Our Daily Routine

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a schedule/list-making addict. The problem is that I so meticulously plan an "ideal" schedule that is not very doable in real life and I end up getting frustrated and tossing it. Well, I decided to flip things around and instead of planning what I'd like to do, I decided to simply record what most often actually does happen around here...(relieved sigh). No more impossible schedules to try and follow!  This is our natural routine right now, liable and likely to change at a moment's notice ;) Flexibility is necessary in this line of work!  With a newborn, he is basically still attached to me (nursing, in the Moby wrap, or lounging in the bassinet nearby); so I can still go about our day and do what needs to be done. 

The gist of our school day is: 
-Morning routine
-Short storytime with little ones while Davin does his basic subjects.
-Play outside or downstairs.
-Lunchtime
-Naptime/Rest time
-Read aloud time + 1 more subject if we have time.

Morning:

~7:30 or 8 a.m.
Wake up (I know I am not an early bird!)
Make bed.
Get dressed and ready for the day.
Make coffee!! 
Switch a load of laundry and fold a load. (I always put one in to wash at night before bed).
Do devotional while enjoying a cup of coffee, then check email and facebook.

~8:30 a.m.- Kids do their "High 5" (Get dressed, make bed, brush teeth, tidy room, eat breakfast). They wake up from 7:30-8:30.  I change Jonny, get him dressed, help little ones make their beds, get breakfast for anyone who needs help, and clean up the kitchen.

~9:30 am- Davin starts his basic subjects (Bible study, Math, Latin, Cursive, and Piano practice).  Computer programming is another basic subject he does either in the morning or evening.

Meanwhile, I have Storytime with the rest of the kids in our "library."

I read some poetry, we say nursery rhymes, and then I read a story.

They can play with Legos, do puzzles, color, draw, paint, read, play with trains, Hot Wheels, play with babies or blocks until it's time to play outside or downstairs.  They often watch a show too (but I'm trying to work on limiting our tv time more).  Jonny loves to play with water in the kitchen sink during this time too.

~10:30 am- If it's nice, the kids can play outside.  Otherwise it's down to the basement to burn off some energy.

Quinny upset about falling in a puddle as soon as she went outside :(

Sword fighting:

Digging for "gold"

Jumping on the trampoline. 

While the kids are playing I try to switch a load of laundry and then get lunch ready.
~11:30am- Before they can come to eat lunch it's time for a quick tidy of the main floor because it's probably a huge mess :)

Afternoon:

~12 pm- Eat lunch.  After lunch cleanup I take Jonny upstairs for his nap.  

~12:30-1:30 pm- The other kids and I have a rest time.

~1:30- Now it's Read Aloud time with the 3 oldest in the library. I have a basket that stores all of the things we do every day (our Bible, Poetry, and main literature read aloud).  All of this takes about 30 minutes.  

The kids are allowed to play with Legos, draw, or color during this time as long as they are still listening :)

Keaton is with us too, of course, usually on my lap :)

Here is a breakdown of what we do during this time: 

----Bible: read a Bible story, sing a hymn, Bible verse, and character story.

----Poetry: work on memorizing a poem from IEW Poetry book, currently "Sea Fever" by John Masefield. Then read aloud some other poetry for fun.

---Literature: currently Robin Hood, which I've found to be difficult to read aloud! I'm constantly tripping over the words, but the kids still seem to be interested :)

---2:00- The kids are hungry for a snack and can run around for a while if they want.

---Next we do ONE more subject for a bit (either astronomy/nature study, history/geography, literature, or fine arts study). I don't have specific days of when we do these, just whatever we feel like. These are mostly meant for Davin, but the little ones can tag along if they like or are interested, which they often do for astronomy and fine arts.  They can go do other activities instead, if they want.  :

-----Science (astronomy or nature study),

Experiment

Once in a while we go for a nature walk or try to identify a tree in our yard, an insect, bird, etc. 

-----History/Geography (A Child's History of the World, Our Island Story, Story of the World 2, or Seabird)

Davin does a drawing narration for each chapter of "Our Island Story." Here's an example of his reference drawing and his own drawing.

-----Literature (Pilgrim's Progress, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, Parables from Nature)

Davin often does a written narration after reading a chapter in "Pilgrim's Progress." He types it up on his laptop and prints it out for me to read. 

