I’ve decided to start a new series here on the blog called “A Peek Inside Our Homeschool,” and today I’m going to begin with our daily schedule. I always love getting glimpses into other people’s homeschools. Obviously, no two will ever look the same, even if they share methods and philosophies. But I think it can be really helpful to see how other people are doing things to give you ideas for your own homeschool.
I first shared our daily schedule a couple of years ago, but much has changed since then. The biggest change is that we’re fully Charlotte Mason homeschoolers now. But also, my oldest is now in Form 1A (2nd/3rd grade), my middle is in Kindergarten, and my toddler is starting to show interest in sitting at the table with “guys” (as she calls her big brothers) and doing her own version of school.
A PEEK INSIDE OUR HOMESCHOOL: OUR DAILY SCHEDULE
MY MORNING QUIET TIME
So one thing I’ve never been good at (until I began training my own will) was getting up before the kids to exercise and have my own quiet time. I started doing this every single day — even weekends — just a few months ago. And it has been an absolute game changer!
I don’t exercise every day, but I do get up at 6:00 and spend a full hour and a half either exercising and having quiet time, or having quiet time and getting in some mother culture reading. I have NEVER been a morning person, but I’ve come to really cherish my mornings alone. I love getting up when the house is still quiet and dark (now that it’s winter), getting myself ready for the day, and sitting down with my coffee and my Bible. It gives me a chance to wake up, mentally and spiritually prepare myself for the day ahead, and just take a deep breath before the kids literally jump out of bed and hit the ground running.
“MORNING FOUR”
I recently heard this in a Charlotte Mason training. The mom talked about visiting a friend whose family did this “bedtime four” thing. She explained what it was, and I thought it was brilliant. I’m all about routines, and especially because we’re in the thick of habit training, I wanted something easy that we could all learn and remember. Enter the “morning four.”
While I get Little Miss changed for the day and start on breakfast, the boys know to 1) get up, 2) get dressed, 3) make their beds, and 4) brush their teeth. They still need occasional reminders, but for the most part, they do this on their own now and it has completely eliminated any power struggles or dawdling we used to have over what they needed to do in the mornings to get ready for the day.
BREAKFAST & WORLD WATCH NEWS
Right about the time they’re done with their morning four, I’m finished making breakfast. One of the boys helps me carry plates/bowls to the dining room while the other fetches my tablet so we can watch World Watch News over breakfast. This has become one of our favorite ways to start the day, and the boys ask for the news even on the weekends.
Also, shameless plug: I’m an affiliate of World Watch News, and that’s because it’s FANTASTIC! The kids and I LOVE it, we’re up-to-date on what’s happening in the world, and it’s all delivered from a Christian perspective, reminding us that “whatever the news, the purpose of the Lord will stand.” I also love that when they report on stories with content that might be too much for little ones or that parents aren’t ready for their kids to engage with, they give warnings before the news starts so that parents know which stories contain sensitive content. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you can go here to sign up for a free trial!
MORNING CHORES & BIBLE
We’re still working on getting our morning chores done within the 15 minute time slot I’d originally anticipated; however, it’s been so good for the boys to have specific chores they’re in charge of every single day. We were always kind of bad about this before, but as we’ve gotten more serious about habit training, I’ve already seen them take ownership of and responsibility for their chores.
Both of the boys’ morning chores are outside, so after we clean up the dining table following breakfast, they head outside. Mr. Eight feeds all of our rabbits and Mr. Six lets the chickens out. Little Miss usually follows me into the kitchen and keeps me entertained while I unload the dishwasher and begin reloading it with the breakfast dishes.
Once the boys come back in, we head back to the dining table for Bible. We do our reading, draw our narrations, and then put everything away to head into the living room for Morning Basket.
MORNING BASKET
We still absolutely love our morning basket time each day! It’s changed from year to year, as their needs and attention spans change. But one thing that has stayed the same is that we snuggle up on the couch and read some really great books together.
This year, we’ve added our folk songs and Spanish songs into morning basket time. I’ve cut out some of our academic subjects, because I was having a hard time keeping everyone engaged (and quiet) so that Mr. Eight could actually narrate what we’d read. So this year, our morning basket includes the songs, a hymn, natural history, literature, and really great picture books for fun.
“SEAT WORK” LESSONS
Once we’re all finished with Morning Basket, I make another cup of coffee and we usually head straight upstairs to begin our “seat work” lessons. The exception to that is Tuesdays, when we go back to the dining room for clay modeling instead. For all other lessons, we’re in our homeschool room (you can see our full curriculum list for this year here).
We decided to move from our dining room to an actual homeschool room for a couple of reasons. First, our homeschool stuff was taking over the dining room. Second, the younger two wanted to play upstairs during lessons, but then I couldn’t keep an eye on them. So we turned our spare room into our homeschool room, and now the kids can do the buddy system during lessons and I can monitor them much easier.
LUNCH & QUIET/NAP TIME
After lunch, Little Miss goes down for her nap and the boys go to their separate areas for quiet time. They have several options of activities they can choose to do, but whatever they each pick, it has to be quiet. We do that for about an hour, which gives me a chance to eat my own lunch (I read a book aloud to them while they eat), do a few work-related tasks (such as writing this post), and maybe even read for a few minutes.
AFTERNOON OCCUPATIONS
Once quiet time is over, we start afternoon occupations. It has been a goal of mine to be more consistent with occupations for the past couple of years. While we’re still not 100%, we’re much closer this year!
