I couldn't decide where to re-start this blog at, so I figured I'd just give a rundown on what our daily routine looks like right now. Then maybe I'll find some interesting things to blog tomorrow?
We wake up early because my husband is out the door at 5:30 and usually his morning routine wakes at least one of my girls up, and she wakes everyone else up in turn. By about 6:30 everyone is awake and we sit down for breakfast. After breakfast the girls have to brush teeth, get dressed and do their morning chores. Abbagail cleans the cat box and makes her bed, Serenity feeds the cats and then takes Tahlia to their room so they can play quietly while I start school with Abbagail.
First lessons begin at around 8:30-9 a.m. I generally do Phonics and spelling with Abbagail first thing. That is her most involved lesson. We do her sight words (she has 6 she is learning at any one time), then there is a portion of her phonics lesson that is out of her textbook where we work with building or sounding out words using her new sound/letter combos, and after that we go online and she does some games too. There is usually either a story to read or a activity sheet to complete. Spelling generally only takes 15-20 minutes where we go over the words she's supposed to be learning or take her test. Overall phonics takes about 1-2 hrs.
At 9:30 we all eat snack together at the table. Abby gets free time once she finishes snack and I start on Serenity and Tahlia's phonics lesson. They are working through the Hooked on Phonics Pre-K book 2 right now and learning their lower case letters. Generally we watch 2-3 videos about the letter they are learning, and play at least one short game to review all the letters they've already learned. I am teaching each new lower case letter over 2 days. Day 1 I introduce the lower case version of the letters, remind them of the sound the letter makes, and show them how to write the new lower case letter. We do 2 worksheets also, one is a coloring sheet of the upper and lower case letter together. The other is practice writing the letter. Tahlia is still only practicing tracing the upper case letters. Since she is only 3 and hasn't had as much practice writing letters she can't write them without the tracing lines. Serenity is practicing the upper and lowercase both. Day 2 we play a card game to match up baby and mommy letters (upper and lower case). I show the videos for the letter and remind them of the sound and such. We then do 2 more worksheets. One is matching the letter to pictures that begin with that sound, the other is more writing practice for the letter.
After Serenity and Tahlia finish phonics Abbagail comes back to join us and we do Science, History, or Art all together. If Serenity and/or Tahlia gets too antsy at the table and can't make it through the whole lesson they get to go play in their room a bit more, I might reward them for good behavior with one of their DVD's, but generally TV time is reserved for after all school is done or only on the weekends.
At 11:30-12 it is lunchtime. After Abbagail finishes her lunch she gets freetime again while I do math with Serenity and Tahlia.
I start math with Tahlia. Right now she is learning how to use scissors and glue, how to color inside lines, and how to identify, count, and write all her numbers from 0-15. Her math takes only about 15-20 minutes and I usually start it while everyone is still eating so that she is done with math and lunch about the same time. Then she goes down for a nap.
Serenity is learning all her numbers from 0-20, how to recognize, count, and write them. We are also working on her coloring within the lines, scissor, and glue practice. She has several worksheets she does each day to review past math concepts too. She gets to use more math manipulatives than Tahlia and we generally will play more games during her math time because she gets bored with sitting still very quickly.
At around 2:00 Serenity goes outside to play for a while and I finish up Abbagail's school. We generally have Math and Language Arts left. If we get things done quickly we might tackle another of her elective classes (Science, History, and Art). By 4:00 usually Abby is all done with her shool and joins Serenity outside. Tahlia is up from her nap and will follow me around as I start getting dinner prepped and ready. If there isn't much to do then I'll take Tahlia outside too and let her play with her sisters.
So that is our school day. In between everything I mentioned I'm usually doing dishes, laundry, and cleaning up around the house. My house is never as clean as everyone else I know, and I could make excuses that it's because of how hard I work on the girls school, but honestly it is just I'm not a great housekeeper like most people I know. I guess I could put more effort into the cleaning, but it would probably detract too much from the school part, and since we don't have guests that often who are over the age of 7... I'm betting most people don't care if there are toys lying around and I need 3 hampers to keep the dirty clothes from overflowing onto the floor, and my kids beds aren't smooth and pristine. All the kids probably prefer it the way it is. Less breakable, more toy accessible, and almost always friendly and fun. (Hey, I have my days when I'm apathetic to them too. "Meh, c'mon in. Try not to be too loud." lol)
What happens after school? I make dinner, we eat it, then we have bedtime routine and the girls go to bed. If I'm lucky I get 2-3 hrs of semi-quiet before I have to hit the hay too. I like to spend time with my husband for at least an hr of it, if not more, but I also end up having to spend at least 1 hr on school prep for the next day or week. I've gotten it to where I can generally prep for a whole week of one subject in one day, so now I stagger them so I'm not doing every subject each day, but only one. Takes less time because there is only one area of my computer files to focus in on and one area of my school closet to drag things out of (if I have to at all). The drawback to that is I might realize too late that I forgot to buy something, but that is when I improvise.
So that is me, fun fun fun. Of course tomorrow isn't going to work like this at all because we have our monthly parent/teacher conference on Skype with Abby's teacher from K12. She gets to tell me how awesome Abby is and I get to pretend like I didn't already know that. ;) Plus Abby gets to show off her awesome reading skills and other things she's learned. It's pretty neat.
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