Morning {7:15am-12:00pm}

Mom’s Morning Routine

I get up at 7:15am so I can get dressed for the day, make the bed and get a head start on laundry. By 7:45am I get Sarge up and he drinks his milk. The girls’ light has turned on at 7:40am in their bedroom and they are to get up and get dressed. If they are not getting along, I will call one of them out of the room and tell them to go sit in the playroom until it is time to come to the kitchen. Sarge gets easily distracted from drinking his milk if his sisters are around which is why I have the stay in their bedroom until 8am.

Girls’ Morning Routine

At around 8am, the girls are to continue their morning routine. They are to get dressed, put pjs back in basket, brush hair and then they empty the dishwasher together. They are doing a wonderful job with this and it is SO helpful for me! While they empty the dishwasher, I fix breakfast for everyone. Sarge is sitting in his highchair watching his sister and waiting patiently for his food. (The sisters distract him I am sure because this boy loves to eat!) Once their Morning Routine and chore is complete, they can eat breakfast. When breakfast is over, they are to clean up their place at the table. During this time I usually have the CC Timeline Song on or worship music and, once finished with breakfast, the girls can go to the living room and dance and listen to the CD, but they are not allowed to get out any toys. This is a huge change to our schedule. Being allowed to play before school was becoming way too distracting from our formal school time so I decided to move all playtime to after formal school time. They are adjusting well to this change, for the most part, and I think they are realizing by working first, they have the rest of the day for play.

Bible Story

Our school day begins with a Bible story from 101 Favorite Bible Stories. We also go over our monthly Bible verse we are memorizing. I’m still trying to figure out Sarge’s schedule from after breakfast until his morning nap. Half of that time is his Independent Playtime and then the other half he is wreaking havoc on our homeschool like all good 1 year old’s do! After the Bible story, he goes to the pack n play for his 25 minute Independent Playtime.

Classical Conversations Memory Work

While Sarge is in IP, we review our CC Memory Work. On a typical day, we get my laptop and listen to the week’s videos. We may listen to a previous week’s memory work if the girls want to. This time is lead a lot by the girls’ interests. We are taking a very “stick in the sand” approach to Memory work for our first year of CC. I have printed off a few activities, coloring sheets, and helpful resources (which I will share eventually), but most of our CC Memory Work review time is spent watching the videos taken during Community Day of the new Memory Work and reading more about certain topics. It is simply amazing how much the girls are memorizing already. When the timer goes off, we all run to get Sarge out of IP time. I go lay him down for his nap and then it is time for preschool with Sweet Pea!

Handwriting

While I am getting Sarge down for his nap the girls work on their handwriting. I am back within 5 minutes and help anyone needing help with their handwriting.

Preschool with Sweet Pea

Once handwriting is complete, I start preschool with Sweet Pea. I have just started leaving some independent work for Little Bug to complete while I am doing preschool with Sweet Pea. We will see how this goes. Giving her this independent work will help her become an independent worker and it also helps us finish school faster…so we can play!

1st Grade with Little Bug

I let Little Bug choose whether she wants to begin with Reading or Math. If she picks Reading, we do her All About Reading Level 1 lesson and then Explode the Code Book 1 (she does 2-3 pages just about every day). We take a 10 minute break between subjects for a Read Aloud. Sweet Pea comes back to the homeschool room and joins us for this. After the 10 minute break, Sweet Pea goes back to IP time and Little Bug and I do her Saxon 1 Math lesson.

Outside

We usually finish our formal schooling time around 10:30-11am and we head outside to burn some energy! Before going out, I switch out the laundry to keep that train moving along!

Free Play

After playing outside we come back inside and all three children are free to play. I do a chore during this time (laundry, clean the bathrooms, dust, organize) while the children play. If they are not playing well the girls have to come sit on our couches in the living room and work things out. They can’t bring anything with them. They just have to sit there and work it out. They pretty much have a love/hate relationship these days. You never know what it is going to be! It can change from day to day, and sometimes, minute by minute! It definitely keeps things interesting around here. Sarge loves to play with them and usually they include him well because they both always love their baby brother. After spending about 15-20 minutes on household chores, I make everyone lunch.

