Written by contributor Lora Lynn Fanning of Vitafamiliae

My family, with our seven kids ages 7, 7, 6, 5, 3, 1, and Not-Quite-Here-Yet are currently in a season of Not Normal Life.

For the last 14 weeks of my pregnancy, I’ve been on various levels of bed rest and high levels of medication. This means that I have about an hour and a half of teaching and talking time in the morning before I head to the couch or my bed with a whimper.

We have just enough time to do our reading aloud for history and literature, a quick grammar and spelling lesson, and maybe some phonics with my early readers. Or, if it’s a math day of the week, I teach the new math lesson. My older kids do their book work in the afternoons while my little people nap.

Our situation is certainly unique, but it’s not unthinkable that homeschooling families will have Mom/Teacher sidelined on a long-term basis at some point. And when the children/students are home all day every day, this has an even greater impact on the family.

Here are a few tips for when Mom takes a long, unexcused absence:
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This post should be called “Joel’s Homeschool Day in the Life” because three months ago my husband and I traded responsibilities: I accepted a full-time position working from our home and he exuberantly took on the role of full time caregiver and overseer of our family’s home learning.

It has been a major transition for all of us, but the rhythm of the day has mainly stayed the same and we’re happy with our new lifestyle.

While my day-to-day role has changed I remain involved in our big picture homeschooling strategy and planning, research resources and supplement specific learning themes whenever possible.

Here’s what our family’s average day looks like right now.
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Written by contributor Renee Tougas of FIMBY

The months of November and December were a planned homeschool break for us due to moving, celebrating birthdays and Christmas. We returned to our “in session” homeschool lessons and practice the Monday after New Year’s.

On that day I recorded an actual homeschool day in the life.

The first day back to a routine is not the most representative of our “typical” homeschool day. I keep our academic schedule light when we first get going and also I’m usually full of energy in the beginning of a new school term.

As my enthusiasm waxes and wanes and as we follow our individual interests our days take on unexpected twists and turns.

If I was writing this in two weeks or next month my day might look like a morning at the library followed by an afternoon immersed in books.

Or an exhausting morning of errands followed by an afternoon of documentaries and a hot bath (the first for the kids, the second for myself).

There is no typical homeschool day for our family.
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Written by Jamie Martin, editor of Simple Homeschool and founder of Steady Mom

When I wrote about my homeschool day last year, I had no idea that by January 2012 we would have moved to our dream house in the country.

My–how one year can change everything. I now find my children, inching ever so slowly, through the phases of learning–moving gradually from Core Phase into Love of Learning.

We have plenty of days when everything seems to fall apart. You know the ones.

But we also have golden moments, when magic happens, connections are made, and my heart swells as I think, “It’s working! It’s really working!”

This is the joy and wonder of the homeschooling lifestyle.

What follows are the nuts and bolts of how that joy and wonder play out in our home.
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Written by contributor Kris of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

I used to think that there wasn’t any such thing as a “typical” homeschool day. However, this year, with no outside classes (currently), we seem to have settled into a fairly predictable routine.

Well, we had, anyway. With the start of the new year, my younger two kids are starting a completely new curriculum, which means that we’ll be tweaking our schedule and figuring out a new routine that works with our new curriculum.

That’s life on the edge in a homeschooling household.
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