A Day In The Life
By Chelsey Dankert
Where did the month of October go?? I feel like I was waiting for September to end so we could actually “start” our school schedule, but here we are, somehow, rounding out the month and my thoughts are turning to December schedules, activities, and school expectations.
As I have been considering this post, I have been watching the flow of our days and am encouraged that they are going (mostly) as well as I planned and hoped! Not every day is perfect, but we are learning the ebbs and flow of our days and I can see the routines settling into place with less whining from the little people.
Yay for productivity and positive attitudes!
What used to feel incredibly foreign and clunky is finally starting to feel more natural. I am still likely more obscure than other homeschool families, but I am finding our rhythms to be a beautiful reflection of grace and flexibility, with plenty of room for adventures, commitments, and the mundane daily tasks that tether us close to home.
When people find out we homeschool, frequently I am asked “How do you manage with so many age groups” and “How do you even start with your little ones?” Alison covered some great ideas in her blog this week, Learning To Play, and I wholeheartedly encourage all of her ideas to engage with little hands and minds. Check it out, if you haven’t already! In addition to echoing her thoughts, I would also say that it’s really not as hard as you may seem to think, or believe, based on whatever spheres of influence you may be following. A friend of mine from the gym started homeschooling her six-year-old this year and I love hearing her talk about their ups and downs. Another acquaintance from CBS has asked questions about how to get started with her toddler in hopes to continue homeschooling and she gets older.
I wish I could shout from the mountaintops the truth:
It’s not as hard as you think!
Or at least, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as some portrayals on social media make it out to be.
So whether you are pulling out a 5th grader, just starting with your three-year-old, or maybe you’re a homeschool family with multiple ages and stages and you’re looking for some inspiration. I hope you find it here!
I am sharing our loosely held schedule with some details that have helped me maintain some expectations and routine in what feels like our ever-changing days.
Setting the stage: my oldest daughter, who is 10, can be very independent with her school work. She can be extremely driven and will accomplish her schoolwork quickly and correctly some days. Other days, it’s a struggle to get her motivated and focused, with enough mental ambition to remember what division is. My second child is 8, and he is what can only be explained as your average boy. I may be biased, but I believe he is extremely intelligent and gifted in the area of mathematics, with a high interest in coding and engineering. He is greatly motivated by screen time of any sort, but does struggle with focusing, especially when there’s a lot of noise around him. My youngest daughter just turned six and she is a sponge for information. She is eager to learn and longs to impress adults with all of her knowledge. My fourth is a new-four-year-old and he takes life with both hands and jumps from the highest point possible, not concerned with how or where he may fall. He is my feral child with an aversion to pants.
Now that you may be more familiar with my crew, let me introduce you to our days. Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays are our “mostly home” days, while Tuesdays and Wednesdays we are out of the house from 8:30-12pm. Sometimes we all sit around the table in our school area, other times the older ones might work solo in their rooms. I try to be available at the kitchen table to help as needed. Below is our outline for our home days:
6:20AM - I have been giving myself a bit more time in the mornings to be collected and ready for the day. Some days I sleep longer, but it sets the rest of the morning up to feel rushed if I’m not downstairs by the time the kids wake up.
7:01AM - I can guarantee that at least one child's door is opening at this exact moment. They all know to stay in bed until 7, but when the clock ticks over one or two are leaping out of their beds like they can’t miss a single minute of the day.
8:30AM - My oldest has been sleeping in some days, so between 7-8:30AM our mornings vary. I write a breakfast meal plan, but it’s rarely adhered to; it’s more of a guideline. I try to close the kitchen at 8:30AM to create some sort of healthy relationship with food and not constant grazing. During this time the kids may play nicely together, eat breakfast, and so on. But let me be clear, we do not have slow or soft mornings. There are no earth-toned activity baskets or candles flickering. During this time I will start loads of laundry, make a daily to-do list to keep myself on track, unload the dishwasher, and so on.
9:00AM - The kids each have “home blessings” (read: chores) to keep track of each quarter. I try to establish time during our home days to do these small tasks. Ideally before school starts I ask that they also get dressed, fill their water bottles, take meds and vitamins as needed. Giving them a reminder thirty minutes before we intend to start school helps keep them on track too.
9:30-10:30AM - I try to get us started about this time on our home days because we all are more focused in the morning than too late in the afternoon. At 9:30AM, I will turn on a “learning show” for my youngest to stay occupied while I devote some time to help my middle daughter and get my older two focused. Ideally, they have several subjects that do not require my immediate assistance.
10:30AM - The TV gets turned off and I like to work on creative play with my youngest two. This could include coloring, puzzles, matching games, while the older two continue through their work.
10:45AM - Break time and snack. Sometimes this happens sooner, but I try to not have a snack too late and change our lunch times.
11:00AM - Back at it for the older ones. This is a good time for the little ones to play together or apart or go outside when the weather is nice. This is when the location of schoolwork might change based on where the little ones are playing and how loud they are being. As long as they are doing their work well and putting their books away, I’m really ok with them completing their work wherever. During this time I try to get caught up on laundry, computer work, Bible study, or some reading for enjoyment during quiet moments.
12:30PM - It’s not likely that even the older ones have been working for this whole time. But in addition to educating at home, I also desire for them to be good humans to each other. In order to learn those skills, I allow a lot of spontaneous play time, as long as it’s fun for everyone and something that is not tearing apart the house. We do try to eat lunch together which I think is an important part of our day.
1:30PM - I try to build in time after lunch for checking home blessings again and general tidying before the day gets to be too late. If there are still school assignments to be completed, they are to be done before screens are available. During this time I try to focus on some of the list I made in the morning or giving one-on-one attention to the kids when I can.
3:00PM - Kitchen focus. I have found the afternoon goes so much smoother when the kitchen is cleaned up before the dinner rush. Three nights a week I am gone for dinner, so I try to be as prepared for Evan as possible and a clean space makes that so much easier. I like to have this space clean too because it’s the first room he enters after coming home from work and I can feel the tension release when he walks into a clean kitchen.
4:30PM - On the nights I am home, I start dinner, on the nights we have commitments, it’s about this time that I am leaving with one or more of the kids. On the few nights a week that we are all home for dinner, we try to eat about 5:30PM.
Evenings - As I know I have mentioned before, between three kids in activities, my gym time, and Evan’s work and Ministry School nights, we can be very scattered. We have one night a week that we are all home for dinner without activities, and I try very hard to protect that time. During that family night we will play games after dinner, or take a walk if the weather is decent.
Bed times - We start at roughly 8:00PM, with the hopes of everyone in bed by 8:40PM. The boys share a room, as do the girls, so our bed time routines start at the same time for all our ages. My oldest will use her booklight and read or write in bed for much later than her little sister on the top bunk. The boys are out almost as soon as their heads hit their pillows.
After writing and reading all of this, I even feel a little overwhelmed - that was not my intent! I wanted to be simple and light and flowy. But I guess this is an honest description of our home days with a lot of detail about what is actually happening in the moments that often matter the most.
In conclusion, I hope that, wherever you are in your motherhood journey, you have a community that encourages you in your own rhythms and routines, that you feel capable and confident in this season that you are in, and that you actually believe that you are doing an amazing job, even on what you call your worst days.