I made a checklist for Mr. Eight, so he goes through his list first, and then he chooses another activity or two for his occupations. He has to practice piano, read for roughly 20 minutes, and make a notebook entry (can be either in his nature notebook or TGB notebook) each day.
Then he’s free to pick a handicraft, a timeline, a scouting activity, an additional nature study, physical geography or map work, or a puzzle to work on. There is a lot of overlap between quiet time and afternoon occupation, and that’s fine. I prefer it that way because I imagine eventually we won’t do a “quiet time” as the kids get older. But by then, they should all be really good at knowing what needs to be done or deciding what leisurely, but constructive activities they’d like to pursue in the afternoons.
I usually sit at the table with them while they pursue their occupations, so I’m there if they need help. But I don’t spend that time actively instructing them. If they choose a handicraft, it’s one we’ve already been working on, so they can pick it up and continue it largely on their own.
So while they do that, I typically use that time for some mother culture reading. I do my “stiff” read in the morning before the kids get up, but I usually read my “moderately easy” book while they’re working on occupations. I want them to see me reading and common-placing, so I really like that we do these activities alongside each other as part of our daily schedule.
TEA TIME
As the kids are finishing up occupation time, I start getting things ready for tea time. We used to only do this once a week, but we’ve changed it up and made it a part of our daily schedule. When Blaise and I lived in East Africa, afternoon tea was one of our favorite times of the day so I love incorporating this into our homeschool routine.
Our tea times aren’t terribly formal or overly scheduled. We are currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia, so I read that aloud to them. And then we usually read from a church history book, spend a bit of time praying together for missionaries we know, and just talk about random things. We’ve had some really excellent conversations over our afternoon tea, which is exactly what I always envisioned for tea times!
ONE ROOM POWER CLEAN
So I’ve really struggled to figure out a way to manage our home well while homeschooling. Always before, I’d basically neglect majority of cleaning chores until the weekends when my husband is home, then I’d stress clean to try to feel somewhat ready for the week ahead. It got to the point that I really kind of dreaded weekends, but I just didn’t have a good system in place to stay on top of cleaning, laundry, and cooking on top of our schooling during the week.
But I have FINALLY figured out that for my sanity, I HAVE to clean a good chunk of the house daily. So I spent our last term break in October figuring out the best, most realistic, most manageable house cleaning schedule.
And this is it!
I spend 30-45 minutes each day cleaning a different room of the house. Mondays are always the kitchen, Tuesdays are always the dining room, and so on. I know some people like to focus on a specific task each day of the week, like they always dust on Mondays. But I need an entire space completely clean from top to bottom. For the first couple of weeks of doing this, I spent way more than 45 minutes deep cleaning each room. But after doing this for a couple of months, it really only takes me about 30 minutes each day.
I plan to write about this in a future post, because it has been a life saver for me. But for now, I just want to highly recommend some type of cleaning schedule that you can actually stick to (because that was always my problem).
FREE PLAY, DINNER PREP, & DINNER
This is pretty self-explanatory. We try to get outside as much as possible, and often we’ll take lessons and occupations outside during the warm months when sitting outside is actually comfortable. During the cold months, we just don’t get out as much, but this late afternoon chunk of time is for my kids to just have some completely unstructured free play time.
I do want to note that another absolute sanity saver for me has been developing a meal rotation that I can stick to. I’ll go into depth about that in a future post, too, but we sat down and listed out all of the meals that our family enjoys. Then I went through and plugged in meals on a 4-week rotation. I plan for left-overs and our weekly pizza night. This has absolutely removed the decision fatigue that meal planning often caused me, and because we only eat each meal once every four weeks, we haven’t gotten tired of anything yet.
FAMILY WORSHIP
After dinner and chores, we gather as a family for our family worship. This is nothing super structured and certainly not glamorous. We either pile on the couch or our master bed, sing some songs from Seeds Family Worship, sing whatever catechism song we’re working on (Songs for Saplings, Questions with Answers), read a Bible story, and pray together. It’s usually a touch chaotic, as the kids are tired but trying hard to stay wide awake. It only lasts for 15 minutes or so, but it’s important for us to develop that habit and anchor our days in Christ.
BATH & BEDTIME
Usually while Blaise is helping the kids get in and out of baths, get jammied, and get their teeth brushed, I’m doing my evening “house reset.” Because I clean a room each day, the house doesn’t really have a chance to get super messy, and to make sure it doesn’t, I spend 15-20 minutes each evening going from room to room and putting everything in order. I don’t dust or anything like that, I just pick up stray toys, fluff toss pillows, make sure all of the dishes made it to the dishwasher, and grab any clothes that need washed.
Once that’s all done, I read a few chapters of the Wingfeather Saga to the boys while Blaise puts Little Miss to bed, and then it’s time for the boys to head to bed. I wish I could say that bedtime goes super smoothly and there’s not a lot of drama, but that’s certainly not the case. (If you have any great tips for making bedtime run smoothly, I’m literally all ears!)
THAT’S OUR DAY!
And then we come to the end of our very full day. Blaise does any remaining outdoor chores with the animals, I get the dishwasher going, and we get into bed. I usually read for a while (this is my novel reading time of the day), and then it’s lights out fairly early so we can both get up early.
I’d love to hear about your daily schedule! Drop me a comment below and tell me what your homeschool days look like!
And don’t forget to check out the other posts in this series:
A Peek Inside Our Homeschool: Clay Modeling
