A day in the life

This is a day-in-the-life of our homeschool.  This is just one day – not every day looks like this, of course.  The beauty of life.  Izzy (7) is a second grader, Addy (5) is technically a kindergartner, and Paige is almost one!

I eat breakfast before the girls this morning.  I’m trying to make this a habit:  get up around 6:30 when Jared’s alarm goes off, dress, brush teeth, wash face, get coffee, get Paige and nurse her because this is when she’s been getting up lately, put her back down because she’s still sleepy, read a little, eat breakfast and read a little more, wake the big girls up around 7:45 if they’re not up already (they haven’t been).

The big girls sit down to breakfast around ten after 8:00, after they change clothes and make beds, and we pray before they eat.  We talk, then I read from The Jesus Storybook Bible.  Today’s story is about the Pharisees praying out loud for everyone to hear, and showing off, when really they are hollow inside.  Then Jesus teaches the people how to pray, i.e. The Lord’s Prayer.  Which is good because we memorized that last school year and needed to review it.  We then discussed the “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” part and talked a little about our need for forgiveness every day.  And how no one is perfect and we mess up a lot.  And Izzy said, “Like Pinocchio!” 

I then read Psalm 150 twice which we are currently memorizing.

I read a poem by Walter De La Mare, our term’s poet.

The girls were done eating so we cleared the table, they got coloring books and I read for 10 minutes or so of “King Lear” from Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.  We can never read huge chunks of this – I read a couple of paragraphs then we rolled the dice to see who would narrate.  I was evens, Izzy odds.  We rolled an even the first two times, so after the third reading I told Izzy it was her turn.  Incidentally, the beginning of “King Lear” introduces the king’s two older daughters as shallow and hollow people, but unfortunately neither of the girls made that connection with our Bible story.  I guess I could have asked the question, “How does this compare with what we read earlier about the Pharisees?” but I just now thought of that.  Poo.

At some point Paige woke up so I brought her into the kitchen and she had her breakfast and hung out with us in her high chair.

I pulled up our current hymn on youtube, “Come Thou Fount” (which I loooooove), and we listened/sang/danced to it.  The big girls put their coloring books away and got out materials for writing.  Izzy did copywork from the story “The Minotaur” from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: “He put his whole brave heart into the effort.”  She completed, as neatly as possible, the first three words, which took about 10 minutes.  Of course, she had to redo a few letters.  Addy wanted me to write “cute bunny” for her to trace.  Then she wanted me to add “lives by our house.”  (We found some baby bunnies close to our house the other day.)

Addy then left to go brush her teeth and hair and feed the dogs while Izzy and I did math.  I am really liking Frank Hall’s Arithmetic Primer so far.  Apparently so is Izzy.  When I asked her at lunch today what she had enjoyed about her day so far, she mentioned math as one of the things.  (Or maybe she’s like her mommy in that regard :) )

We finished math and Addy finally finished feeding the dogs after yelling at the squirrels I don’t know how many times for eating from the bird feeders.  I threw dinner in the crock pot (French dip sandwiches – yum!), Addy helped, Izzy brushed her teeth and hair (not really her hair, she likes to pretend she tries to brush it).  Paige is down from her high chair and crawling who knows where. :)

I cut up a cantaloupe and we take the rinds outside, a few lots down, to the aforesaid baby bunnies.  There are three of them in a hole in the middle of a vacant lot.  Izzy and I went to the store the other night and on the way home I spotted a rabbit in that lot.  When we pulled into the driveway, Izzy got out and walked over towards the rabbit, very slowly, and spotted the babies.  She ran back, we got Addy, they put on rain boots (because it was a little rainy) and we all trekked back over.  The mama had hopped off a little ways but kept her eye on us.

The girls drop the cantaloupe rinds all over and stare at the bunnies and Addy says over and over again that she wants to hold one and we watch a butterfly land on the stroller and then on Paige’s head twice.  (Of course my camera wouldn’t focus for that picture.)

The hole is to the right of the big piece of cantaloupe rind.

Paige is curious.

