Our Hectic Schedule
© Rachel Vardis
In the comments to my last article about homeschooling with 6 children, Rachel asked me to describe a typical day. Well, here goes!
Rise and Shine!
I wake up around 7 A.M. depending on the weather and how I feel. The children arise about 8 A.M. They eat breakfast, clean up, and get dressed for the day. They play until 10 A.M., at which time "the school bell rings". Not literally of course. I allow them that time to play so they can release their pent up energy before beginning the day. I believe it relaxes them and puts them in the mood to learn. Otherwise, they would not sit still!
Josiah and Joel's 3rd grade subjects are: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts(English, grammar and reading), Bible, Art, Spelling, and Penmanship -- in no particular order. I like to start the day with Art so Josiah can get in the mood for school. He only likes Art so if I can get him off to a good start, then we are set for the day. But, there is only one problem -- we only do art once a week! So on the other days, they start with spelling. It is an easy subject that is done in 15 minutes.
After that we can get down to business. After art, we do math (Rod and Staff). This takes about 45 minutes. They are currently learning 3 digit subtraction, adding money, word problems, and time. In a few lessons, we will start with multiplication. During this subject, I catch up on housework. (dishes, laundry, vacuuming, dusting, etc.) After math, we do Language Arts. I let them do their reading in the evening so it doesn't take up time during the day when they really need me.
For English, we use Macmillan. They have 2 pages a day in this subject. Today's work will be on how to study and the parts of a book. They have grammar worksheets that came with their reader worksheets (Houghton Mifflin) so they do those as they correspond with their English lessons. Spelling is done daily and they learn about 15 words per lesson. At the end of the week, they get a test and after every 6 lessons, they get a unit test of ALL the words they learned. They are doing very well, I might say.
Weekly lessons...
Science, Social Studies, Bible and penmanship are not done daily. Science is done every 3 days and we just finished a unit on water. After the end of each unit, they have another test on their vocabulary words -- match the definition with the words. For the entire unit, there were only 28 words, which is why I chose to do it at the end of the unit instead of along with each lesson. Social Studies is done once a week and they just finished learning about emergency vehicles (ambulances). Both of these subjects are Rod and Staff books.
