Never let your schooling interrupt your education.

Share YOUR homeschool day in the life!

//  by 

dayinlife2016picmo
Written by Jamie Martin of Simple Homeschool

It’s been so encouraging to take a peek into the days of several families during our 6th annual homeschool day in the life series!

We’ve heard from homeschool moms who embrace various styles and methods–and if you’re like me, you’ve discovered a few new tips and tricks to add to your days.

There’s nothing quite like this series to remind us that no homeschool day is alike,  and that we don’t have to be perfect to make progress and do what’s right for our unique family.

A homeschool day in the life 2016

And now, I’d love to hear from you! Today is your chance to share your homeschool day in the life with Simple Homeschool readers.

Please link up your own day in the life post using the linky below. (If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share the details of your day in the comments section.)

In the “name” section, write your title like this “Jamie’s day with a 10, 11, & 12-year-old” – that will help readers who are seeking advice for certain ages.

Thank you so much for being a part of this series, and for sharing with us. I look forward to grabbing a cup of tea and “visiting” many of you!

“I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things.”
~ Helen Keller

If you’re reading this post in an email or reader and want to check out everyone’s links, just click here to go to the blog — enjoy!

About Jamie C. Martin

Jamie is an introverted mom of three, who loves books, tea, and people (not always in that order), and avoids answering the phone when possible. She co-founded SimpleHomeschool.net in 2010 and began IntrovertedMoms.com in 2020.

Jamie is the author of four books, including Give Your Child the World (reached #9 on Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers list), and her latest release, Introverted Mom (an ECPA bestseller). Her work has been featured by LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow, the Washington Post, Parents, Today Parenting, and Psychology Today.

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Comments

  3. Sarah Moulding

    Sarah’s day in the life with a 3, 5 and 9 year old

    My day starts at 6am when I take time to read my bible and a thought provoking book before I even get out of bed.
    At 7am its time to start the kids getting themselves dressed and ready for the day. I then get myself sorted and get started on lunch prep (Lunch time is the main cooked meal of our day so its easier for me to prep now rather than whilst we are still studying). While my focus is on food my husband sees to getting the children finished getting ready, getting their jobs down and breakfast set up – its usually just cereals and milk so simple and easy. Once I have lunch prepared I eat my own breakfast usually whilst the children are finishing off theirs. Once my eldest has finished she reads a chapter of the bible. When everybody else is done (8am) my husband heads off to work and we settle down to a short bible and hymn study.
    8.45am we take the youngest to nursery then the rest of us head off on a short walk often to buy bread or run short errands.
    9.30am we are back home and ready to settle to work. For the first hour I work with the 5 year old learning letters and numbers whilst the 9 year old works independently on copy work, maths, and spanish (Duolingo).
    10:30am we have a 15 min break with a snack, during this time I take 15minutes to get on the exercise bike.
    10:45am We read some of our current read aloud (Mondays: Story of the world, Tuesday – Thursday: Little house in the big woods in Spanish – we are reading it in English as a family on a Sunday evening, so during the week I practice my own spanish by translating the English).
    11am The 5 year old may have some other work to finish off but mainly has the rest of the morning to play. I work directly with the 9 year old on English and Spanish. the English work varies from week to week, one week we work on Writeshop, the other week we work on a paragraph from the Little house in the big woods doing punctuation, copy work, oral and written translation and dictation.
    12am We are living in Bolivia so twice a week each of my older children have a Skype call with their grandmother who reads them stories.
    1pm My husband has collected the youngest and returned home so we eat lunch together. 2pm Ideally Quiet time when the eldest reads a chapter of a chosen book.
    Afternoon activities vary depend on the day.
    Monday the eldest works on preparing lunch for the following day. She did baking last year, this year she is working on main meals (Thank you Jaime for the wonderful idea, she loves it).
    Tuesdays and Thursdays we all take the eldest to art classes, and my husband collects her after he has finished work. I take the quieter afternoons to either catch up on jobs or do activities with the youngest two.
    Wednesdays they get their afternoon with their Dad whilst I get some breathing space to myself.
    Fridays, the eldest has a regular playdate with a local friend so I spend time doing things with the youngest two.
    5:30pm we normally settle down to a light tea of sandwiches, then its into the bedtime routine stories and bed by 7. Hubby comes home around this time so we spend some time catching up about the day, catch up on jobs that need doing then we ourselves are in bed by 9pm. Living at high altitude and working constantly in a different language is exhausting so we rarely get past 9pm.

  4. Gaby's day in México with his 1, 4 and 6 year old

    I wake up and my 4 and 6 years old are awake playing. I make breakfast for my hubby and kiddos. My hubby finish and go to work. Usually my kids are still having breakfast and my one year old wake up. She start having breakfast and they are finishing, they brush teeth, change, water pots, feed the fish. We start class in our homeschool room. Working in writhing and reading with our 6 years old, and English with our 4 year old. Then we do reading time. All the time, our baby is playing with different toys around us. We have a break at 10 am and they (4 and 6) go riding bikes in the yard, and I use to drink my second coffee, check emails, make phone calls, wash dishes etc. My one year old is with me inside the house. At 11 am we continue classes: life of Fred and reading the Bible. I prepare lunch, we eat. And prepare to go to football or music, depending the day. Wednesday we go to the library or stay at home playing. Friday we go with friends tod the park. After the plan, is bath time and dinner time. In the night we read and is time to bed at 8pm.