-----Fine Art study:

-------We look at paintings by a particular artist (this term is Edouard Manet).  I just tell them the name of the painting, let them look at it, then turn it over and each child tells me a detail from the painting or something interesting.  It's very simple, but before long the paintings are like old friends!

-------Listen to music by the composer we're studying (Currently Tchaikovsky) and read a little biography. I also have it playing during the day when I remember, or on Pandora.

-------Listen to and sing along or dance to this month's folk song on YouTube. 

~2:30- By this time, Quinny is getting grumpy and needs a rest.  I let her watch a show while I finish up school with Davin.  I check in with him to see how he's doing with math and Latin, and I listen to him narrate any readings he's done in other subjects. Then, I do dictation with him. I simply read a few sentences from one of our readings and he writes it in cursive. I check the spelling and punctuation when he's done. 

Dori also practices writing a few words. 

The kids have time to play until about 4 when they do one more quick tidy before they have free time and I start making dinner. They can have an hour of game time during this (either computer, iPad, or video game).  Otherwise they play outside, play a card or board game, or whatever else they feel like.

So there is a look into a school day at our home!  Let me know if there is something you want more details about or if there is something else you'd like me to write about! 

Blessings,
Kristen

Nature Study with the Boys

It has been SO hot outside lately that we have not enjoyed the outdoors very much this past week.  It rained earlier today and cooled it down to a comfortable 85 degrees, so it was a perfect day for exploring :)  There are so many exciting things to discover outside, and getting to see the world through the eyes of a child brings me such joy!  "Nature study" and letting kids spend a lot of time playing outside is an important part of Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy, which I have read quite a bit about during our homeschooling journey.  You can read more HERE if you're interested :)  Here's an example of our nature study, which is really just enjoying nature!

As I was sitting on the patio, Dorian was bringing me rocks that he thought were interesting and telling me why he liked them: like, "This one is shiny!" and "This one is white and brown and gray." Then he decided to start smelling the rocks (I have no idea why!) and after sniffing several he said, "This one smells like Daddy!"  I had a good laugh about that one :)  This was Davin's favorite rock:

Then, Dorian was looking around the rocks and discovered a butterfly on the ground.  He told me it wasn't moving, so I picked it up and carried it to the table.  We told Davin to come and look and the boys got quite sad at the fate of the poor butterfly and hugged each other to mourn their loss....I have two sensitive little boys!  It was adorable, though.  Here's the butterfly Dorian found:

When we got inside, we looked online to identify the butterfly and discovered that it was a Black Swallowtail.  Such a beautiful butterfly!:

My keen explorer, Dorian, next spotted a beetle among the rocks.  He called me over to look at it and this is what we saw:

We're not certain about what kind of beetle it is, but it looks like it may be a stag beetle:

Then, the boys were walking around the house and came to one of their favorite spots: the lavender growing beside the garage.  We all love to pull a piece and take a good whiff of that heavenly smell!  Davin often smells it and gets a little woozy with relaxation and falls to the ground to rest for a while :)  It must be very potent!

So, that was our nature study!  It's so much fun to spend a few minutes really appreciating the outdoors with my children.

Thanksgiving Week: Homeschool

This week we're going to take a break from our normal homeschool subjects so that we can focus on Thanksgiving!

We will read lots of books, do some activities, crafts, games, writing, science, sing some hymns, do a little bit of cooking, and have a lot of fun!  A lot of theses ideas come from the Adventures in My Father's World teacher's guide.

Here's some books from our collection that we will read:

Here's some books from the library we will read:

We participated in the virtual field trip to Plimoth Plantation last week on this website:

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/

and also took a virtual tour of the Mayflower.

Some of the Crafts we'll do:

• Make woven placemats


• Make an Indian vest


• Make a hand turkey


• Make a hand and shoe turkey

For Science, we will use some of our squash for these activities:

• Will it float? experiment


• Predicting the weight by comparing it to pantry items with the weight on it, then weighing them.


• Predicting and measuring the distance around the middle of the squash.


• How many seeds? activity

Some of the hymns we will sing.  I just love singing hymns!:

• We Gather Together


• Count Your Many Blessings


• Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow


• For the Beauty of the Earth


• Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

For writing, we will write about everything we are thankful for, of course!

For Cooking, we will make some cornbread like the pilgrims made and make mini pumpkin pies with pumpkin pudding and mini graham cracker crusts.

Some Indian games we will play:

• Twig Toss


• Almond Toss


• Spearing Game (not as dangerous as it sounds!)

