How we do it: Monday
I thought it would be entertaining to show you all how we conduct our homeschool days and how I squeeze in household chores, so each day this week, I am going to have a post on how we do things around here.
Here are the things we are currently using
We are starting Rasing Rock Stars Preschool from 1+1+1=1 this week. Monkey already knows most of what it covers, but I thought it would be nice to review things before we start our kindergarten curriculum. I really like how this is put together, each week you focus on a bible verse, bible application, letter, number, color, sight word, and song.
For reading, we are using You Can Read! from 1+1+1=1. Monkey has been begging to learn how to read, so I thought we would pick up the pace a bit and back off whenever he needs extra time on something. We also have borrowed Bob books, which seem ridiculously simple, but that's just what kids enjoy, Monkey adores the characters and likes how he can read with me. I purchased kindergarten Hooked on Phonics from a thrift store awhile back and we are using the books only from that (I really didn't care for any of the other resources). For our hands-on portion of learning how to read, we have homemade Montessori sandpaper letters, and Leapfrog phonics magnet and word builders (both of which don't always say the correct phonetic sound, so sometimes I have to say it at the same time and a little louder than the toy so he hears the proper sound). We occasionally use Starfall, which is a great resource for learning phonetic sounds and blends. And of course, we read, read, read!
For math, we use everyday learning, such as counting everything around us, and baking. I use printables from various homeschool websites and we turn them into hands on manipulatives. We also have various education thrift store finds in Monkey's workboxes, and I search Pinterest for activities for us to do.
Monkey has various workboxes to work on that cover different subjects, and I have a weekly "choose it" activity board on Pinterest for him to choose from.
So now you know the what, here's the how
Mornings are an adventure. I gave up trying to do any kind of school time in the morning a looong time ago! Froggy has been waking up early and, even though he is very tired, won't go back to sleep until around 11AM. Monkey wakes up earlier than his norm as a result and is cranky because he is still tired. We are working on this, but training an early bird (or frog in this case) to sleep in an extra hour or two isn't easy.
7 AM-Playtime is first on the kid's agenda, and I do any laundry that I left in the basket to fold in the morning. After morning chores, I make breakfast for everyone and sit down and eat. Monkey will eat half of his breakfast and pick on the rest for an hour or two.
9AM-Playtime continues, I wash dishes and start a load of laundry. I also use their playtime to do any reading I want to do or school planning I didn't finish the night before.
11:20AM-By this time, Froggy is running low on energy and decides that a nap would be nice, so I get him to nap. Monkey usually goes crazy during this period, because he too is tired but no longer takes a morning nap. He wants to play with his brother, but brother needs to sleep, since an almost four year old doesn't understand this concept, he tries to wake his brother up the entire time he naps. I try to get Monkey to have quiet time at this time until Froggy wakes up. It kinda worked, he ended up watching an episode of Top Gear with my hubbie.
I've tried having schooltime while Froggy sleeps, but he wakes up every time.
12:20PM-When Froggy wakes up, it's time for lunch. I do some dishes, prepare lunch, and we all eat.
1PM- Argue with Monkey about eating his honey and peanut butter sandwich. Give up and give it to Froggy.
1:12PM-the boys start playing nicely together again...I'm going to let them play a little while longer so I can finish some chores.
1:20PM-Monkey finally is eating his second sandwich!
1:30PM-After lunch we start our official school day with Calendar time and our Daily board. This is usually about fifteen minutes.
1:45PM-Now it's time for RRSP, we do our activities for the day and any workboxes Monkey chooses.
2:30PM- You Choose It time, Monkey chose to go to the Cookie game site and we did the learning numbers math game, transports science game, and the wild animals game. The games, on average took around ten minutes each.
3PM- Boys started to fight, Froggy pacified himself by nursing, Monkey played with a Noah's ark toy.
3:10PM- Monkey chose another activity from his You Choose It board, but it was something I haven't prepped yet, so he helped me prepare the colors activity.
3:20PM- Monkey wanted to do more art, so he finger painted the candle craft for this week's Raising Rock Stars craft. I had two really cute videos that I had recorded that didn't get saved because my phone stopped working twice today (ironically both times coincided with power outages at our house, although I'm sure the two instances don't correlate, still, I'm upset because they were really cute).
