How I Made the Switch to Charlotte Mason

Posted on July 28, 2021July 29, 2021 by Amy

There are two things that have been true about me for all the years I have been homeschooling my kids (8 years):

Every year, I have changed nearly everything in my curriculum from the previous year (here’s one example, here’s another)
Every year, I have looked longingly at Charlotte Mason-style curriculum for many hours, seeing how beautiful and fulfilling it looks and trying to figure out how to do it myself. Inevitably I end up feeling completely lost and overwhelmed, and give up.

This year, things have changed. For this past 2020-2021 school year I did change almost everything in my curriculum again (from what I had used in 2019-2020). However, this next year 2021-2022 I am NOT changing again. That’s right, I am keeping with the same plan from this past year. I will of course get some new books for grade levels and do some tweaking to improve my schedule, but we’ll be doing the same curriculum two years running for the first. time. ever.

How could this be??? I finally tried Charlotte Mason!

You guys. It is so amazing and beautiful and all that I have dreamed it would be for all these years of wanting to do it. In years past I have mostly looked at the Ambleside Online site when thinking about trying CM. AO is lovely of course, but when I finally decided to go with CM, I chose to primarily follow the Mater Amabilis plan, which is Catholic Charlotte Mason, and it provided all the resources and info I needed to jump into the CM method this year. I’m so glad I did.

Full disclosure: I spent many, many hours last summer reading and researching and agonizing over how much of the MA work my kids could/should do together, and how much they would do individually, and how to still work out the CM stuff with the Catholic Schoolhouse stuff. Since there wasn’t much else to do during The Summer of The Virus, I was able to pore over many resources to figure out a way to use Charlotte Mason in our family. I read books, listened to podcasts, and pored over websites and Facebook pages. (In case you’re interested, I’ll link to the resources I used at the bottom of this post.)

Where I started: We have always done history, science, geography, memorization, picture study, poetry, catechism, music appreciation, Latin, and other such things all together at the beginning of the day during what we call “Table Work” (some people call it Morning Time). In years past, this time together at the table would often last an hour to an hour and a half or even more sometimes. Then when we were done, I’d send the girls to their desks to do their individual work. They never had a set order or time frame in which to do their desk work. I gave them a list of work each day, which I wrote in their notebook the night before, and they would just go through it in whatever order they wanted, taking turns doing whatever they needed to do with me as I was able.

This worked okay. But it was problematic in two ways. The first is that I spent way too much time preparing the night before for the following day by writing everything in their notebooks. I got the idea for the notebooks from Sarah Mackenzie, who said she is able to do her kids’ notebooks in a very short time each night. (I clearly am not Sarah Mackenzie!) The second, and greater problem was that the school day seemed to drag on way into the afternoon and their lessons seemed to take much longer than they really needed to. When I started learning about the Charlotte Mason method, I loved that one of the things she insisted on was the need for short lessons. So for this past year I totally revamped the way our day was scheduled.

Here’s how it worked:

I shifted our school day so we started a half hour earlier, at 8:30 (before this the girls did gym class with their dad, then we’d have breakfast). Then I changed things so our Table Work was only thirty to fifty minutes each day. I wanted to continue this practice, because it is usually the best time of our day, but I needed to make it shorter. I was able to shorten it while still including Latin, picture study, memorization, geography, music appreciation, poetry, read alouds, etc. And I also added in very intentional time set aside for Shakespeare every Monday, because I have had a tendency to neglect Shakespeare and really wanted to be sure to include it this year.

The girls were at their desks doing their individual work by 9-9:20 every day. And they no longer just had a list of things to do in whatever order they wanted, taking however long they wanted to get each thing done. They actually had a block schedule for each day. In their schedule I alternated between subjects where they had to read, like history or geography, and subjects where they were doing some other sort of activity, like math, dictation, or copywork. They also had a set number of minutes to work on each subject, and they were to set a timer and work hard on that subject for the full time allotted, and then move on even if they weren’t quite finished (usually they were or they could finish later in the week). This allowed them to complete almost everything by lunch time, even with a recess time included halfway through the morning. The only things they still had in the afternoons were literature, saint reading, and piano practice.

Each girl had a page like this to follow. On Tuesdays we have Catholic Schoolhouse and catechism class, and we spend an hour each way driving to these, so we do Latin and other subjects in the car during our travel time.

It turned out that we usually didn’t quite follow the schedule exactly, but we kept it close enough that they weren’t doing lessons into the afternoon each day.

My planning time changed in that, instead of sitting down every night and writing the next day’s work in notebooks, I would sit down every six weeks and fill out the girls’ schedules, using those provided on the Mater Amabilis website for guidance. They ended up like this:

For some subjects (like catechism, “Living in God’s Church”), I did not assign particular pages. Instead the girls would read for the time allotted on their schedule (20 minutes if you look above at the schedule for LIGC), leaving enough time for a narration before moving on to the next thing. Mostly this was because I didn’t use the Mater Amabilis books/schedule for this subject and I wasn’t sure how many pages to assign, so it was easier to just have them read for a set time instead of a set number of pages. Each girl had both of these pages on a bulletin board strip above her desk, along with a white board where I could write notes for them for each day if needed.

At the beginning of the year I blocked out a plan for myself to make sure I wasn’t scheduling girls to do subjects that they needed my help with at the same time. Mostly I just worked with them on math and dictation, and listened to recitations, so those are the things I blocked out. It looked like this:

Each girl is represented by a different color. The green at the top is the time I set aside for Bubba’s preschool.

The girls were able to move through their work on their own each day. It really helped to have smooth and easy days and a successful year.

I have a few things I need to tweak for this coming year. I talked with the girls to find out which subjects they felt like they needed more or less time for in their schedules, and I’ll adjust accordingly. I’ll need to figure in more time with Bubba since he’s starting kindergarten this year (!). I need to increase and strengthen the habit of good written narrations. And there are plenty of other areas to improve this year, but it sure is nice to have finally found a curriculum, a method, and a system that works well for our family. Took me long enough!

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Here are the different sources I used to help get started last summer:

Mater Amabilis website and Facebook page (the moms who run the Facebook page are so helpful!)

Simply Charlotte Mason podcast, blog (great book lists), and bookstore

Karen Glass books Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition and Know and Tell: The Art of Narration

The Charlotte Mason Show podcast

A Delectable Education podcast

Homeschooling in the Time of Quarantine

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Amy

Wow, you guys. It has been a crazy week. Most people are now stuck at home, quarantined to one degree or another, though at this point there isn’t really anywhere to go anyway with everything closed. I mean, we stayed home a lot before, but this is a new level of HOME.

It seems like nearly every school in the country has been shut down at this point and now just about everyone is, in some ways, homeschooling, whether they want to or not.