Also, Scripture Adventures has a FREE Thanksgiving guide with TONS of neat things to do!  I'm planning to use it a lot this week, especially for the writing activities.

Just enter "moneysavingmom" at the checkout to get it for FREE!

It should be a very fun week!!!

Week 8

October 4-10

My Father's World 1st Days 33-37

This week I'm glad I took a bunch of pictures at the beginning of the week, because I started coming down with a cold on Tuesday night and I'm just now almost better (more than a week later).  We were so happy to have Grandma (my mom) come visit from Friday until Sunday and celebrated her birthday as well.  Davin made her a whole bunch of Super Davin paper dolls and a lovely birthday card.  I felt bad that my mom was doing so much to help out: cooking, helping with the kids, running errands, getting groceries....but I know she has such a servant's heart and taking care of people, especially her kids (even if they're all grown up!) is what she does!!  And let me tell you, she's the best!!  Oh, my kids will surely be blessed if I can come anywhere near to being a wonderful mom like mine :)

We had quite a little incident on Saturday.  While we were eating lunch we heard a strange sound outside and looked out to discover that the back windshield in our van completely shattered.  It was such a mess!!!  My mom went and got a shop-vac and her and my husband spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the mess, while I took care of the kids inside and watched a bunch of season one of The Donna Reed Show.  (It's okay to do that, right?  I was sick!)  We don't know how it happened, but we got the van in on Monday and it's all fixed now :)  Alright, now on to school things and other highlights from this week!

Our Proverb this week was "Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Proverbs 12:18.  An activity was to write "Healing Words" on a few band-aids and during the day if someone was sad, angry, or discouraged, Davin could give them a band-aid and tell them some healing words.  Isn't that adorable?  Other Bible things we worked on:

• In Sparks, Davin earned his Wing Runner badge!


• We talked about the languages of the Bible and Davin copied the Greek alphabet.

We've started our Italic Handwriting Book B and here he's working diligently.



Taking a break to build a house for Mario.



Teaching Quinnlyn how to play the drums.



He wanted to read aloud to me all of his math books!  I found this very surprising, since he usually does not want to read aloud to me.  He read these books:

• Jelly Beans for Sale by Bruce McMillan


• A Fair Bear Share by Stuart J. Murphy


• Safari Park by Stuart J. Murphy

For math, we set up a cafe and Davin wrote out the menu, took orders, and added up the bill for each person.  It was a joy to eat at the Sunshine Cafe!



For science this week, the topic was "Rivers."  Here is his narration and illustration after reading about the topic in Things Outdoors.  The narration says:

"Canals carry ships over spaces where there is not any water.  The water from rivers is made up of snow and rain.  The rivers that are near cities are in danger of getting poisoned by trash.  Crashed oil ships can make oil fly everywhere into the river."

Daddy wrote down the narration this week and I think he enjoyed it!  I always love hearing what Davin has to say for narrations, too :)



We read this books from the library and enjoyed them all!:

• The Raft by Jim LaMarche


• Where the River Begins by Thomas Locker


• White Water by Jonathan and Aaron London


• River Story by Meredith Hooper


• The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks by Joanna Cole

Here's Dorian making a centerpiece for our table.  He placed all the foam leaves on there by himself and did a lovely job!  You can also see his poor little lip that got split open the past weekend while he was running outside and tripped :(



He started playing with this toolbox set and just had to find his construction hat!  He always wants to have the right outfit/equipment for what he's playing with!



The best picture I could get of them all together on the swing!



Mmmm....Dori loves the yummy cake Grandma brought!  One of my mom's friends made her a cake for her birthday, so she brought it with.  It was delicious!



The boys sitting with Grandma looking at a Toys'R'Us catalog.



Here's his narration from an Aesop Fable:

10/6/10

“The Wolf & The Kid”

There once was a Kid whose grown horns made him think he was a grown-up goat. One day, when the group was over at the field, it was time to go. But when it was time to go, his Mama called for him, and he just stayed, nibbling on the grass. When he lifted his head, he realized that the group was gone. He frowned as he thought about the terrible wolf. He tried to make his way home, but not even midway there he met the Wolf. The Kid said, “Please Mr. Wolf, before you eat me, please play me a merry tune.” The Wolf liked the idea of playing a tune before having a feast. As he was playing his tune, the Kid sneakily went away right back home. The Wolf felt silly of himself and thought he should've gone with eating his prey before playing a merry tune.