3:38PM- the boys decided it would be fun to have a yelling contest. They do this often, and although it sounds terrible, I actually think it's hilarious, and besides, they're getting along while they do it, so that's always a good thing.
3:40PM- Reading time, which proved to be difficult with Froggy's constant interruptions and Monkey getting distracted because of his brother. We ended up reading two books before I called it quits. Honestly, there is only so loud I will allow myself to read a book before I give up being able to be heard over Froggy.
4PM- Snack time
4:24PM- Some quiet play time
5PM- Froggy nap take two.
5:30PM- Hubbie home, Froggy awake, Monkey wound up.
6PM- Hubbie leaves to go mountain biking, Monkey and me start dinner.
6:30PM- Monkey gets out of hand wrestling with Froggy, I put Monkey down for a nap. I know it's late. I had tried nap time earlier in the day with him and it failed and had planned on an early bed time, but that wasn't going to happen with how he was acting. It should be an interesting night.
7PM- Froggy is cranky, which makes sense since he woke up after a very short nap.
11:40PM- Monkey goes back to bed. I'm missing the days when he woke up at 9:30AM, took a nap at 11AM or 3PM, and went to bed at 9PM. Having a baby has messed up his time clock, especially when that baby wakes up early and keeps Monkey awake during the day.
12:30AM- I gave up on trying to finish laundry, Froggy fell asleep on me, so housework will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Hubbie put the food up for me, now I'm just finishing up this post, which is taking forever since everything keeps messing up.
As you will see throughout the week, our schedule is different every day. We don't follow any set schedule, we just go with the flow. Right now things are more relaxed than usual, since our normal weekly activities are on hold for the summer. Also, the times aren't all completely accurate, just estimates to give you a general idea of how things go around here.
There you have it, day one of my peek into our homeschool. Tomorrow will hopefully be less chaotic than today, it figures that the kids would fight a lot when I'm wanting to document the day. Ah, boys.
I'll also include a separate post to show you what we do for our Calendar time and Daily board, and a tour of our classroom and art area.
Here are the things we are currently using
We are starting Rasing Rock Stars Preschool from 1+1+1=1 this week. Monkey already knows most of what it covers, but I thought it would be nice to review things before we start our kindergarten curriculum. I really like how this is put together, each week you focus on a bible verse, bible application, letter, number, color, sight word, and song.
For reading, we are using You Can Read! from 1+1+1=1. Monkey has been begging to learn how to read, so I thought we would pick up the pace a bit and back off whenever he needs extra time on something. We also have borrowed Bob books, which seem ridiculously simple, but that's just what kids enjoy, Monkey adores the characters and likes how he can read with me. I purchased kindergarten Hooked on Phonics from a thrift store awhile back and we are using the books only from that (I really didn't care for any of the other resources). For our hands-on portion of learning how to read, we have homemade Montessori sandpaper letters, and Leapfrog phonics magnet and word builders (both of which don't always say the correct phonetic sound, so sometimes I have to say it at the same time and a little louder than the toy so he hears the proper sound). We occasionally use Starfall, which is a great resource for learning phonetic sounds and blends. And of course, we read, read, read!
For math, we use everyday learning, such as counting everything around us, and baking. I use printables from various homeschool websites and we turn them into hands on manipulatives. We also have various education thrift store finds in Monkey's workboxes, and I search Pinterest for activities for us to do.
Monkey has various workboxes to work on that cover different subjects, and I have a weekly "choose it" activity board on Pinterest for him to choose from.
So now you know the what, here's the how
Mornings are an adventure. I gave up trying to do any kind of school time in the morning a looong time ago! Froggy has been waking up early and, even though he is very tired, won't go back to sleep until around 11AM. Monkey wakes up earlier than his norm as a result and is cranky because he is still tired. We are working on this, but training an early bird (or frog in this case) to sleep in an extra hour or two isn't easy.
7 AM-Playtime is first on the kid's agenda, and I do any laundry that I left in the basket to fold in the morning. After morning chores, I make breakfast for everyone and sit down and eat. Monkey will eat half of his breakfast and pick on the rest for an hour or two.
9AM-Playtime continues, I wash dishes and start a load of laundry. I also use their playtime to do any reading I want to do or school planning I didn't finish the night before.