I’m seeing lots of memes on Facebook with kind of snarky comments about everyone having to homeschool now. I’m not really a huge fan of the comments that are poking fun at people who are suddenly finding themselves in the position of having to do school at home with their kids, except for this one (I edited off the top comment, because it was rude):

Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

Personally, I can’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in a position of having to do school with your kids at home. In many, if not most cases, these suddenly-homeschooling parents don’t get to choose their own curricula and activities (which is part of the fun of it). They have been sent home with their kids school assignments that they now have to complete at home. I’m sure the kids are not super excited about that and it’s all just a bit overwhelming at times.

I have seen some parents who are really excited about this, who have said they had wanted to try homeschooling and now they get their chance. And I have seen some parents who are saying they’re nervous, annoyed, or lacking confidence in their ability to pull this off. I even saw where one mom posted about how she yelled at her kids most of the day and then she thanked her children’s teachers for putting up with how awful they are (I think that one was meant to be at least partly in jest. I hope.).

I would like to say, first of all, to anyone who is reading this and feeling overwhelmed by suddenly having to do school at home with your kids: YOU CAN DO THIS.

Secondly, I would like to just offer a few little tips to maybe help things to go smoothly-ish. I posted a link to this post on my Facebook page, which has lots of ideas and links for practical things you can do during the day, including podcasts, booklists, video streaming, online art classes, and so on. My list here is less about specific school-y things to do and more about how to make the shift to school at home a little less painful.

Tip #1: Have a plan/routine to start your day.

Example, after breakfast and morning chores, I used to put on a song every morning just before 9. My kids knew that the song was the signal that it was about time to start school, so they’d come to our kitchen, which is near the schoolroom. Often there would be a little quick dance party, and then when the song was over, everyone would move into the schoolroom and the day would start.

We don’t do this anymore, because my husband has instituted “gym time” before school starts. Now morning chores are done before breakfast and once our morning meal is cleaned up, the kids all go downstairs for some sort of gym exercise that my husband writes for them on our white board in the basement. They do this for about half an hour and then as soon as they’re done, school starts in the schoolroom. We have our routine timed so they still get into the schoolroom about 9am. We always start with prayer, singing the Doxology, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance, to further formalize the “official” start to our day.

My point is, there is a known routine that helps us to move from regular morning stuff to school time. And because it’s the same every morning, I don’t (usually) get grumbling and complaining about it being time for school. I think it also helps that we get school done first thing in the morning, so I don’t have to try to round everyone up after they’ve been able to get absorbed in other stuff. So I guess that’s tip #2.

Tip #2: If possible, do school first thing in the morning after breakfast/morning chores.

Tip #3: Don’t try to make school at home look like school at school. It’s okay if they don’t do all their work sitting at the table or if they need regular breaks, or whatever. I have a kid who always takes all of her reading assignments into our pantry and reads them while sitting on top of our chest freezer. I think that’s pretty weird, but she gets it done so who cares? And also…

Tip #4: Don’t try too hard to match some idealized idea you have about what school at home should look like. I mean, I’d really like to be reading Shakespeare to my kids on a blanket under a tree in our backyard whilst they construct to-scale dioramas of the Globe Theater… or something, but that’s not likely to happen. It’s a great benefit of homeschooling to be able to do science experiments and art projects and nature walks and poetry tea times and all those things. But if that’s not your thing, don’t sweat it. And if you do want to add in this stuff, just do one or two things to start. Not all the things at once, or you’ll burn out.

Tip #5: Read aloud. Just pick a book, pick a time of day, and gather your kids around while you read to them, even if they can read for themselves.

Tip #6: Bribe them with food. But don’t necessarily let them know you’re bribing them. Have a poetry tea time (nothing complicated, just have snacks and tea or another tasty beverage while you peruse poetry books together and read aloud from them for each other), eat a snack that somehow goes along with something your kids are learning about in their schoolwork (this doesn’t have to be complicated either… I mean I made corned beef hash out of a can for St. Patrick’s Day yesterday), or just bake something together for fun (and math). Or sometimes do make it obvious you’re bribing them! My kids rarely get to chew gum. But they know that if they have a cheerful attitude and do our work without complaining during Table Time (our version or Morning Basket: schoolwork done all together at the table before everyone breaks away to individual work), they can have a piece (except right now because: Lent). Food makes everything better.

^ They wrote “The Corn Laws” in cookie frosting on the plate and then stuck microwaved popcorn to it^

Tip #7: Last and most importantly, let yourself enjoy your kids and try not to stress about their schoolwork. Schools are probably going to be closed for much longer than two weeks. The work will get done. They will learn and they will be fine. Your connection with them is much more important that how much schoolwork they get done (I have to remind myself of this often!!)

Shifting from regular school to homeschooling would be a huge adjustment under the best circumstances, and both parents and kids would need time to acclimate to such a huge change, even if they had been expecting it and were prepared for the shift. In these times of unexpected, perhaps unwanted, and probably unplanned-for homeschooling, everyone needs some breathing room, some compassion, and some time to figure things out. Homeschooling is hard! It’s okay for it to be messy sometimes. But hard as it may feel, we all have an opportunity to slow down and enjoy each other for a while. You can do this. I hope that you will truly love this opportunity to be your kids’ teacher all day, at least for a while. I am praying for you.

Our Homeschool Year 2018-2019

Posted on June 9, 2019June 11, 2019 by Amy

Sooo, since we just finished up our school year, I suddenly have more time to write, and I have homeschooling on the brain (can’t wait to start planning next year, anyone with me??). So you might just see lots of posts on the topic for a few days. Or maybe just this one and the last one and then I’ll burn out and go into hibernation again for another five months. Time will tell.

Anyway, looking back on our school year, I’m feeling pretty good about what we did. We got into a good groove and learned a lot. We have stumbled into the classical method of homeschooling, and we memorized the heck out of stuff this year!! We did quite a bit of poetry memorization and John 1, along with lots of memory work from our co-op. Here’s how our year went, in a nutshell:

We participated in a Catholic Schoolhouse (CSH) co-op again this year. We found this co-op halfway through the year last year, and immediately switched from our local Classical Conversations group to the farther-away-but-so-worth-the-drive CSH, which is also a classical program. We did the whole year with CSH this year and I absolutely loved it. It’s great for the kids to be able to be in a classroom with other kids and be taught by other adults for one day a week. They have music instruction (chorus and recorder this year), art class, and science class, so even if I’m not on the ball and putting together art projects and science experiments at home, I know they will at least get to have these things at co-op. The history focus this year was ancients through the Middle Ages and the girls memorized a lot of stuff for our timeline. They even memorized all the books of the Bible, including which councils determined which testaments and in what years. I learned so much with them, and we had lots of fun. CSH has a program where the kids who memorize all of the memory work for the year (they get tested quarterly by one of the tutors) get named “Super Scholars,” get recognized at the end of year show, and get a t-shirt and a trophy. My girls worked hard to earn the honor!

