Wednesday, September 1, 2010

A day in the life of our homeschool

So, here goes... a day in our homeschool. I would say "typical" day, but there is never a typical day, because we switch things up, go to co-op classes, enrichment activities, field trips, and meet with homeschool groups. We have a field trip coming up soon to go to... a COOKIE FACTORY! We are super excited about that, as we will get to sample their moravian cookies and see how they are made. We are going on one to the transportation museum, plus we are going to the Alamance Battleground one day in October to get a very Colonial Williamsburg type experience- meeting blacksmiths, schoolteachers, spinners, and more. We will even see a cannon fired! Aidan is thrilled about that.

First off, here is what our homeschool area looks like. It is a section of the playroom. The picture on the left shows you that there is a bookcase full of books(this is 1 of the 2 we have upstairs), a Thomas chair the boys sit on to look at books, the plastic bins with craft supplies and math manipulatives, a map of the U.S., a dry erase board (which we use every single day for most subjects!). On the picture on the right, you see 2 desks. The smaller one is for our 3 1/2 year old, Preston. The larger is for Aidan, our 6 1/2 year old. We have a multiplication chart, 100 number chart, chore chart, calendar, and weather chart.



Now, here is how our day went today.


I first woke Aidan up...who happened to be camping out in his tent in the playroom. Life is good. :)


Somewhere around 7:15
We started with an art project, and then went on to math. We use Saxon 2, which is manipulative heavy. The lesson today was on drawing pictures to represent addition and subtraction problems, plus reviewing calendar work, graph work, addition, and basic fractions.





After our normal lesson (which takes between 30 to 45 minutes), he got to play around with tangrams/pattern blocks.


Around this time, Preston woke up and was ready to learn! He may be 3 1/2, but he tells everyone he is homeschooled. He loves reading, math, pretty much everything. Here he is, reading from an easy reader.




After breakfast, it was time for history. This is Aidan's favorite subject. We use Story of the World and we are currently studying ancient times-middle ages. We had an encyclopedia reading today and we read a book set in the time period of ancient India, entitled The King's Chessboard. Aidan also went back to last week's work to finish a project from the Byzantine empire.





Aidan then did some reading from two of our Abeka readers, his Handbook for Reading book, as well as his seat work for Language 1 and Letters and Sounds 1.



After a snack, we needed a break... so we headed to the Burlington area to Joe Davidson park for playground fun and a nature walk.







The boys loved hiking through the woods and discovering different trees, rocks, mushrooms, and even a little stream of water. After a nice walk through the woods, we found a bench to sit on and eat our picnic lunch. The boys were very tired when we were through and ready to go home. We ran into another homeschooling family there, learning about the phases of the moon. The woman, who will teach Aidan's geography co-op course, had the same idea as I did- to do some learning outside.










We went back home and it was time to read! I read the boys a book about too many toys, and Aidan read a Henry and Mudge book. Aidan also used Explode the Code online.

This usually takes place in my bed. :)



When all of the subjects were completed, we headed down to the .....

POOL!!!


So, that is one day in our lives. Every single day is different. Some more stressful, some more exciting, but each a blessing.