  6. Katja's Day with a 7-, 10-, and 11-year old

    Our day usually starts around 6:30 – 7:00 am. Everyone gets up, has breakfast, takes showers and gets dressed. After clean-up, the older kids work on their math and language arts independently while mom does the dishes and gets ingredients for lunch out. Our oldest participates in 6th-grade band at the local public school and has to be dropped off by 9:50 am. While she is away, mom works with the youngest on math and reading, while the 10-year old practices piano. The 11-year old is done with band at 10:50 am. When we get home the 7-year old and the 11-year old practice piano while mom makes lunch. The kids also get some time to do some coding on scratch.com before lunch. Dad comes home for lunch and all five of us sit down together enjoy some family time. After lunch clean-up we tackle spelling (two different levels for three kids). That is followed by history, geography, and science; although we don’t do all three of those every day.
    Two days a week our 10-year old has to be at the local public school for 5th grade band from 1:45 – 2:35, so those days we are done with school for the day. The other three days we finish the school day off with art, bible or German.
    Our school day has lots of free time and flexibility built in while still covering everything required of us.

  7. Sarah

    Sarah’s day with 5 & 6 year old boys in Chicago:
    We wake up a little before the kids and my husband eats breakfast and heads off to work around 7:30. I clean up any kitchen mess or unload the dishwasher while listening to NPR and talking to him. I used to make a good pot of pour over coffee at this point, but I’m attempting a caffeine-free pregnancy, and so, I mourn the coffee morning ritual and have some lemon water. Sigh. The kids roll out of bed about 7:45-8:30 depending on their fatigue factor. Some mornings are cereal, some are scratch waffles. Not much method to that madness. By 9:30, the kids have typically finished breakfast & bath time and I’ve gotten some meal prep done for lunch or dinner. Then, we hit obstacle one: they’d rather be playing. They are great playmates, and the oldest is an art fiend. While google calendar blinks on my phone that it’s time to start homeschool, I usually let them free play or do art for an hour or so, while I cram in a consulting hour for the intermittent projects I work on. Then we’re likely to sit down to our day’s lesson from “spell to read & write” and do some cursive penmanship worksheets. That’s followed by a few lessons from the Saxon K-math book. I split the difference between the pre-k guy & the first grade guy, and thus the youngest brother is nearly reading and the older brother is probably considered behind his grade level, always a source of heart palpitations if I dwell on this too much. I like teaching them together, and they like learning together, so that’s how we do it. By 12:30, we eat a lunch and pack a second lunch for the road most days. Then we head out on the CTA for a combination of kiddie college, swimming, art school, gymnastics, piano school or hockey class. We also hit the library once or twice a week, and are often compelled to stop at every park we pass. Sometimes we just get off the train downtown and walk around for pleasure. Classes & city time takes us from 1pm-5pm, before journeying home to make dinner. Some days I feel like an I’ve fought an epic battle to through snow, wind, rain while rallying kids to board the bus politely and/or to please step back while others exit the train. Often the battle involves a stop at the grocery, as we shop on foot. Afternoons are often usually accompanied by a crisis moment of questioning why we’ve chosen such a challenging life in the city, even while marveling at all the things our kids see and do in this rich hodgepodge of what I’ve coined “city school”. After dinner together, my husband usually practices piano & guitar with the boys and does the bedtime routine, and several nights per week I grab the car and drive to classes at the gym a few minutes away, usually back in time for a kiss goodnight. Then I pass out in a good way. And, we do it again.

  10. Jenna

    I have a 6 year old daughter Sara who is in kindergarten and a 3.5 daughter Olivia who has Cerebral palsy. I homeschool Sara and Olivia goes to a special needs preschool. This was today. I woke up at 5:40 and did yoga for a half hour before taking the dog out and starting the coffee. At 6:20 my husband made us eggs before leaving for work at 7. I then woke the girls up, got Olivia dressed and gave the girls cereal. After that we cuddled for a few minutes before leaving at 7:45 to take Olivia to school. We got home at 8:50 and after taking the dog out, got to work with Math U See Primer. By then it was 9:45and we started our Five in A Row work. By 11:15 Sara was done so I made grilled cheese for lunch and then she colored for an hour. We left to pick Olivia up at 1 before heading to her private speech/assistive tech therapy. Once we got home at 3:15, I read Winnie the Pooh aloud while the girls had a snack. My husband came home at 5 and we are dinner at 5:45. After dinner, we watched a half hour of TV before bath time and getting ready for bed. The girls went to bed a little before 8 and now I’m going to bed.

  11. Vivian's day in the life with 10yo and 5yo

    Our typical day starts at about 8am, when we have breakfast. I do some housework and the kids play until 930am, when we start our school work with our Bible lesson (Shorter Catechism and memory verses from Sunday School). Then the 10yo does his independent work (copywork, piano practice, German lessons on Rosetta Stone) while I work with the 5yo (Sonlight Core P4/5 and God’s Little Explorers). At 1130 we have our lunch break. We resume work at 1pm with readalouds (Ambleside Online year 3). The younger one stays in bed for a rest or has his free time (Lego or screen time) while the older one has English and Math. Afterwards, they have Science together, then we do our chores (cleaning a zone of the house, their task of the week, and their daily tasks). Some days we have extracurricular activities: gymnastics, playgroup, piano lesson, or swimming. We have art and music on Thursdays. After school, they play with our neighbours or by themselves while I prepare dinner. After dinner, the older one reads the Bible to Dad, while I read with the younger one, and then Dad reads a book to them while they are in bed. After a few chapters, we say good night and they listen to the audio Bible. Hubby and I do housework or read or watch TV or prepare our Sunday School lessons until we are ready to go to bed, usually 11pm or midnight.

  13. Naimah

    Love this series. Virtual support systems like these are great.

    Please check out, like and share my blog as well. Thanks!