Here are a few other CSH moments from the year:

^^End-of-year rocket launch^^

Every Tuesday we drove an hour to our CSH co-op, then did a Latin class afterwards (we used Our Roman Roots this year), taught by another mom, then would do some sort of field trip or play time with some friends in between Latin class and our parish’s catechism classes (our parish is in the same town as our CSH co-op). We have lots of great memories of these Tuesday afternoons.

At home, we continued with some of the same things that had been working in previous years, such as Catholic Heritage Curricula for spelling, Singapore for math, and All About Reading for reading. The older girls read great books like Mara, Daughter of the Nile, The Hobbit, The Golden Goblet, Because of Winn Dixie, and many others. We did lots of read alouds too, most recently Snow and Rose and the Wilderking Trilogy (which was amazing!!).

We sometimes added in extra worksheets with fun themes for practice. Math facts are a frequent focus for extra practice for us, so an under-the-sea themed multiplication worksheet from Education.com was fun to do after we got back from our trip to Florida and Sea World as a nice little way to ease back into school, and math in particular, after a vacation. (There is a link to the worksheet we used below, and you can check out their other multiplication games and resources here. I think we’ll be using some of them for summer practice.)

multiplication_under the sea

Some things were different than in years past.

We started a weekly holy hour, where I alternated taking one girl with me and then taking her out to lunch afterwards. It was a wonderful chance to spend some on-on-one time with each of them.

Curriculum changes this year included using The Story of Civilization from Tan Books for our history spine. We really loved it. It matched up well with the history work we did in CSH. Previously we had used The Story of the World, but we like TSoC much better. We used lots of mix and match living books for science to cover the topics of botany, chemistry, astronomy, and light and sound. We got a couple of boxes from MEL Science when we were doing our chemistry quarter, and had fun doing some of those experiments.

We went back to Seton for handwriting/cursive (we’ve switched around with other handwriting books for the past few years). I added in IEW for writing and The Good and the Beautiful for creative writing and typing for Miss. We used Seton and the Baltimore Catechism for religion. Sis used St. Joseph First Communion Catechism to prepare for her First Holy Communion.

We studied Europe and Asia in geography. I forgot about our fun with Draw the USA last year, so we didn’t do Draw Europe until the end of the school year and didn’t have time to draw Asia. But Europe was fun and turned out great!

We learned a lot about various European and Asian countries (and memorized all of them). I really think geography is my favorite subject to teach. We had cooking projects to go along with our geography studies too:

^Slovakian Bryndzové halušky – potato dumplings with sheep cheese and roasted bacon^

^Making traditional Hungarian goulash^

^French Croque Monsieur and Niçoise salad (from her Raddish box)^

We did art projects:

We went on field trips:

My husband taught gym class:

The girls did piano, ballet and tap, and knitting as extracurricular activities:

We did some other random stuff too. We had poetry tea times, took nature walks, and played board games (yes, during school time!).

^We did a bit of ice dancing during this nature walk^

We even dissected owl pellets:

And that’s snapshot into what we did this year.

Of course, I’m not showing you the photos of the days that we all melted down, no one wanted to work, the girls whined, and I was a jerk. I actually don’t generally take photos of those days, I guess. We did have those too. Sometimes homeschooling is hard. BUT, it is my fervent hope (and firm belief!) that these moments here, the photo-worthy together-times, will be the more memorable ones. We seem to have more of these anyway.

It was a really good year.

A Year Done and Why We Do It

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Amy

Last Thursday was our last day of school! We went out for a celebratory dinner and ice cream (I actually started writing this post that same day, which gives you some idea of how I never get writing done anymore!).

We had a really good year. First, third, and fourth grades are officially done, and it feels pretty awesome to be heading into summer.

For a short time this year I had some struggles with our choice to homeschool in terms of how it was affecting my girls (and somewhat me) socially. Not that there has ever been any lack of the dreaded socialization. That has never been a problem (really, it’s not a problem). But we have good friends who do not homeschool, and during the first half of the year a couple of my kids had a hard time with feeling left out of the school world of their friends. And if I’m honest, I sometimes struggled with feeling left out of the school-mom-world of my friends too.

It turned out okay. We kept open communication about it. We have great homeschooling friends too, and we made more time to spend with them. I had many conversations with my girls and with my husband. I never had any doubts about our choice, it just sometimes felt extra hard this year. In many ways I think these struggles actually strengthened my conviction that homeschooling is the best thing for our family. My kids sometimes don’t understand why we homeschool, so we talked a lot about it, and I think it really helped them to understand our reasoning.

As I’m closing out this school year, I thought I’d just jot down here why we do homeschool. I’ve been fortunate to have pretty consistent support for our choice to homeschool from the people in my life, but I know there are a lot of people who do not understand homeschooling, who think it is weird or wrong or even dangerous. I also know that there are many, many reasons for homeschooling and the reasons we do it are not the same as for others.

But in case you’re curious (and in case I need a shot-in-the-arm reminder in November of next year), here’s why we do it:

First and foremost, I know that God has called me to homeschool my kids.
I don’t like what I have seen and heard about what is being taught in schools. Textbooks are terribly biased, gender is confused, and schools teach to the test or to the demands of the loudest voices rather than focusing on filling childrens’ hearts with the true, good, and beautiful things of this world.
I want my kids to learn primarily from books, with a little bit of time on screens. That seems to be reversed in many schools.
I also want the books they read to be worth reading, with positive values and powerful messages that will help them engage with the world through well-written stories. I don’t want them to just be handed the current pop culture best-seller, or the books that are horrid but prevalent in classrooms because they supposedly “get kids to read.”
I don’t believe in homework for elementary-aged children.
I want my kids to have more time to play and to eat lunch at a leisurely pace than what they are allowed in schools.
I like having my kids home with me all day.
I cannot imagine having to get my kids up and out the door by 7:30am five days a week. Just the thought makes me shudder.
I want our Faith to be the most important thing they are learning every day and for their education to be faithful to true Catholic teaching.
I like that my kids are each others’ best friends.
I want the primary influences in their lives to come from my husband and me and our family, not peers or teachers.
I like being able to take time off whenever I want if something comes up that is worth taking time off for.

13. Finally, I’m confident that I’m the best teacher for my kids. I am far from perfect, but I know them better and am more invested in the education of both their minds and their hearts than anyone else could ever possibly be. No question.

There are many more reasons, but those are the main ones that come to mind right away.

We have our occasional struggles, and this year was no exception. Homeschooling is sometimes hard work, but it is so, so worth it.

Happy summer!!

A Peek Inside Our Homeschool Day – 2017 Version

Posted on March 9, 2017March 9, 2017 by Amy

Last year, I wrote a post about a day in our homeschooling life. I just went back and reread it, and it was fun to look back on where we were a year ago. Things are a little different this year. Different curriculum, different daily system, a new baby, etc. So here’s the 2017 version of our homeschool day-in-the-life, containing what we did on a pretty typical Tuesday earlier this week.

