Never let your schooling interrupt your education.

Share your homeschool day in the life

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dayinlifephotopicmo Written by Jamie Martin of Simple Homeschool and Steady Mom

Homeschooling doesn’t look the same for each family. But that’s one of the things that makes it great — it doesn’t have to!

During the past several weeks, we’ve been proud to share our fifth annual homeschool day in the life series — our largest ever!

We’ve heard from homeschool mom (and dads!) schooling between 1 and 7 kids, those who love unschooling, classical education, Waldorf, Leadership Education, or their very own styles that work for their families.

Those parents have given us a peek into their days, and we’ve been continuously reminded of the many different ways that people make homeschooling work.

homeschoolday

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 9, 10, & 11-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 your days with us. I look forward to grabbing a cup of tea and “visiting” many of you.

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” ~ Plato

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.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  6. Alli's Day in the Life with a 1 & 3 year old.

    I have known that I wanted to homeschool my children since before I had children! I knew it would be challenging and these little years, especially hard. I by no means have any of this figured out! But I thought I could share what we do on a typical day and maybe encourage someone else! I have two boys ages 1 & 3 and we are doing preschool, or should I say pre-preschool! My 3 year old and I wake up at 6:30 for coffee and hot chocolate. Daddy and my 1 year old wake up around 7. We all have breakfast together before Daddy goes to work and the boys have free play while I clean up the kitchen. Then around 9am it switches to some more guided activities. Depending on the weather, we may do P.E. first! My 3 year old is learning how to pedal on his new bike. But usually mornings are for art. We have an easel on our back porch and the morning light is just perfect for art projects. He loves to paint, draw, color, stamp, whatever! During this time there are lots of balls and blocks on the porch for my 1 year old to be interested in while big brother paints. Then we go outside and dig in the dirt for awhile. They come in and if they are really dirty have a bath before lunch. After lunch I put my one year old down for a nap and my 3 year old can choose between playdoh, some tablet time, or ABC mouse on the computer. After my 1 year old is asleep. My 3 year old and I will do some more school projects together. We may do a science experiment (Making volcanoes are his favorite, so much so that when I came home from the grocery story last week with a new bottle of vinegar he was so excited! “Mommy you got me vinegar!!!”) or we read a book, work on some Bible Memory verses, or work on his scissor skills book. We have different activities in gallon ziplock bags in some plastic boxes, our “work boxes”. After about an hour of work, he is ready to go down for his nap (or at least I am!) and he lays down for “quiet time”. These days he only naps about 3 times a week, but he always has to lay down. By this time my one year old is up and ready for a snack and some one on one mommy play time. Then by 3:30 in the afternoon, we do some chores; cleaning up toys, getting all our school stuff off the kitchen table; and the boys can play outside some more while I start dinner. It is a very rough and flexible schedule, but I think It can work into more structure as the boys get older and we add more school projects into our day! I really enjoy reading about everyone’s Day in the Life!

  8. Charlotte

    My kids are 8 and 4. My son has autism disorder, and is very severely affected, so I basically just take care of him, talk to him, and let him have as much as he wants. He has passions and that is all I want him to focus on. I would like to see a chance at giving him a bright future in something positive like playing the piano. The traditional educational system would only send him to a residency and fast.

    My daughter is 4 and probably asperger’s in some ways, so things have not been drastically easier with her. Likewise I let her focus on her passions, she is unschooled and knows a lot academically for her age.

    It is very easy for my kids to educate themselves, they do it very well, it is harder to deal with behavioral problems, but I am keeping faith.