11:20AM-By this time, Froggy is running low on energy and decides that a nap would be nice, so I get him to nap. Monkey usually goes crazy during this period, because he too is tired but no longer takes a morning nap. He wants to play with his brother, but brother needs to sleep, since an almost four year old doesn't understand this concept, he tries to wake his brother up the entire time he naps. I try to get Monkey to have quiet time at this time until Froggy wakes up. It kinda worked, he ended up watching an episode of Top Gear with my hubbie.
I've tried having schooltime while Froggy sleeps, but he wakes up every time.
12:20PM-When Froggy wakes up, it's time for lunch. I do some dishes, prepare lunch, and we all eat.
1PM- Argue with Monkey about eating his honey and peanut butter sandwich. Give up and give it to Froggy.
1:12PM-the boys start playing nicely together again...I'm going to let them play a little while longer so I can finish some chores.
1:20PM-Monkey finally is eating his second sandwich!
1:30PM-After lunch we start our official school day with Calendar time and our Daily board. This is usually about fifteen minutes.
1:45PM-Now it's time for RRSP, we do our activities for the day and any workboxes Monkey chooses.
2:30PM- You Choose It time, Monkey chose to go to the Cookie game site and we did the learning numbers math game, transports science game, and the wild animals game. The games, on average took around ten minutes each.
3PM- Boys started to fight, Froggy pacified himself by nursing, Monkey played with a Noah's ark toy.
3:10PM- Monkey chose another activity from his You Choose It board, but it was something I haven't prepped yet, so he helped me prepare the colors activity.
3:20PM- Monkey wanted to do more art, so he finger painted the candle craft for this week's Raising Rock Stars craft. I had two really cute videos that I had recorded that didn't get saved because my phone stopped working twice today (ironically both times coincided with power outages at our house, although I'm sure the two instances don't correlate, still, I'm upset because they were really cute).
3:38PM- the boys decided it would be fun to have a yelling contest. They do this often, and although it sounds terrible, I actually think it's hilarious, and besides, they're getting along while they do it, so that's always a good thing.
3:40PM- Reading time, which proved to be difficult with Froggy's constant interruptions and Monkey getting distracted because of his brother. We ended up reading two books before I called it quits. Honestly, there is only so loud I will allow myself to read a book before I give up being able to be heard over Froggy.
4PM- Snack time
4:24PM- Some quiet play time
5PM- Froggy nap take two.
5:30PM- Hubbie home, Froggy awake, Monkey wound up.
6PM- Hubbie leaves to go mountain biking, Monkey and me start dinner.
6:30PM- Monkey gets out of hand wrestling with Froggy, I put Monkey down for a nap. I know it's late. I had tried nap time earlier in the day with him and it failed and had planned on an early bed time, but that wasn't going to happen with how he was acting. It should be an interesting night.
7PM- Froggy is cranky, which makes sense since he woke up after a very short nap.
7:30PM-Froggy is asleep!
8:20PM- Hubbie comes home, dinner is ready, Froggy wakes up
10PM- Monkey wakes up (he had an accident), change sheets, bath
10:56PM- I just realized I have laundry to finish on the bed (I put it there to encourage myself to finish it and not go to sleep without doing it), dishes to wash in the sink, and food to put up. Crap.
11:40PM- Monkey goes back to bed. I'm missing the days when he woke up at 9:30AM, took a nap at 11AM or 3PM, and went to bed at 9PM. Having a baby has messed up his time clock, especially when that baby wakes up early and keeps Monkey awake during the day.
12:30AM- I gave up on trying to finish laundry, Froggy fell asleep on me, so housework will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Hubbie put the food up for me, now I'm just finishing up this post, which is taking forever since everything keeps messing up.
As you will see throughout the week, our schedule is different every day. We don't follow any set schedule, we just go with the flow. Right now things are more relaxed than usual, since our normal weekly activities are on hold for the summer. Also, the times aren't all completely accurate, just estimates to give you a general idea of how things go around here.
There you have it, day one of my peek into our homeschool. Tomorrow will hopefully be less chaotic than today, it figures that the kids would fight a lot when I'm wanting to document the day. Ah, boys.
I'll also include a separate post to show you what we do for our Calendar time and Daily board, and a tour of our classroom and art area.
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