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5:30 – My alarm goes off. I press snooze twice. One of my Lenten commitments is to begin getting up early again. I used to be a faithful 5:30-am-riser, until I got pregnant with Bubba, and I haven’t done well with this since. But Lent is a good time to begin or renew fruitful practices, so I’m back to getting up early.

6-ish – I’m downstairs getting coffee and I hear Bubba starting to stir. He’s just chattering a bit, so I let him stay in his crib, and I start my prayers.

6:15 – Bubba is getting loud and fussy, so I go up to get him. I finish my prayers while nursing him and then put him in his playpen so I can pray the rosary and do my Lenten journal.

7:00 – By this time, Lass and Sis are up. I chat with them and play with Bubba for a bit.

7:45 – My husband has left for work and Miss is up now. I put Bubba in his high chair with some Cheerios and have the girls start to get themselves some cereal while I make strawberry smoothies for them and myself (from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook). We all sit down to eat (drink) and I read Jan Brett’s “The Turnip” over breakfast. We are going on a field trip on Friday to a Jan Brett exhibit at a local museum, so I’m reading lots of her stuff this week.

8:20 – Breakfast is done. I start to clean up and get a phone call from a friend. We chat for a bit while the girls go upstairs to get ready for the day. Their morning routine is still the same as last year – get dressed, brush teeth, brush hair (or have me help them do hair), make bed, clean room.

8:45 – I’m off the phone and putting a French braid in Sis’s hair at her request.

9:00 – This is our goal start time for school. I put on our “get-thyself-to-the-schoolroom-pronto” song for the morning, which today is “I Wanna Dance in the Dark” (by Rhianna, I think??). We all dance around for the duration of the song, and land in the schoolroom by its end. Bubba goes into his jumper and we start with the beginning of our morning time routine which consists of singing the Doxology, selecting an old Christmas card from a big box of them we have received over the past several years, saying prayers, including an intention for the family or person the Christmas card is from, finishing with the Anima Christi (I love this prayer!), and then doing the Pledge of Allegiance. We do a super quick calendar time in which one of the girls comes to our calendar, says the date in full, leads her sisters in saying the date all together, and then another girl observes the weather for the day. Then we move to our memory work, which right now is John 3:16-18. This is a pretty standard start to our morning time every day.

9:10-ish – We move into the next part of our morning time, which can vary. Right now we’re using the Lenten Morning Time Plans from Pam Barnhill, with a few added items that we like to use as well. A brand new addition to morning time is Bedtime Math. I read an entry in the book and each of the girls answers a question (there are three levels of question which are pretty well matched to the levels of the girls’ learning). We quickly review the latin we are learning this week. I put on our Song School Latin CD (another new addition to the routine) and we sing and dance to help us memorize how to say “What is your name?” and “My name is…” in latin. We do our map work relating to the history chapter we listened to in the car on Monday.

9:20 – Bubba is getting fussy and tired, so I have the girls go to their desks to begin their individual work while I take him upstairs to put him down for a nap. Interrupting morning time to put him down for a nap is pretty common, so they’re used to this.

9:30 – We are back at the table to continue with morning time. We read Proverbs 31 and talk about the virtue of orderliness, we listen to and try to sing along with the current hymn we’re working on “Lord, Who Through These Forty Days,” we read a fairy tale (The Princess and the Pea), and we do music appreciation. On Monday we read the poem “The Donkey” by G.K. Chesterton, and we’re studying Entry Into Jerusalem by Fra Angelico for picture study, so we also read some picture books with a donkey theme (“The Donkey of Gallipoli” and “Humphrey’s First Palm Sunday,” which is actually about a camel, but kind of fits with the theme anyway) and then read a chapter from our current read-aloud “Girl in a Cage.” The girls do narration for the chapter and then morning time is over for the day.

10:25 – The girls are back to their desks doing their individual work. Instead of the workbox system we used last year, I’m now using notebooks to indicate to them what they need to complete each day. Their work is still in the rolling carts with drawers labeled by subject, but they can do their assignments in whichever order they choose, and they just check them off as they go.

In her notebook that day, Miss had a spelling test, a math test, and the conclusion of a report on Madagascar. She has been working through the beatitudes for her copywork, but Tuesday she was excited because I let her also choose a page out of a Draw Write Now book for drawing and additional copywork. She had to read through and talk with me about the sections in two of her religion books about the last supper and the institution of the Eucharist and the part of Mass when the consecration occurs (She knows all these things, but we are spending some time talking about it more in depth in preparation for her First Holy Communion in April). She also had piano practice, a lesson from First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind (FLL), and a chapter to read in her current assigned book (which she usually reads at bedtime).

Lass had a few pages of math in her Star Wars workbook, some work on her spelling list and a couple of handwriting exercises. She had piano practice, a lesson from FLL, and a reading lesson, which consisted of reading and discussing a story with me.

Sis had two pages of math from a new Miquon math book, a page of handwriting and some practice on her handwriting slate, a few phonics pages, and some ABC practice in a new sticker book I got for her.

11:35 – Bubba wakes up while I’m doing Miss’s math test with her (Shiller math tests are administered by the teacher). I try to keep going to get through the test before getting him.

11:45 – We’re still working on the test, but the baby is getting mad, so I go get him and bring him down to nurse while I finish the math test with Miss.

11:55 – We’re finished with the math test. All the girls’ schoolwork is done except for Miss’s religion. We go and begin to make turnip pancakes for lunch (to go with our book from breakfast), and Miss and I read and discuss her religion pages while we grate turnips together.

1:00 – We finally sit down to eat lunch.

The turnip pancakes turned out great, except that they are far too salty. The girls and Bubba still eat some, so I’m feeling good about them having turnips for lunch. After they eat, I suggest to the girls that we should check the recipe again and see if we made a mistake of adding 2 Tbsp of salt instead of 2 tsp. I explain why this would be an easy mistake to make, but when we check, we find that we did read the recipe correctly, and it just called for too much salt. I discuss with them how it is possible to change a recipe if we make it and decide we don’t like something about it. Miss says next time we make these we should only add 1 Tbsp of salt.

1:25 – The girls go outside to play. It is crazy windy here, and I’m fairly certain they are freezing, because they insisted on wearing their light jackets when I suggested their winter coats, but they seem to be having fun anyway. I start cleaning up the kitchen.

2:05 – The kitchen is nearly clean, I have chicken in the oven for dinner, and I put Bubba down for his afternoon nap.

2:15 – The girls come inside. I send them to the basement to clean up their toys.

I spend the next half hour or so kind of wandering about from task to task, getting distracted and having a hard time actually finishing anything. I’m cleaning the kitchen a bit more, getting distracted by our seeds on the counter and deciding to spray some water on them, cleaning a bit more, remembering that my vacuum isn’t working right and looking for the manual so I can figure out how to clean the filter, etc.

