A Day in the Life of a Homeschooling Family

My alarmed blared at 6:30am just as my kids came into the bedroom. Samuel had probably been awake since 5:45am when Brian left for work, and Ruthie still looked slightly sleepy. She sucked on her two fingers and pulled gently on her wispy blonde hair.

“Can we have a snack?” asked Samuel. I sleepily rolled over and looked into his brown eyes.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’ll get up and get ready and then make breakfast.”

“Mommy?” asked Ruthie. “Can I have a snack?”

“Not yet, girly,” I said. “We’ll have breakfast soon.”

“Okay,” Ruthie said. She and Samuel shuffled off to play with their stuffed animals. I slid out of bed, picked out a pair of skinny jeans and a soft shirt, got dressed, and then hurried into the bathroom to wash my face, pick through my hair, and put on some moisturizer. My frizzy hair still looked frizzy and my eyes still looked tired, but the only students I would see that day had already paid me an early-morning visit.

After the kids and I ate our fruit and granola, we followed the rest of our morning routine: treats, vitamins, brush teeth, coffee. We headed downstairs to our little homeschool room around 8:30am. I cranked open one of the basement windows to let in the cool morning air. The sun filtered through the shrubs and lilies that make their home in the rocks outside the window. What a bright fall morning!

I walked over to the bookshelf and ran my finger along the smooth spines of the books until I came to our copy of The Children’s Bible in 365 Stories. The kids and I snuggled onto the big chair in the basement and said one of our morning prayers. Then we learned more about the life of King Solomon, a wise but unsteady king at the end of his reign.

“Mom,” Samuel asked, “can we do another reading subject?”

“Sure,” I said. I pulled myself out of the pile of blankets hiding my two children and walked over to the bookshelf.

“How about geography?” I said.

“Is that the one where we read about Paddle?”

“Yes, and we’ll do our map work, too.”

“Okay, yeah, let’s do that,” Samuel said. I walked back over to the mass of blankets and pillows on the chair and snuggled in next to Samuel. Ruthie laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. I read Chapter 13 of Paddle-to-the-Sea. After that we somehow found the determination to emerge from the cozy pile and studied the layout of the Great Lakes. We mapped Paddle’s journey around Lake Superior and then reviewed the names of the Great Lakes and the waterways leading to the Atlantic.

After geography we practiced copywork and reading. I cried during our science lesson from James Herriot’s Treasury For Children. Thank goodness Blossom found her way safely home to Farmer Dakin! Next we took a quick mental break. The kids and I pretended to hop like frogs, hop like bunnies, and then run like cheetahs from the map on one side of the basement to the chalkboard on the other side. We finished the first half of our morning with math and a picture study.

The kids requested a snack around 10:30am. Samuel gathered whatever toys he had brought downstairs to tinker with in between subjects and Ruthie looked up at me with sweet eyes and said, “Mama, will you hold me?” Yes, of course. Mama will hold you.

We trudged up the stairs: me with Ruthie and coffee in hand, and Samuel flying his X-wing. Shortly thereafter, emails checked, laundry started, and snacks eaten, we found ourselves trudging back downstairs to finish up our school day.

Samuel’s Y-Wing zoomed down the stairs and attacked the mini-figure Darth Vader and Tie-Fighter waiting on the table, right where he had left them before snack time. They never saw the attack coming. Darth Vader barely had enough time to jump out of the way. The Y-Wing pilot smirked and blasted Darth Vader’s Tie-Fighter into plastic bits. Suddenly a voice cried loud and clear from somewhere above the fray: “Samuel, it’s time for poetry! Put the ships away or I’ll take them!” Darth Vader promptly fixed his Tie-Fighter and jumped inside and the Y-Wing found a safe place to land.

“Let’s review our memory poem first,” the voice said. We recited the last stanza of “Forgotten” by A.A. Milne and then I read aloud a couple more poems from When We Were Very Young. We practiced our call and response Spanish lesson next. For every English word I said, the kids responded with the same word en Espanol. We practiced hello and goodbye and counted numbers one through five. Samuel started giggling uncontrollably at how silly Ruthie pronounced ‘uno,’ so we quickly moved on to literature. We read A Kiss for Little Bear–what better way to end a book and our school day than a sweet little woodland wedding between two skunks?

“Lunchtime!” I said to the kids in my best sing-song voice. We ate shells and cheese, cucumbers, and sliced apples. Outside the birds chirped as they gathered seeds from the feeder. We watched nuthatches climb up and down the branches of the lilac bush and nimble chickadees zip between leaves. Samuel told me all about what he planned to build during his quiet playtime that afternoon.

Soon Ruthie took a nap, Samuel built his latest creation, and I rested and read The Hobbit. After our busy morning of school, snacks, giggles, and chalk, I felt ready to enjoy something all my own.

Bilbo might have spoken with a dangerous dragon, but I taught school at home today. My two unruly yet lovable students make every day its own adventure. I love them to The Lonely Mountain and back.