Back at the house, I have Addy pick a book (she picks a Curious George story) and we three sit on the couch and read.  Paige plays in the floor.  I then read a few pages of “The Minotaur” from Tanglewood Tales to Izzy and she narrates.  Addy leaves to go play with the globe.  Halfway through my reading to Izzy, Paige gets fussy so I nurse her and finish reading.  We then move back to the table because Addy wants to paint.  Izzy and I do a reading lesson, with regular commentary from Addy (she’s good at creating sentences with the words Izzy is learning to read).  Izzy doesn’t end up actually reading any sentences today because all we manage to do is learn about eight new words in our allotted time (15-20 minutes).  I don’t want to go too long and risk Izzy becoming bored.  Short lessons = eagerness to learn (hopefully).  So far so good.

We’re I’m hungry by now (it’s around 11:15 or so), so we break to fix lunch and the girls play.  I eat and start laundry and try to clean up the kitchen some.  The girls sit down around noon to eat.  I alternate cutting up small pieces of cantaloupe and smashing them for Paige (as she only has a limited amount of teeth to work with) and reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Due to Paige shoveling down her food and my effort to keep up, general conversation, and Paige’s loud cries of commentary, i.e. baby shouts, we only manage to get through half of a chapter. 

We clean up the kitchen, I mess with the laundry, and make Izzy and Addy go outside in the back yard.  They have been resistant to this idea all summer because it’s been so hot.  But the weather is cool this week – low to mid 80s, and they need it.  I nurse Paige, she goes to sleep, I read a little and pick up a little.

The big girls keep wanting to come in but I tell them a few more minutes.  “But you already said that.”  I know.  But because of my insistence that you stay out, you end up constructing an apparatus to transport toys back and forth to each other with a bucket.  See?  It’s good for you. 

I finally let them come in around 2:00 and they play for 15 more minutes before we have our daily rest/quiet time.  Izzy gets some books to look at, I get a book (the first book in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy), and Addy has to go lay down with nothing, poor thing.  It would do her good to nap and I’m trying my best to convince her of this, but she isn’t buying.  Izzy lays on my bed and I read a Curious George story to her because “Addy got to pick one this morning and I didn’t.”  Then I lay on the couch and Addy gets up to tell me something every ten minutes.  Addy finally lays on her bed without getting up for about 15 minutes before Paige is up, and then we’re all up.

It’s time to check on the bunnies again.  While we’re watching the bunnies I think of a podcast I listened to last week about how observation skills need to be taught and wonder cultivated.  So I ask the girls if they have any questions about the bunnies.  Is there anything they’re wondering about?  Addy has lots of questions, but Izzy not as much.  Maybe it’s her age – I have to really coax her to slow down and think a minute.  Or it could be her personality – she’s an on-the-go person.  She finally comes up with “Do they ever come out of their hole?”  Good question.  I wonder why the mommy didn’t put them in a hole under the big tree 10 feet away with overgrown bushes all around it, and “Do the babies rotate positions in the hole?  Because one has his bottom facing the opening and I bet it wants to switch places eventually.”  Addy comes up with “Why do they have a white spot on their foreheads?” and “How long are their legs?” and “When will the mama come back?” and “Where is the mama?” and “Can they hop?” and “When were they born?” which leads to “I wonder how the babies come out of their mommy’s belly?”  She’s still asking these questions as we walk back to the house, and saying over and over again how she’s soooo glad and thankful we have bunnies to watch over.  And then she concludes that maybe the mommy will let us have one of the bunnies, or two of them, or maybe all three because she’ll just have more anyway.  I laugh the whole time.

When we get back to the house we park in the shade and eat popsicles.  Paige also tries to eat a marigold.

I write down our bunny questions so we don’t forget and the girls play outside a little before we go back in.  And, Paige stands up on her feet for the first time ever!

That’s pretty much our day.  The rest of it is normal hanging out and playing and doing some chores and dancing to folk songs and getting dinner ready and Daddy coming home and eating dinner and checking on the bunnies one more time and getting ready for bed.  Oh, and I just want to be clear that there was some fussing and some “That’s not how we treat other” talks and some “Obedience means do it right now with a good attitude” sermons as well.

Ahhh, I’m pooped.  But in a good way.  And so very thankful to be able to spend this time nurturing, discipling, teaching, and learning with these precious kiddos.  And thankful for God’s grace EVERYDAY.  He knows I need it.