I got a box with a few new books in it and I really, really want to sit down and start reading one of them, but I don’t.

2:45 – This kitchen is finally clean. Bubba wakes up after taking a really crummy (short) nap. I bring him down and nurse him, which gives me a few minutes to read one of my books.

3:15- I go downstairs to exercise. My husband and I are working our way through the P90X3 workouts. I was never interested in going P90X because I do not care to spend an hour plus working out every day, but these workouts are only 30 minutes, and they’re mostly pretty fun so we’re enjoying them. The workout for Tuesday was my least favorite though (Agility X), so I have to really talk myself into doing it.

4:00 – My workout is done, the girls have had a snack, and I realize that I forgot to put tinfoil over the chicken that is slowly cooking in my oven. I figure it’s probably too late, but put some on it anyway. I take the girls downstairs for some gym time. We practice basketball skills (which is kind of comical if you know how much basketball “skill” I possess), and then we play dodgeball/pickle and line tag.

5:00 – We go back upstairs so I can finish making dinner.

5:30 – Dinner (the chicken turned out okay, in spite of my failure to cover it)

7:00-ish – Everyone has had a shower or bath, I’m getting Bubba ready for bed, we say family prayers.

7:45 – I’ve gotten the baby to bed and come down to have the girls head upstairs and get in bed. They have made lots of paper dolls and are melting down because Lass “lost” Jessie, who apparently is Miss’s favorite paper doll. There are many tears. I tell them I will find Jessie while they go upstair and finish getting ready for bed. I find the paper doll (of course) and take it upstairs to relieved/happy girls.

8:10 – The girls are all tucked in and I come down to make myself a cup of coffee.

8:15 – I sit down with my coffee and one of the girls comes out and asks me to come up and snuggle with her.

8:25 – I again sit down with my coffee and my husband on the couch. We spend some time discussing and making a few purchases we have been putting off.

9:45 – Ben and I are done. He goes to bed. I get myself a snack and then go to bed too. I didn’t get my school prep done for the next day, but decide to finish it in the morning, and I’m pretty happy that I’ve managed to get myself into bed by a little after 10, which will make it a lot easier to get up at 5:30 the next day.

The End

Jamie of Simple Homeschool is doing a link up again this year, so if you’d like to see more “Day in the Life” posts from homeschoolers, go check it our here.

Our Homeschool Plan – Halfway Through the Year

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Amy

We are a little more than halfway through our homeschool year. In August, I wrote this post about my plans and excitement for the year. Here’s an update of how it’s going, what we’re still doing and what has changed:

Our day starts with morning time, usually. I have had to learn to be flexible about this, since Bubba doesn’t always go down for a nap at the same time every morning. If he’s awake and happy when we start school, he’ll play in his playpen area or in his jumper while we get started. But sometimes I have to tell the girls to go straight to their desk work while I put him down for a nap. And sometimes we start morning time, and then I send them to their desks halfway through so I can put him down… it all depends on him, and the girls do a great job of just rolling with it.

Other than that, morning time does look pretty similar to what I planned it to be at the start of the year. We begin by singing a song together. We started the year working on the Gloria and some of the other songs we sing in Mass each week, just to make sure my girls have those down. Now we sing the Doxology. After our song we pray. A new thing we have started is to choose a Christmas card from a big box of them that I have saved for the past three or four years, and whomever the card belongs to, we pray for them during our morning prayer. The girls love this and it’s a great way to pray for lots of our family and friends by name, whom we might not think to pray for on a regular basis. Then we do the Pledge of Allegiance and a quick calendar time and our memory work, which has been highly varied this year but right now is a fairly lengthy Shakespeare passage and a Psalm. Then we move into our read alouds.

^ The girls asked to be allowed to illustrate their Shakespeare passage (“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows…”) while we listened to A Midsummer Night’s Dream ^

As I mentioned in the other post, I switched from Sonlight to Build Your Library for our main science/history/literature curriculum this year. I like BYL much better. I do all of the scheduled reading in the BYL plans with the girls during morning time each day. This usually consists of history (Story of the World or Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, or a fun book that focuses on something we’re reading about, like Knight: A Noble Guide for Young Squires or The Adventures of Marco Polo), science, which right now consists of the First Earth Encyclopedia and The Geography Book, and our literature read aloud, which is Girl in a Cage at the moment. At least once a week we read some poetry, and usually there is one day of the week when we include a fairy tale or a medieval legend. I also read aloud our chapter from Jesus Our Life and any other religious studies we are doing for the week during morning time.

One thing that I wasn’t sticking to very consistently is including nature study, Bedtime Math, art projects, and music appreciation each week. I have kept up poetry tea time every couple of weeks, but the other things have generally been forgotten or just bypassed for lack of time. For this reason, I added in the Winter Morning Time Plans from Pam Barnhill to help me stick to these things a bit more. This has been great, because now I have a lesson plan page in my binder prompting me to do a hymn/music appreciation and a picture study each week. We have art projects each week (though I’ve skipped one or two of them and one was a total flop) and nature study, too. Some of the nature study projects have been a bit tough because, even though they are winter nature study activities, they seem a little more like early winter activities than late winter, at least for our super cold climate. But we have gotten outside, in the snow, to do nature study, so that’s pretty awesome.

^ When we were outside, we found these perfect snow flakes in a rotten hollow in a piece of wood ^

Even though some things haven’t worked out the way I wanted them to, the girls seem to be enjoying these fun additions to our morning time (and I am too).

After we finish with the winter plans, I’m going to do a few weeks of nursery rhymes and fairy/folk tales. I have a huge stack of picture books and lots of fun activities ready to go to add this to our morning time next. After a few weeks of these, when spring has actually arrived, we’ll be using the new Spring Morning Time plans that I just purchased (which are on sale until Friday, if you’re interested).

As for our desk work, this has stayed pretty much the same as what I thought it would too. For Math, we do Shiller or IXL or work in the Star Wars math workbooks, or Life of Fred for Miss. I like Shiller, but find it to be lacking in some skills practice, so we supplement with the other things. I have recently added some math games from Math Geek Mama, which are a nice change of pace and fun for the girls. We have also started playing board games like Sum Swamp and Money Bags during school time as well.

^ A little break to learn about tessellation with magnet blocks ^

For phonics/reading we still use All About Reading. I just love this reading curriculum. Miss is cruising through Level 3 and Lass is moving right along in Level 2. I recently started Sis on Level 1, and she is so excited and proud of herself that she is starting to read real words and whole stories. Miss has additional books assigned to her for daily reading. I assigned “Understood Betsy” as her first book, and she hated it (how is this true of my child??), so I let her pick her books now from a stack I have approved for “school reading” (she has tons more books she can, and does, read on her own in addition to these). Lass is starting to read chapter books, too.

