A Day In Our Homeschool - Then And Now

This week the Schoolhouse Crew members have been invited to share what A Day In Our Homeschool looks like. Having done a few of those kinds of posts over the past several years, I looked back at some of them and was amused to see that even though kids have grown and graduated, and our curriculum choices change with them  - there are some things that haven't changed much!

About two years ago I did a series called 5 Ordinary Homeschool Days that walked through a typical week with my students, who were in 7th and 9th grades at the time. Very briefly, it looked like this:

Monday - I let them sleep late because they're out late on Sunday night.
Tuesday - we were running all day: rides to work, gym class, choir rehearsals, and Civil Air Patrol.
Wednesday-Friday - try to get up on time, try to stick to our schedule and get schoolwork done without too many interruptions, try to keep the grading up to date.
Landon and Kennady did one subject together (Social Studies/History) and I was hands-on in several subjects with Kennady, but Landon worked on almost everything independently.

Some things change:

Kennady isn't playing softball any more, so that's one less obligation to squeeze into a week. She still takes guitar lessons, but now on Mondays instead. Landon has his drivers license now, so we have a little more flexibility when somebody needs to go somewhere. Our household has changed a bit, since our oldest son has moved out on his own, and our second son has his own car so he doesn't need to coordinate with me for rides to work or anything else. And of course with the kids advancing a couple of grades since then, they are using different curriculum and are even more independent when it comes to doing their schoolwork. They are both doing the same Science course, but just take turns with the textbook rather than work together. They are both doing a Student Writing Intensive so we get together for the video lessons. And I work with each of them one-on-one with their respective Grammar studies.

Some things stay the same!

The kids still sleep as late as they can possibly get away with, and I still allow it on Mondays. Because they still work as scorekeepers for Dad's hockey league on Sunday nights and they still get home late. The reality is - I don't think they get to bed any later on Sunday nights than any other school night, but that extra 10 or 15 minutes under the covers on Monday morning is a special treat.

We still have a bajillion places to be on Tuesdays, so that is still sort of half day of school. Half day if we're lucky! I don't have to give anyone a ride to work, but we still have gym class (during which I try to get groceries bought or something useful like that), and Civil Air Patrol (in fact, Landon has to be there even earlier), and choir rehearsals for both Kennady and me.

  

We have an ongoing challenge in getting up on time most days! I'm still up and starting on my coffee by 6:30am, and I'm still calling up the stairs to make sure my teens are conscious and starting on their schoolwork for the day. Oh, they do know how to use their alarm clocks and are perfectly capable of getting up on their own, but I have been thoroughly trained to wake them so that they don't bother with their alarm clocks. *sigh* I know when I'm beaten! Hahaha!

We still do our best to meet the deadlines for schoolwork that we've set for ourselves and to keep up the pace. And that still means we're almost always in some combination of just a bit ahead of schedule here, pretty close to right on schedule there, and desperately needing to catch up in something else. Sometimes I start to stress about how much is left to do before the end of a semester, but somehow we always pull it off. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll manage it again this year!

I still procrastinate about grading more often than I should. Procrastinating, in general, is a great weakness of mine. But thankfully, I'm getting much better at it! Better at doing things in a timely manner, not better at procrastinating, just to clarify. And coffee. That's the same - there is always coffee.

And despite some changing family dynamics, some very good things about our family life stay much the same as well. Good things, like eating meals together, going to church together, and enjoying each other's company. 

Speaking of some things changing and some staying the same - we've started recreating some awkward family photos just for fun, and this was what we did for our family's New Year's card this year. The caption I put on the card was "Some things change . . . some things stay the same!"

Close family relationships are something that we want to be consistent with, no matter what else changes, and I think all those seemingly ordinary days of homeschooling has helped us do that. What does a day in your homeschool look like? Leave a comment and let me know!

Visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to see what other Crew members are sharing in the A Day In Our Homeschool Round-up, which will be live on Friday, February 19th. 

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This post was added to the Throwback Thursday Blog-Style link-up hosted by Tots and Me... Growing Up Together! on February 23, 2017.

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