Our Schedule

I homeschool using the Charlotte Mason philosophy, which I will explain more about in a later post, because in this post I want to give a brief overview of our daily/weekly/quarterly schedule to answer the question from my cousin-in-law, Katie.

Each morning after breakfast my kids have chores, and I consider this part of "school" because working in the house is teaching them skills they will need for life. I also have them help plan and cook meals once in a while, be involved in more of the deep cleaning like toilets, and helping with yard work, all things they will need in the future.

Following chores (around 9am) I do a morning devotional with them, where we read scriptures, memorize scriptures, learn hymns, read church magazines, read inspirational stories, and learn church history. It lasts about 30-45 minutes, and keeps growing because we keep adding to it. While I am reading aloud the kids are free to color, but they also pay attention because they participate by narrating, answering and asking questions, and usually want me to keep reading!

Then we have what I guess is recess-- about 15 minutes of free time while I get out our school stuff for the day. School lessons usually start around 10am.

Daily School: Pledge of Allegiance, Patriotic Song we are memorizing, Phonics/Reading, Copywork/Penmanship, and Math. These are the basics that I try to do M-F no matter what else is going on.

Each day we also focus on another subject: M & W are History days-- This year we are studing the Middle Ages and American History so we do a short lesson for each.

T, TH, & F are Science/Nature Study days: I use several books: God's Design for Life: The Animal Kingdom, The Handbook of Nature Study, and Discover Nature in Winter The Animal Kingdom has lessons planned with simple activities, and I found a great blog that hosts The Outdoor Hour Challenge and Winter Wednesdays, which are nature lessons planned by this blogger using the Handbook and Discoer Nature books. Here is the link for the blog The Handbook of Nature Study.

We also do Literature each day. M, W, & F we read from a chapter books, and T & TH we read a fairy tale (like real versions of Grimm's or Oscar Wilde's, etc.) or from Tales From Shakespeare by Charles & Mary Lamb.

Fridays we do Geography is I feel we haven't talked about it much during the week. For History and Science we usually pull out a map and talk about where things happened or where animals are found, etc., but if we didn't get to it I'll pull something together on Friday. Friday is also a catch up day to get any skipped lessons done.

Quareterly we have a music composer and artist we are studying, and we do a short lesson on these once a week. Right now we are studing Antonio Vivaldi and Jackson Pollock. "Studying" makes it seem a little intense, because the real objective is to know the composer/artists work more than to know biographical information. So I have a painting posted on the fridge and we listen to selections of music. And I'm kind of wishing I had chosen ones to go along with our Middle Ages studies, but I can change that next quarter when I pick new ones.

When things run smoothly we are done with all lessons by lunchtime. Sometimes we have a couple things we need to do after lunch to finish up, and that is usually because of the little girls needed more attention in the morning. They usually nap at the same time after lunch so sometimes I save our messier activities for that time.

Once we are done with school the kids are free to do do what they want. I only let them watch tv/play video games for 1-2 hours a day, so they spend a lot of time playing outside or with their toys or reading or whatever.

As I mentioned before I will be elaborating on the Charlotte Mason way of homeschooling which explains copywork, narrating, short lessons, etc. And I plan on blogging about each subject individually to share the resources we use and how we do it.