  9. Sarah's Day with a 5, 2, and 1 year old

    This is our first year homeschooling, and even with just one Kindergartener, we’ve already gone through a variety of learning and teaching trials – from how I thought school should be to what is actually working (for now). Currently, I’d like to say that we are unschooling, and when we do “do school” it is all my daughter’s choice and led by her desire.
    This morning I got up at 4 and was gone to work from 5-8 am. Upon coming home, I’m met with the initial needs of getting everyone changed/dressed and fed while my husband gets ready to head to work. We have free time in the morning until it is time for the baby to go down for nap. Around 9:30 he went down, and thus we entered our prime school time.
    This morning my daughter asked for some paper and set to work writing her ABC’s and their lowercase pair. I wasn’t even sure she knew them all, but alas, she does. Assessment of writing letters complete without any effort on my part. She then decorated her ABC’s with plenty of flowers, followed by coloring another paper – a gift for a friend, she told me. She then randomly asked for the story blocks (a Christmas gift), and had me record 4 short stories as she dictated them to me based upon the pictures on the blocks. This was the first time she’d done this, and we both enjoyed it! When we put her stories in her special binder, she came across spelling words we had worked on earlier in the year and was so excited that she requested a new set immediately. She chose the words she wanted to practice this week and set to it. She also wanted to work on her calendar book (dates, time, temp, etc), and a page in her math workbook, but addition frustrates her, so we stopped after a couple problems to have morning snack. I should add that my 2 year old was playing with puzzles, his train set, coloring in our laminated ABC book, and watching random kid-friendly YouTube videos during all this. During snack, we had a very exciting game of I Spy that reinforced colors and 3D shapes (“I Spy something spherical”). About this time, the baby woke up, and my daughter decided it was time to run on the treadmill. Running is a fun activity, she says. So she ran, practiced some jump rope, and then the older two went off to play together while I made lunch and loaded the dishwasher. Now, they are all 3 upstairs for quiet time. This afternoon, I anticipate reading books, maybe a movie, dinner, and more crazy play – but I never expected to do so much “school” this morning, so that goes to show that I can never really anticipate or expect how the rest of our day is going to go!

  12. Leslie Eichelberger

    Leslie’s day with a 10 year old and soon a 15 year old too.
    This school year has been a good year with lots of new experiences and lots of growing for my whole family. My husband and I let our daughter experience her first year of highschool at a traditional private school and this allowed me to really concentrate on my son and better understand his learning style which is very different from my daughters.
    Elijah is the typical high energy Avengers, knights and dragrons, Ninjago……..on and on loving boy. He learns best when we move around (different spots in the house), listen to music and use manipulatives. None of this was very important with Zoe, she just saw what she needed to do and jumped in to get it done.
    Right now my day starts at 4:45am so that I can get up and work out or ride the spin bikes with my husband…….we’re a military family and he’s out the door pretty early most days. I wake Zoe up at 6:00 and Elijah at 6:20……(Zoe needs a jump on bathroom time). They get ready while I cook bacon or something then I get ready so we can leave drive the 10 miles to school and drop her off by 7:45
    Roughly by 8:30 if he doesn’t want anything else to eat, Elijah does his morning chores (cleaning the kitchen, take out garbage) while I get to do my devotion and finish my coffee. Then I go up to our bonus room where the school room is set up and check emails and post on to my FB business page ( I have a handcrafted soap company). So technically we get started at about 9:30 and Elijah practices violin for 20 minutes. I “borrowed” from another day in life parent with writing his assignments in a spiral note book for the whole week so we can use our white board for problem solving and doodling. I usually don’t set specific time to get a particular thing done……….our basic goal is to be done by 2pm. Of course that doesn’t always happen…….sometimes we do read alouds after dinner which Zoe still enjoys. We usually have a 15 minute break after the first couple of assignments where he goes out back and runs around or we shoot basketball. I try to keep the day simple but productive and I am continually learning how to not slip into my old ways of legalistic home schooling whichever some days is easier than others.
    Zoe is out of school at 3 and usually has a ton of homework, so for part of that time Elijah does Legos or art….or both! I think learning is an all day, this is life kind of thing, but it doesn’t always have to do with books, pens and paper. I want my children to enjoy learning and to be life long learners…….not scared to try something new especially if the current thing isn’t working.
    Zoe will come back to home schooling in the fall and we’ll need to make a few adjustments, but we’re all thrilled and on count down! Through all of our changes, tears and adjustments over this last year the one thing we’ve discovered and unanimously agree on is that we heart home school!

  13. Sara R.

    I just wanted to thank you for linking these! What a wonderful peek into other homeschooler’s lives…and a great reminder that we are all different and doing our best for our children.