I think it's helpful at times to get a peek into someone else's home for ideas...
For reference: We have 7 children that range in age from 18 all the way down to 10 months. We live on a small hobby farm with dairy goats, chickens, turkeys, and Great Pyrenees dogs. I have homeschooled for over 13 years and didn't always live this way. (That is for another time though!)
I found Charlotte Mason at the beginning of my homeschool journey, and her principles changed my life. Instead of focusing so much on school...I started to focus on education. Education for my children and myself ( because I am being homeschooled right along with my children).
I found out early on how critically important it is for me to welcome and train myself to be more self-disciplined. When you go from working in the corporate world with a schedule set for you and a boss...then you go home...you are suddenly in charge of managing everything, including yourself.
This was a huge learning curve for me. I had to develop new and better habits.
Habits like: Managing the minutes in my day, laundry, meal planning, reading aloud ( I wasn't a fan of daily reading aloud at first!)
I say all of this to encourage you...If you are like me and just starting out OR if you've been at it awhile and just need fresh encouragement...
Suddenly managing a household and a one-room school house isn't something a lot of us grew up doing. I didn't. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. With both of my parents working and I attended traditional school.
It wasn't until I "came home", I started truly educating myself. I have learned more at home than I ever did in grammar school, high school, or college. It's the truth!
Fast forward to now..
I am going to share a typical daily routine for us during our academic ( fall, winter, spring) schedule: (We follow a daily rhythm instead of a strict schedule...more on that here)
Early morning hours:
I wake up earlier than anyone. I spend the early morning reading,praying, and working in my office for a few minutes. I get dressed, then my baby is usually awake and wants to nurse.
As I spend a few minutes with my baby, I get her dressed and changed for the day. Sometimes that includes a quick bath for her.
My older children ( I have four teenagers) get up on their own. Get dressed. Go outside immediately to do barn chores.
Barn chores include: Milking 7 goats, feeding chickens and turkeys, feeding dogs, and lots of watering tasks. These chores take about 45 minutes-1 hour.
During this time, I am typically inside taking care of the youngest children. If I am needed in the barn for anything, the older children call me and I will go take care of or advise them on anything at all. (If any animal is sick or they have a question about anything, they ask me first)
I have a list of 3-5 tasks I do in the morning. (unload dishes,start laundry, fold whatever laundry is in the dryer from the previous night, and sweep the family room)
Now we are at about 8:30-9AM... We have breakfast together and have a devotional. Sometimes we eat during devotions...it depends how big of a breakfast we are having.
( I put my baby down for a nap around now)
✏ 9AM: Formal school lessons begin. I am always working on the habit of paying good attention with my youngest 3 children. I aim to keep lessons short, but rich. Lessons are rotated between mental difficulty, then something to do with their hands. ( We do seasonal handcrafts ... our autumn ones are here)
We continue these lessons until about 11:30-12. Every day has different challenges and nothing is ever perfect. I get very frustrated if I expect perfection, and have unexpected problems. Now, I expect things to happen.
Around 12 is lunch time. ( I have meals planned out...it's a must for me!)
After we eat, everyone has their zones to keep clean. (This is about 20 minutes of work to keep our house nice)
Quiet time.... from about 1-2 is quiet time. For us that means, little children nap..older children read. The house is quiet. I have found that I really need this time for my own sanity. As a homeschool mom, I am constantly responding to problems from the minute I wake up. I need time to compress my heart and silence is so helpful to me. (More on quiet time here)
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After quiet time (My older children have about an hour more of school)
We have time for nature walks, chores, hobbies, free time, handcrafts, cooking, and home business work.
I believe the afternoons are such a beautiful and productive time for homeschooled children. One of the reasons I wrote Slow. Simple. Seasonal is to give children ( and mothers) ideas for afternoon enrichment and a way to beautify your home.
We have dinner around 5. Again, we have our zones to keep clean.
I work in the evenings for a few hours while my husband is with the children.
The older children work in the barn again in the evening and put all the animals to bed.
around 8PM, I put the little ones to bed OR my husband does.
I try to get into bed by 10. I am an early to bed, early to rise type of person.
That is a very brief overview of our typical day. Soon I will write in more detail about our formal lessons and how I get them completed before lunch.
When I say our family lives seasonally, I am referring to living in alignment with the seasons. For autumn, we spend our afternoons in this season. Our crafts, meals, preparation...are all themed around autumn. It's been refreshing to live more simple and seasonal.
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