a day in the life

If  you are visiting from Simple Homeschool's A Day in the Life week, hi and welcome. My name is Carrie and my husband and I have two little boys, ages 6 and 2. This is our second semester homeschooling. Most often, you can find me at jamesrivergirl...and her boys.

The following gives a glimpse of what an ordinary day looks like for us. Because I'm not really a time-managing kind of girl, I haven't specified times, but rather blocks of time: Morning, Afternoon, Late Afternoon, and Evening.

Morning
Breakfast with Daddy (literally, I'm still in bed asleep while Brandon has breakfast with the boys.)
Jump and crawl on Momma and snuggle with parents until Daddy says we need to have family prayer and then leaves for the day.
The boys watch PBS while I very reluctantly leave my bed.

Once I'm up, I have breakfast,
often sitting beside Luke while he does his

Piano practice.

Sometimes we look at a To Do list for the day, but not usually.

Jobs - usually with help, between 1 and 3 jobs I want Luke to do while Pete tags along and helps...sometimes.

Playtime (Often while I do my own jobs and "The Essentials" - personal prayer and scripture reading )

This morning playtime could include: running errands, visiting the library, getting together with friends, playing at the park, a morning walk/bike ride, making up tunes on the piano, looking at books, or listening to books on tape, listening to Johnny Cash or Coldplay, Music and Movement time with me, writing or drawing-sometimes with me, baking with me, Creative time (with paper, scissors, glue, tape, and markers, crayons, paints, play-doh, etc.), and playing outside with bikes, scooters, shovels, balls, and bags to collect pecans. 


I would also like this time, or late afternoon to include serving others, but we haven't started yet.

Storytime and Lunch
Usually, we have story time first, reading about 6 storybooks together on the couch and then the boys sit at the table and demand "honey!" or "jam!" while I make lunch. Also, generally we have storytime a little bit after 12 noon and Pete goes down for his nap after 1 o'clock. He usually sleeps a couple of hours.

Afternoon
Pete's Nap.
While Pete sleeps:
Reading time with Luke, including longer storybooks, novels, chapter books, science books, etc. And sometimes we do more directed learning with phonics, but mostly he gets that with all of his drawings that he wants help labeling.
Math time: Singapore and made up word problems by me.
Science: currently we're learning about the Human Body mostly through books, but we'll do other more hands-on types of things too. After Human Body, we want to learn about trees and plants and then ocean and water.
Independent time: write and draw, ride bike, dig and play outside, legos, Dado squares, blocks, trains, cars, PBS kids online games, or play on the Friend LDS.org site, etc. Also, I find movies to stream from Netflix for him to watch about all sorts of things: dolphins, weather, coral reefs, the human body...
(I spend independent time reading or doing laundry or making lists and planning. And this is when I read blogs, check email. If I haven't already showered when the boys were watching pbs in the morning, this is when I do that. And sometimes I start dinner.)

Late Afternoon
Pete wakes up.
Then the boys play together again. Or we get together with a friend. Or we have piano lessons. We'll be starting soccer and another PE class soon. And on some afternoons we invite others over for special story times with accompanying activities.

Make dinner while boys play with next door neighbors who are home from school now.

Evening
Daddy comes home, plays with boys, helps with dinner, and/or picks up the front room.
Family Dinner. (If we remember this is also when we read scriptures as a family, but only one page each night.)
Sometimes do dishes, sometimes leave them for tomorrow. (Often, Luke is back at his desk, drawing a picture to slip under one of our pillows around this time of day.)
Read to boys, help them get ready for bed. (Most often Brandon does this while I either clean up the kitchen or hole up in our bedroom alone.)
Family prayer.
Little boys go to bed.

A day of interest-led learning for a kindergartner

Last night, as I planned for today, I listed:
For Luke: practice piano kindly, read aloud, and play with a friend.
For Pete: stories, play outside, a nap
For Carrie: exercise, the essentials (scriptures and prayer, I've just begun calling them "the essentials" so that I'll think of them as essential.)
For the family: return overdue books, empty dishwasher and keep the kitchen clean

So, I didn't plan any lessons. I just let nature take its course. Here is what we've (they've) done so far:
Piano Practice -when he dawdled, I sang quietly, "I will be kind, I will be kind." I think Luke liked it.
Play-doh (my only job was to pretend to eat something every now and then and avoid the kitchen where I would inevitably say, "No, you can't use that apple corer/lemon zester/pie server." I did take away the mesh strainer, though.)
Rhymes with lists of rhyming words. We were talking and one of us said, "box" or "fox," and Luke said, "Hey that rhymes!" He then made up a verse:
Fox box wearing socks.
Hawks flying overhead!
Then, I said, "Wait, I'll go get paper!" And we wrote down words that rhymed with fox, box, and hawks and had a mini-phonics lesson, made up of me saying, "Hey look--the ah sound is made by the letter O, and AW, and just an A sometimes. And then "x" says the same sound as "cks." But this had to be quick, but Luke was more interested in actually making up rhymes, of course. *Remember--Real and meaningful experiences yield skills, skills practice or teaching can, but doesn't necessarily, yield real and meaningful experiences.