^ Sis’s first whole book she read ^

Language Arts is exactly what I thought it would be – First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind for Miss and Lass, and an occasional page from Language of God for Little Folks for Miss. First Language Lessons has short lessons that I go through with them, and the Language of God book is a workbook that Miss can do to reinforce some of the FLL concepts we talk about.

The girls are doing their CHC spelling workbooks, but I haven’t added in any All About Spelling as I had intended to. I think All About Spelling is probably actually a better method, so I’m considering switching to it soon.

I changed up handwriting a bit. Miss is now using the Writing Our Catholic Faith Grade 2 cursive book, while still working on her printing with copy work. She is so excited to be doing cursive writing. Lass is still using the same Catholic Heritage Curriculum book, and Sis is mostly using the preschool version of Writing Our Catholic Faith.

We are still using the Faith and Life books for religion, and Miss has started working through the Little Catechism on the Eucharist and The New St. Joseph First Communion Catechism to prepare for her First Holy Communion in April.

We made a few changes with extracurriculars this semester too. The girls are still doing piano and ice skating, but we have added gymnastics in again and dropped their homeschool gym class at the YMCA. This class was starting to feel like such a time suck, since the girls had it twice a week at an awkward time of the day for us. Now we are trying to do various gym time activities at home more, and I don’t think we’ll miss it.

Happily, since I chose curricula that I’m enjoying this year and have added in a few things to liven it up, I’m not feeling the February homeschool mom burnout right now that I hear lots of people talking about. I’m still enjoying (most of) our school days and love learning so much stuff with the girls every day (the more I homeschool, the more I realize how limited my own education was!).

^ A recent field trip ^

A big change that I’m already starting to plan for for next year is that we will be joining our local Classical Conversations group. I have been intrigued by this for years, and have looked into it briefly a few times, but never too seriously. Recently, I spoke with a friend whose daughter is in the group, and she shared with me how much they enjoy it and benefit from it, and then I got an invitation to attend an open house. We went on Tuesday and it was so wonderful. The girls loved it and begged to go back. After looking into it a bit more and discussing it with my husband, I decided to go for it, and we will be adding this to our curriculum for next year, most Tuesday mornings. We are all pretty excited about this one.

You know there will be a full, overly-detailed post some time in the future about all the plans for next year, when I get to that point.

For now, we’re enjoying this year. For me, each day presents challenges that I’m trying to use as a way to grow in virtue as I push myself to do better for my kids, and I try to help them to think of it this way too. We are working on growing in faith and love in the small moments of each day, and we’re doing it together. That’s pretty cool.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the year and the fun things we have coming up.

In the Books

Posted on September 1, 2016September 1, 2016 by Amy

We started school this week. Three days in, and I’m going to say I’m thrilled with the changes I made and the direction we’re heading (you can check out our curriculum here if you’re inclined).

A few highlights:

Our first day of school special breakfast was chocolate waffles.

The girls usually are still in pjs for breakfast, but they were excited and got dressed early for their first day.

I told them that at the beginning of each school day, I’ll put on a song for them, and they need to be at the school table ready to go by the time the song is over. They danced and hammed it up to the song I picked for the first morning, which was “Uptown Funk” (I couldn’t find “Happy” on my phone, which was what I wanted, but we managed to play that one Wednesday morning).

We started by singing the Gloria, praying, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Then I asked them if they wanted to have a new name for our school this year (why not?) and had them come up with one. They chose “St. Therese Homeschool” (last year we were “Holy Family Academy”). They helped me make a list of our classroom rules, and we discussed the things they especially want to learn this year (archery was high on the list), and then we started into our morning time read alouds from our Build Your Library curriculum.

The girls liked the new method we’re using with our workboxes. Instead of having them go through all of their drawers in order, I labeled the drawers and wrote in their new notebooks what they had to do for the day. Then they could do their assignments in whatever order they chose. We’re still working out some issues with this, as Sis and Lass have needed some help to decipher my pictures and words and abbreviations that tell them what to do. I think it’s going to work though, and cut down on my prep time each evening, too.

The two biggest improvements so far have been letting them color quietly during read alouds and our math curriculum.

I always thought that the girls needed to just sit relatively quietly while I was reading aloud to them in order for them to be paying attention. It turns out, they actually pay better attention if I put a box of markers on the table and some mandala coloring books and let them color while they listen! Our new curriculum also sometimes has some related pages that they can color while they listen to history and science readings as well. We are all so much happier during read alouds suddenly!

And our math curriculum this year is so much better. Last year’s math curricula for Miss and Lass were very strongly workbook-based. Miss hated doing her math each day and as soon as she pulled out her workbook would begin complaining about it. I knew I needed to get something different this year in order to avoid raising a bunch of math-haters. I researched a LOT of different math curricula, and I decided on Shiller Math, which is very hands-on. I have never been really into doing Montessori-method teaching, but this math curriculum is Montessori based, and we all love it so far.

We finished up our first morning with sandwiches and malts for lunch, and then had an archery lesson before dinner.

The rest of our short week (M-W, because we’re going out of town for The Labor Day Party) went well also. We had more archery and even did a little science experiment on Wednesday.

With week one in the books, I’m feeling encouraged that our year is going to be even better than last year. In the past three days, during family prayers at bedtime, my kids have all said things about being thankful for school, and for archery, and for our science experiment.

Miss even said she was thankful for math.

That makes me one happy homeschooling mama.

A Summer Reading Adventure

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Amy

Last week we finished our Read the World Summer Book Club. It was based on the book “Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time” by Jamie Martin. We used a chapter a week to go through different areas of the world, selecting books to read and activities to do as we went.

Some weeks we were more into it than others. Some books were better than others and sparked more conversation and exploration. All of it was an exercise in learning about the wider world. Geography, language, customs, history. We talked about all of it through the stories told in the books we chose, all of which were recommended in Jamie’s book.

We began with gusto with Multicultural week, focusing on exploring lots of different cultures all over the world. We picked several books with this emphasis, and started out coloring each country that we read about on the map that was provided in one of Jamie’s first posts about the book club.

After doing this for a few days, the girls lost interest in the maps, which we dropped, but not the stories.

We rolled right into the second week focused on Africa with books and movies from the library about Kenya and Mali and Madagascar. We read about cassava plants and how tapioca is made from the starch of these plants, so I got tapioca pudding for them to try. They didn’t like it (neither do I), but they found it “interesting,” for sure.

After Africa, we moved to the chapter on Europe. There were lots of books in the Europe section of Jamie’s book (and the Asia section) that we have read already, but there were still plenty to choose from that were new to us. One that my girls and I especially enjoyed was “Boxes for Katje.” I had grand plans to make something European for dinner one night that week, maybe from one of my French or Spanish cookbooks, but I flopped on that one.

Next up was North America. Jamie suggested lots of good books, but our favorite that we read was “Jingle Dancer,” about the Native American traditional dance performed in a dress with metal “jingles” on it. We ended up going down a YouTube rabbit hole after this book, watching video after video of jingle dancing and various other types of traditional Native American dance. It was absolutely fascinating, and the girls just kept begging for more.

