Here's an easy breakdown of a good homeschool day - note, this day is an *at home* day when my husband is at work, no excursions, homeschool meetups, extracurriculars etc. We might get 1 or 2 opportunities for this kind of day a week!:
- Wake up fresh and well rested
- Kitchen is still clean from last night
- Bible study
- Prep the day's school work
- Muck around on the computer & have breakfast
- Boys wake up fresh and well rested
- Hot chocolate and devotions with boys
- Wake up WR, hot chocolate and devotion
- Get the kids settled with breakfast
- Put on a load of laundry
- Exercise
- Shower, dressed (nicely!), tidy bedroom, put away laundry
- Kids dressed, easily because clothes were laid out the night before
- Morning jobs - with good attitudes!
- Cheerfully begin our school day with a Read Aloud time
- Maths block
- Hang out washing
- English block
- Break - park (weather permitting) for family time fitness, or if raining kinect games for exercise inside.
- Snack time
- Morning board
- Violin and Russian
- Art or Science
- Lunch
- History
- Reading Rest time
- Free time for kids (no bickering!), piano for me (students or practice)
- Afternoon Jobs - still with good attitudes!
- Dinner
- Clean up
- Lay out next day's clothes
- Kids in Bed
- Fold Laundry
- Relax with husband
Add in some happybaby cuddles, fun preschooler activities and a bit of interspersed cleaning, you've got a great day! Full! Productive! Hard work, but fun and fulfilling! When a day goes like this the whole operation runs smoothly and I can almost convince myself I know what I'm doing!
And now... the other kind of day, lest I be accused of perpetuating any rose tinted view of homeschooling. This kind happens with soul-crushing regularity, like the sarcastic ticking of a clock...
- Well Rested? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - so, the baby woke 3 times between 11pm and 4am (not even kidding - HOW and WHY?)
- Never got around to cleaning the kitchen last night, can't bear to look at it yet let alone deal with it...
- Go back to bed
- Oversleep
- Faff around on the computer for too long, avoiding the unavoidable. (love the word 'faff')
- Kids wake up and watch TV, cos I'm faffing around you see!
- Have another coffee, throw on some toast for the kids (who have mentioned their hunger a few times now)
- Clean some vomit or other bodily fluid (X2) - notice this was missing in the top list? This item is for extras!
- Shower? Brush hair? I'll just throw a t-shirt on over my pj's...
- Yell at the kids
- Despair over the state of the house
- Send kids to get dressed and tidy their rooms
- Hang out some laundry (in the machine from yesterday) - remember that there is sun and fresh air and revel in it.
- 3 year old tantrum
- Some school work - what can be done mostly independently?
- Finally deal with kitchen... *big sigh*
- Send kids outside while I make lunch
- Watch some Dr. Phil while cooking #guiltypleasure
- Tackle some violin practice! Which wakes the baby early! Did I mention he rarely sleeps more than 30-40mins at a time during the day?
Ok, that takes us to about lunch. You get the idea though, right? It's beginning to depress me, so I'd rather not chronicle the bad afternoon! Suffice to say it involves more TV, zero housework, bickering, exhaustion, an inquiring husband wondering "what I've done all day"...
Still, I press on. The tantalising vision of Good Days dancing before my eyes and giving me hope. Amazingly, we still manage to cobble together a good homeschooling life from a mix of good, bad and very bad (we call them 'write offs') days.
Let's finish with a funny, hey?! This made me chuckle:
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