Then we made up other rhyming verses together.
Trees bees in a hive
At the flowers they arrive.
When the sun is in its sky,
All the bees will buzz and fly.
To the flowers they will go
Carrying pollen to help them grow.
In this verse and the "Fox box" one, Luke's contributions are in blue. I was pleasantly surprised that his rhyme for hive was arrive.

In the next one, I wrote most of it, but when I paused, after pink, Luke piped up, "As pink as a rose!" What a cutie.
Up, up in the sky
Kites and balloons flying high.
The spring wind blows across my nose.
My cheeks are pink --as pink as a rose.
Outside all day in the sun
I'm so glad that Spring has come.

I pretended to be a witch and carried the boys on my broom to my gingerbread house where I wanted to fatten them up. "What can I tempt you with, my pretty? Will you eat icecream, chocolate chip cookies, a juicy steak?" It didn't matter what I said, Luke said, "No," because he understood that I was trying to make him plump for eating. but each time Luke said, "No" or "Uh-uh." Pete quietly and resolutely said, "Yes."

We read stories, had lunch, Pete took a nap, and Luke and I started another book, The Trumpet of the Swan. I adore that book. I read it to Luke when he was four, but he's forgotten it. Goody! That means we have to read it again.

Now Luke is playing at a friend's house.

From this former school teacher's perspective, we did something in each of these subjects: Reading and literacy, drama, social studies, music, and math. (Math-this book.)

a good day

I planned our day last night. Before I planned, I prayed for help to know the important things. 

Here are the plans & how the day actually went:

Personal prayer: me, encourage the boys to say their own (they didn't.)
Read scriptures: me, out loud in the family room, sometimes ignoring Pete yelling.
Brush teeth. (This needs to be written on the schedule because my children brush their teeth once a day at night. That must change. I wish it was because I was really worried about their teeth. I am concerned. But mostly my motivation is the dread of getting yelled at by a dentist one day.)
Breakfast.
Piano. We forgot.
A Morning Walk (bike ride for Luke) to Lowe's Grocery Store, about 8 blocks away. To replace Luke's toothbrush that had fallen in the trashcan with dirty diapers the night before. (Oh, he didn't brush his teeth this morning either.)

Clean the bathroom.
Clean the kitchen.
Dust and Vacuum (if you can figure it out. We bought a new vacuum. I didn't even attempt to figure it out.)
I did clean the bathroom and the kitchen. I'm just not sure when. And the kitchen is dirty again.

A Healthy Lunch. The kids boycotted the healthy lunch and had PB & honey. But, I had a salad. I felt guilty for giving them regular peanut butter, not no-sugar and oil added. And then I looked at the 2nd humongous canister of Peter Pan in the pantry from Sam's and thought, "Maybe after I use that up I'll go back to buying the other kind.")

Read stories to boys. Love.
Petey naps. Thankfully.
Luke and Mama read Henry Huggins. I love Henry Huggins. He's so respectful to Mrs. Huggins. Tonight at dinner, Luke said, "May I be excused?" Maybe it's rubbing off on him.
And plan Family Home Evening. We didn't.

Yoga-together if Luke would like to. Or independent time. (Luke drew pictures. I ...? didn't do yoga.)
Bake a treat together for F. H. E. (Um, YES - apple cake cupcakes.)
Make a good dinner. Ask Luke for help. (Luke & Pete were outside and out of the way. Asked Brandon for help once he got home.)
Practiced piano while his buddy from next door sat on the floor with Pete and listened.

Dinner, After-dinner walk, and FHE

Oh! I just remembered when I cleaned.
The boys ate lunch outside on the back patio, afterwhich they turned on the hose and made a mud bath...in which they bathed. I was cleaning the kitchen.
I cleaned the bathroom later while Luke and Pete were outside playing. They didn't get muddy again. I guess one naked soak-down with cold water was enough. Their clothes are still strewn across the patio. After they were washed off, they ran around naked --Pete avoiding the spray, Luke pretending to avoid it.

For me, this was a really good mothering day.