Our zeal for the book club hit its low point during the Middle East week, when we only read one book from those I checked out of the library. We quickly rebounded with Asia week though. I don’t know what it is about reading books set in Asia, but we have always loved reading about this region of the world. From our old books, “The Story about Ping” and “A Pair of Red Clogs” to the many new ones we read during this week of the book club, we just really enjoy the richness of Asian culture as we experience it through picture books.

One of our favorites during this week was “Bee-bim Bop!” which included a recipe that we promptly made together, and which led to the girls’ first experience with Korean food (including kimchee!!).

The other favorite of the week was this:

The original name of this book was Little Black Sambo, and my grandma used to read it to me when I was little. I didn’t realize this was the same story when I reserved it from the library, but inside the jacket it explained the original title. The memory of my Gram reading it came rushing back, and I was so excited. I can vividly remember the distinct voices she used for Little Black Sambo and the tigers. I tried to replicate them in my reading of the story, but I didn’t do it justice. My girls enjoyed it anyway, of course, and so did I.

The next week was Latin America week, during which I picked a couple of books set in Brazil and made a lame attempt at an Olympic connection, but because we don’t have TV and weren’t really able to watch much of the Olympics, it didn’t really resonate.

And finally, Australia, Oceania, Polar Regions, which we wrapped up last week. I found these two reading “Diary of a Wombat” in our swing set tower the other day.

As I walked away after taking this photo, I heard them bust out in giggles over the silliness of the story. I love sharing special moments over books with my girls, and even more seeing them sharing the love of books with each other.

My Big Fat Curriculum Post

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Amy

It’s that time of year again. Back to school is coming. At our house it will be upon us in about two weeks. Miss will be in second grade, Lass in first, and Sis in PreK4.

I’m simultaneously very excited and sort of scared to death. I’m not sure how it’s going to work to homeschool with a newborn in the mix. I’m banking on the possibility that he may nap every morning between 9 and noon. If that doesn’t happen, I’m screwed.

BUT, either way, I have my curriculum all lined up on my brand new pretty shelves and I’m so flipping excited about it I have to share.

I’ll start by telling you why we changed our curriculum from what we had last year, which was Sonlight. I picked Sonlight, hoping for a literature-based curriculum. Unfortunately, it turned out to not actually be what I consider literature-based. Usborn books about space and history don’t really qualify, in my opinion. A lot of the books were more textbook-y, and they seemed to bore my kids. I ended up ditching a lot of their selections in order to add in Five in a Row and The Story of the World. We didn’t like the math or the handwriting programs that came with it either. Plus, though I knew that their curriculum was not Catholic and that I would need to add in some religious studies to make it more in line with our faith, I wasn’t expecting to be so uncomfortable with the religious elements they did have. I ended up not using any of their religion choices and completely replacing them with Catholic Heritage Curricula’s study and lots of our own books.

By the end of the year, I was hardly using any of the sources that came in our Sonlight box.

So. That’s what we are not doing again this year.

Instead, I switched to Build Your Library as our main curriculum, and then added a bunch of stuff on to that. BYL is a secular curriculum that comes with literature, science, history, copy work, narration, and art study. You can check out BYL’s second grade package, which is the one we’re using, here.

I’ll do the science, history, art study, and literature read alouds with all of the girls together before they split to do their individual skill work.

Which includes:

Math – Miss hated doing math in a workbook. So this year I’m switching to Shiller Math, which uses a lot more brief lessons and hands on activities. I’ll also use Life of Fred from time to time and the IXL app for a fun change of pace.

Reading – We’re sticking with All About Reading. We all like it and it works. Miss is a pretty fluent reader, so mostly she just needs practice reading and reminders to sound out the words she doesn’t know. But I’ll finish up the AAR Level 3 with her and continue Level 2 with Lass. Later in the year I may start Level 1 with Sis, since she’s already finished the Pre-reading program, but I’m not in any hurry (she’ll mostly be doing typical preschool ABC, counting, sorting, coloring, cutting, pasting activities).

Language Arts – We’ll be doing lots of reading, narration, copy work, poetry memorization, etc. as part of our BYL curriculum. I’m also using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Level 2 for Miss and Level 1 for Lass, as well as possibly including some of CHC’s Language of God for Little Folks. We’re using All About Spelling and My Catholic Speller Level A for Miss and My Very First Catholic Speller for Lass from CHC for spelling.

Religion – We use the Faith and Life Series from CHC for Miss and Lass. I added some books for Miss since she will be receiving her First Holy Communion this year.

If you click the images above it will take you to an Amazon page where you can read more and/or purchase the books (They aren’t affiliate links, I’m just trying to make your life easier).

Handwriting – Most of Miss’s handwriting practice will be copy work, either from BYL or from the Catholic Heritage Handwriting Series Level 2. She has expressed an interest in learning to write in cursive, so I’ll start having her do that a little later in the year as well. Lass has CHHS Level 1 for handwriting, and Sis has an old Seton handwriting book that I never ended up having Miss do.

Morning Time – Our morning time will start with singing a hymn, prayer, the Pledge, calendar, and then read alouds (like science, art study, and literature; we’ll mostly listen to Story of the World in the car). This year I’m also going to include nature study, SQUILT music appreciation, some easy art projects, the Bedtime Math app, and the occasional poetry tea time. I’ll alternate these activities throughout the week. I got awesome ideas from the podcast Your Morning Basket for making morning time more rich and more fun for all of us.

There are a few more odds and ends here and there, things I hold onto to add in and change things up a bit from time to time, but that’s the gist of it.

I love this time of year. We have new notebooks and pens and binders. I’ve stocked up on lots of new art supplies. I’ve reread Teaching From Rest. I even got some brand new PlayDoh. We’re basking in the last few weeks of summer, and I’m looking forward to the excitement of our new year.

A Homeschool Day in the Life

Posted on March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 by Amy

A few bloggers I enjoy reading (like Ana and Micaela) have recently participated in the Homeschool Day in the Life link up at Jamie’s Simple Homeschool blog. I love reading these kinds of posts, and they’re kind of fun to write too, so here’s my contribution with how our day ran yesterday, a pretty typical Monday:

6:45 – I wake up and get (decaffeinated) coffee. Proceed to office. Pray the rosary and do my Lenten reading : Rediscover Jesus by Matthew Kelly and the little black book for Lent from our parish (usually I read the Mass readings and daily devotions from Blessed is She, but this morning I got distracted before making it to these).

8:00 – Go upstairs to wake up all three of my kids. Usually at least one of them is up already, but not today (this is why I like springing forward better than falling back).

8:10-ish – Breakfast is on the table.

8:40-ish – The girls have finished eating and they go upstairs to get ready for the day. This consists of getting dressed, making their beds, cleaning their rooms, and brushing their teeth and hair.

