A Day in the Life of a Homeschool Family

A day in the life of a homeschool family. I don’t know about you, but for the most part our days don’t always stay the same or stick to the same schedule. We have a general list of things to get done each day but they aren’t always in the same order. Due to my oldest being neurodivergent, there needs to be a sense of a schedule but not in a way that’s too rigid. He knows what to expect, but there is flexibility in it so that he still feels like he has a little bit more autonomy in how his day is arranged. That’s the beauty of this journey, making it how we want and making it work for us - being flexible is paramount for our lifestyle.

Our kids are allergic to sleep so they wake up pretty early most days and in order to give my husband and I a little time to wake up - I have some sort of breakfast food prepared so they can make it themselves. I will create a whole post some other time for all my breakfast recipes. Whatever there is for breakfast they will heat it up or toast it, grab out some ham, fruit that has already been cut up, and granola. After they have eaten their first task is to unload the dishwasher. I do allow them to watch TV while eating breakfast, it just keeps the level of noise down just a bit while my husband and I are still laying down or if my youngest is still asleep. Once breakfast and first chores are done, then it’s free play time - usually downstairs so I can try to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee in peace before we really get our day started. Depending on the day, they free play all morning until lunch - other days we have play dates or head to a park or the zoo in the morning. When it’s nice out we will do our school work in the morning so the rest of the day can be spent outside, some days we even do our school work outside. 

On days we just free play all morning, we do our school after lunch. As I have mentioned before, I am doing only math and reading for Mr. Blue (6), so he decides which he wants to do first and we go from there. It doesn’t take us too long to finish, it just depends on his focus level that day. While he is doing school, Mr. Orange (3) is on the IPad doing Reading Eggs and Mr. Green (2) is usually roaming around. Once schoolwork for Mr. Blue is done, he switches places with Mr Orange. I always start with Mr. Blue for school since his takes a little bit longer in order to give him somewhat equal time on Reading Eggs while Mr. Orange is doing school and then he’s able to continue on for a bit longer even though Mr. Orange is finished with his school work. Other days instead of saying - hey, we’re going to do school now, I just leave our binders out and wait for them to tell me they’re ready for school. This can usually only be done if we have no other plans for the day. We have taken school with us when we’ve gone away for a few days, we’ve taken it with us to a park and will do a little work then play and back, we’ve also done ‘specialized’ lessons if we decide to go to the zoo or science center and I have a specific thing for each of them to be able to remember or write down and tell me once we’re at home. 

Another thing that I like to do, but don’t always do every day is a read aloud. I either will continue on in one of our chapter books that I am working through with them, or they will just pick out a book of ours or one we’ve borrowed from the library. Otherwise the bulk of our day is just spent playing; building legos, building forts, building with tiles, (there’s definitely a theme here…), or just coming up with whatever they feel like playing that day. Needless to say our basement is a disaster most days. I usually choose one day a week that I let them do crafts freely so our table isn’t always covered in craft supplies. I definitely like when the weather is warmer and we can spend most of our days outside. Riding scooters, bikes, going on walks, park hopping, playing in creeks/ponds, hikes, you name it. As with most kids in general, but definitely with boys, we need all the opportunities possible to burn all sorts of energy. 

We are pretty lax with screen time since we are trying to be as low demand as possible to keep Mr. Blue out of burnout (something I will go into more detail on later on in my regular blog posts). We usually just have the TV on in the background of wherever they are playing with a curated selection of shows. I have found the more we have it on, the less they ask for it when it’s not on - like we have removed the novelty of it, because before we were pretty strict on screen time. One thing that they do get every day is tablet time and that is a set amount of time. We have the amazon kids tablet and it has pretty good parental controls. So we set the time for 1 hour of games and then they can’t get into games anymore. Our one rule is it has to be after 3pm before they get their tablets to ensure that they have done plenty of free play, outside time, and school work done. It doesn’t always mean they get their tablets at exactly 3pm, many times it’s after that but it gives them a set time to know when they can expect it so they’re not asking all day long when it’s tablet time. They can look at the clock and know when it’s getting close or not. And for Mr. Orange, he goes more by what we have or haven’t done yet to gauge if it’s time. Have we had lunch, done school, etc. That’s what our day looks like in a nutshell, it’s not the same every day - but it works for us.

XOXO, mischief managing momma

Oldest (1)- Mr. Blue (with age they are in the time of the post)

Middle (2) - Mr. Orange

Youngest (3) - Mr. Green