleep a little longer. Other days, he will climb in bed with me and talk my ear off. By 8:00, my husband has left for work, and my son has heard enough of “Just 5 more minutes, please!” So I drag myself out of bed, pour the coffee (I was not a coffee drinker until we started homeschooling), and we sit on the couch together snuggled under a blanket to read the Bible, work on his Awana verses for the week, and read some poetry. We usually eat breakfast during this time, too, as I’ve found that my son listens best when he is chewing.

After our Bible time, we move into our school room to do our daily calendar math. We use this time to review days of the week, months of the year, reading and writing the date, patterning, counting money, place value, and number sense. We don’t do this everyday, but I do try to make sure we do it at least twice a week, as it keeps these foundational math skills in practice.

Before we move into the rest of our day, I will either send my son outside to play for a little while, or if the Florida weather is nice, we will take a walk/bike ride around our neighborhood. Getting some of those early morning wiggles out helps him focus better for the next hour or so. Once we come back in, I take time to shower and get dressed, and then we get back into our routine.

Reading is next. At the beginning of the year, this was the most difficult time of our school day; however, as the year has progressed, he has discovered that he is a fantastic reader, and he is now eager to do his reading lessons each day!

After reading, we do what we call “table time.” During this time we work at his little table in the school room to work on Phonics, Handwriting, and Language Arts. We stay in the school room for math. My son loves math games and manipulatives, so anything that I can do to “gamify” math concepts goes over big with him.

After we finish math, my son grabs a snack and we move back to the couch to do history, literature, and science. We use a literature-based curriculum for these subjects. I know my son can focus better when his hands are busy, so during this time, I have a collection of “busy bags” that he can play with while I read aloud.

We are typically done with school by 12:00, so after lunch my son is free for afternoon playtime. We are fortunate to live on a street with two other homeschool families, and we all tend to finish school around the same time, so around mid-day, the doorbells start ringing. While my son plays, I have time to tackle a load of laundry or two and start prepping for dinner. A few mornings a week, my son has therapy or activities with our homeschool group. On those days, our school time lasts a little longer, and we don’t finish until around 3:00.

My husband gets home from work around 6:00. We make it a point to eat dinner together as a family every night. Our son has discovered “Wheel of Fortune,” so we usually watch after dinner each night. He enjoys using what he’s learned in reading to try to solve the puzzles before we do. After that, it’s time to get ready for bed. Once he goes to bed, I take a few minutes to lay out materials for the next day before heading to bed myself. Because the days start early around here!

By: Shannon

Shannon

I’m early on in my homeschooling days with 2 newly 6-year-olds (girls), a 3.5-year-old boy and a 3-month-old boy. I’ve always loved reading these and using them to help us find our own rhythm, so I wanted to share ours! Things are still a bit in flux as we adjust to the new baby, but they’ve slowly been settling down:
6:00-6:30: I try to wake up by 6, but it sometimes stretches to 6:30 depending on how the previous night went. I use this time to get the dog out, feed/water the chickens if we’re going somewhere, and do a short work out. I then shower and get the older three breakfast.
7-7:30: The baby usually wakes somewhere in here. My middle son is typically already up and either cuddling or eating. My girls are awake but tend to stay in their room until I get them.
7:45-8:00ish: Everyone is eating breakfast and we start “Time of Wonder” (what most people call Morning TIme). We do a Bible Study (using Long Story Short), a hymn, some simple recitation (currently various parts of the church service to help with familiarity), a couple songs/poems, our calendar time, learn a few French words, and read some books. Depending on the day, we might also do a quick painting study or listen to some classical music. It sounds like a lot, but it generally takes less than an hour, and my kids tend to eat breakfast for most of it.
9:00ish: We clean up from breakfast and I play with the baby a bit before putting him in a sleep sack to try and get him to sleep.
9:15ish (trying to make this earlier eventually): I do some individual work with each of the older kids. For my son, we do 2 10-minute chunks where I typically have some sort of letter activity and a basic math activity ready. Once he finishes those, he gets to decide what we do together. For my daughters, we do a phonics lesson from All About Reading, math (Singapore or Beast), piano, and handwriting/spelling (we use Universal Handwriting and All About Spelling now, but I think I will switch to Spelling You See and some copywork after this level since they’re both very visual learners). I do 2 15 minute chunks with each of the girls, and I encourage them to do a bit of work independently while I’m working with their siblings. This is also the time where I encourage them to brush their teeth, get dressed, and do their basic morning chores (make beds, pick up rooms). It’s a work in progress.
10:00-10:30ish: The baby is up. I have mostly figured out how to feed him while helping with school, so that’s what I do.
10:30-11:00ish: If we’re going somewhere, this is typically when we start getting ready to leave (we have co-op one day, swim one day, and a park playdate and piano lessons a third day. I’m trying to combine so we’re only out of the house 2 days long term). If we’re at home, we head outside for awhile. The baby generally falls asleep on me, and I sometimes succeed in transferring him to his crib.
11:45ish: We’re back inside for family subjects. All the kids got violins for Christmas because two of them wanted to learn to play, so we do a quick video lesson for that followed by some science (we’re reading Sassafrass Zoology right now and doing lapbooks) or history (I am doing a prehistory study I created) and usually drawing/painting/some sort of art.
12:45ish: Lunch time.
1:30: We read our “naptime books” – the kids’ choice before they head down for quiet time/naptime. If I can get the baby napping at this time, too, then this is my window for doing chores though I admit not a lot get done.
When the kids get up, they have snack, and then we have free play until dinner time. If we had a really bad morning and got nothing done, we may do some school here, but I generally try to keep it free. I was doing poetry teatime with snack once a week pre-baby, and the kids loved it, but I’m generally pretty worn out by that time these days, so we’ve only done it a couple times. I do want to add it back along with some more nature study outside as the weather gets nicer.

By: Brittany

Brittany

In reply to Terri.

Yay for emphasizing foreign languages with kids! I’m starting that with my young daughters and am so encouraged by how quickly they progress. If anyone needs ideas for French resources I started a blog to chronicle our journey: https://onyvatogether.blogspot.com/
Merci!

By: Brittany

Brittany

Brittany’s Bilingual FRENCH Day in a Life (with a 4.5 and 1.5 yr old)

https://onyvatogether.blogspot.com/2025/03/brittanys-bilingual-french-day-in-life.html

By: Jamie C. Martin

Jamie C. Martin

In reply to Janet Bandeff. What a beautiful, busy day, Janet! I love your precious pup! Thanks so much for sharing.