8:50 – I have put away the cereal and I go up to hustle the girls into finishing and getting down to the school room. At this point Sis still doesn’t have a shirt on, but the older girls are done with everything except brushing teeth. I grab a shirt for Sis, and put pony tails in hers and Lass’s hair (Miss brushes her own). Lass helps Sis to make her bed, and I think we just might get the day started “on time” as I change my clothes, brush my own hair, and brush my teeth.

9:04 – Everyone is in the school room and ready to go around our old dining room table. We try to start at 9:00 every day, so I’m calling this close enough. We do our morning prayers, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and talk about the date and the weather a bit.

9:10-ish – We start our work together at the table. I don’t really have a name for this part of our day, though the girls usually call it our “reading,” and it might be like what some people call “circle time.” We do all of our read-alouds from our curriculum (Sonlight plus some Catholic add-ons, plus a late addition of Five in a Row). This usually contains some elements of religion, history/social studies, poetry, and science, with our FIAR book and activities added at the end. This week’s new FIAR book is They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson, and I love it!

10:00 – At this point I’d usually send the girls downstairs for some running and “recess,” but we don’t do this on Mondays because we have to be done more quickly to get lunch in before piano lessons. So I go ahead and send the girls to their desks for their independent work.

Each girl has a desk and a rolling cart with drawers. I think some people call this a “workbox” setup. Each drawer for each girl has an assignment in it that needs to be completed that day. As each element is finished, the girls return their completed work to the drawer it came from and move down to the next.

They have a mixture of things they can do on their own and things they need my help with. I try to stagger the items in their drawers so they don’t all need my help at the same time. This sometimes works, and sometimes fails miserably with me saying repeatedly, “I’ll be with you in a minute,” or “Please be patient,” or “Go on to the next thing in your drawer until I can help you.”

Mondays are a little light, and Miss, in first grade, has science questions, a math workbook, spelling words to copy, a handwriting/copywork exercise, a word list and some stories to do in her reader, a piano theory test, and piano practice in her drawers today (I always include their piano practice in our school day, or it will never get done). Lass in kindergarten has a Star Wars math workbook, handwriting, exercises from Learning Success, some addition and subtraction, some worksheets with word family/spelling practice on them, and piano practice. Lass has her pre reading curriculum, which includes some cutting and pasting, some prewriting tracing, and coloring.

10:05 – Sis gets my attention first with her All About Reading Pre-Reading curriculum work. She is nearly finished with this entire program (only Y and Z in the last section are left). As I’m sitting down with her to do Letter X, Lass starts complaining that she doesn’t know how to do her math workbook. I tell her what to do (counting sets of Star Wars characters from 11-20 and drawing a line from each set to the correct number). She starts wailing that she doesn’t remember those numbers. I tell her that’s why she’s doing the exercise, for practice, and help her demonstrate that she does in fact know these numbers better than she thinks. She wails some more, and then I snap at her to quit complaining and get to work. After a few minutes, she begins complaining loudly again, so I keep my cool a little better this time and send her to sit on the bottom step outside the school room until she can get herself in a better frame of mind and do her work without disrupting everyone. I manage to do this without freaking out, and she complies in kind, which feels like a small victory. I proceed with Sis and Lass sits out for about 2-3 minutes before returning to do her work without further complaint.

10:15 – After I finish with Sis, there is a period where no one needs my help, so I go to our book stack and my curriculum binder and get the books ready that we will need for tomorrow. I give direction as needed for the next 45 minutes or so.

10:30 – In between periods of helping the girls, I go to start lunch. We eat early on Mondays, so I’m getting some crescent-roll-wrapped hot dogs ready to put in the oven.

10:45 – Lunch is in the oven.

10:55 – Sis and Miss are done with their drawers. Lass is complaining that she is the last one done. I remind her that her negative attitude at the beginning of the morning and her messing around with her little sister at other times is the reason that she is not done. I let her know that we will be having lunch when the baking timer goes off and that whatever she hasn’t finished will need to be done when we get home from our afternoon classes.

11:00-ish – The timer goes off. The girls start lunch while I read our book study book to them. This month our homeschool group is doing Redwall.

11:20 – I start telling the girls to hustle up so we can leave for piano. I hate this about Mondays, that I have to rush their lunch a bit.

11:30 – I’m rushing everyone into socks, shoes, and jackets, filling up water bottles, and gathering piano binders so we can go.

11:39 – We’re pulling out of the driveway on our way to piano, with just barely enough time to get there on time.

12:00 – Piano lessons start. Lass goes in with the teacher first, while I let Sis and Miss play on iPads and I read my book The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, by Fr. Michael Gaitley. I also take the time to read my BIS email with the day’s Mass readings and commentary.

12:30-ish – Lass comes out and Miss goes in for her lesson. I get lots of instructions from the piano teacher about Miss’s “audition” this weekend for the Wisconsin Music Teacher’s Association. She’s not actually auditioning for anything, but will be playing some pieces in front of a judge and taking a written music test to accumulate points. Her teacher makes sure I know where to go and what to do because this is Miss’s first time participating.

1:15 – Miss comes out of her lesson and her teacher gives more instructions about what she needs to practice for the week to be ready for her audition. We leave piano and head to the YMCA for the girls’ homeschool gym class.

1:25 – I drop off the two older girls for gym and take Sis to Target for a few things.

2:00 – Still happily wandering around Target.

2:25 – I’m back at the Y to pick up the older girls, and we head home.

2:45 – I set Miss and Sis free to go play, while Lass goes to the school room to finish the work she didn’t complete for the morning. It only takes her a few minutes, and then she’s off to play with her sisters. I avoid doing anything productive, and instead spend about an hour and a half messing around on the computer and starting to type this post.

4:30-ish – My husband comes home and goes downstairs to play with the girls. He likes to do more gym class with them in the afternoons before dinner.

5:30 – We sit down to dinner. The girls animatedly tell my husband about the book we’re reading, Redwall.

6:00 – Our babysitter comes so my husband and I can go to our RCIA meeting (we are both sponsors this year).

8:15 – I come home (my husband got called to work). My babysitter tells me that the girls requested early/extra reading time before bed, and they read three more chapters of Redwall. I pay her, clean the kitchen from dinner, and go into the school room to get the girls’ drawers set up for the next day.

9:00 – My husband comes home and we talk and talk about some new things that happened at RCIA.

11:00 – I go to bed.

So there you go. That’s a pretty typical Monday around here. Our other days are pretty similar except we do a little more work. I usually will have All About Reading for the older girls (Miss is in Level 3 and Lass is in Level 2), and they have more recess time to break up the morning. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I sometimes add in an art lesson or a craft. Fridays we usually do less work in the school room and more other stuff, like chores or field trips. That’s it!

Head over to the link up if you want to read others’ “Day in the Life” posts.