Afternoon {12:00pm-4:00pm}

Lunch

Around noon, we sit down to eat lunch at the table. This is another huge change in our schedule. During the survival days when Sarge first came home, TV at lunch time was one of my saving graces. I always told myself I would do away with this eventually and when we revamped our schedule in early September, I knew I wanted to remove TV time from lunch time. Lunch time is SO much better now. Funny how something I had done to make lunch time bearable was now making lunch time hard! TV had served it’s purpose and now it was time to say goodbye. The girls sit at the table now and they no longer eat FOREVER. Sitting in front of the TV makes us eat a lot more, doesn’t it!? They now eat, at the table, in about 15-20 minutes and then they are back to playing!

Sibling Play Time

After lunch, it’s more playtime! Depending on how the play is going, I will either let them continue to play together until it is time to get ready for Nap/Rest Time or, if it is a not-getting-along day/moment, I will do something structured with them to cut down on the chaos. Activities here include: playing a game, reading books, going for a walk in the neighborhood. If things are really bad between the girls, and they just need a break from each other, I will send both of them to play Independently. One goes to their bedroom and the other goes to play in the playroom. That’s happened a few times, but thankfully, that is not the norm.

Clean Up

1:15pm is clean up time. This was another negative time to the day. Clean up time was a battle. They didn’t want to do it. I was tired of the fussing and getting very frustrated. So I came up with a new policy. At 1:15pm I say, “Time to clean up! I am going to go read to Sarge and put him down for his nap. Anything that is not cleaned up will go in the give-away pile or the trash!” And then I leave. I head to Sarge’s bedroom where I read to him. Most days they get the job done and the house is spotless when I come out! Some days (like today), I hear constant fighting going on from Sarge’s room as they clean up. They still got the job done though. I am not sure what all the fussing was about, but they worked it out and got everything put away!

Read Aloud

Then we go to our bedroom and all pile on the bed and I read to them before nap/rest time. This is one of my favorite times of the day! I love reading to my children and I am thankful I can read to them in my bed in the middle of the day! We are currently reading Bound for Oregon.

Nap/Rest Time

2pm is a glorious time of day around here. It is nap/rest time and I park myself in my bedroom to rest. I am an introvert. I need quiet time and, after a busy morning of school and play, the children need rest, too! Little Bug begins rest time on the couch listening to stories.

Independent Playtime

After a timer goes off, Little Bug is free to get up and go to the playroom for Independent Playtime until nap time is over at 4pm.

PE with Dad

This is new to the schedule too and was Dave’s idea! I LOVE it and so do the girls! He is home usually right around 4pm and then he takes the girls and does an hour of PE with them three days a week. He is slowly purchasing some PE equipment to use with them. I am in love with the PE teacher of our school! He is awesome! I use this time to do some more household chores.

Evening {5:00pm-7:30pm}

TV Time

When the girls come in from PE, they get to watch a 30 minutes TV show. We are trying to get back to 30 minutes of TV viewing a day, with some days of no TV. We had easily gotten to 1-1.5 hours of TV viewing last year while in survival mode. I disliked it, but I knew it wouldn’t be that way forever, and….we were just trying to survive! TV is a privilege and if they don’t follow their bedroom rules (now that they share a room), they lose their TV time. This keeps them motivated to go right to sleep at bedtime. Less viewing does make everyone have a happier attitude overall. Having a show at this time of day is helpful because it allows us to get dinner on the table and Dave and I are able to talk more without interruption after him being at work all day. I do not want Sarge watching TV so I don’t encourage him watching at all and usually go ahead and put him in his highchair to start eating dinner while the girls watch.

Dinner

Dinner is usually ready around 5:30pm and we all sit down around the table to eat. The girls give Daddy a report on school. Did they get an Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor?

Family Time

After dinner clean-up, it’s family time. We enjoy walks outside, playing games, playing inside and whatever else we may decide to do before bedtime routines must begin!

Bedtime Routine

Around 6:30pm we start the bedtime routine so all can be tucked in bed by 7:30pm. We do baths, put pjs on, brush teeth and then Dave has a variety of bedtime reading he does with the girls while I get Sarge to bed. He is reading Everyday Graces with them, Sonlight books and he goes over CC Memory Work with them.

Bedtime

The girls head to bed at 7:30 and Dave and I have the evening to be together, rest, relax and get ready to do it all over again tomorrow!

- Elaine