Homeschool Routine

This past week I started Swahili lessons. 20hrs of language lessons (+ 5-10hrs of homework) has kind  of changed our routine a bit, to say the least. More to come on that, but I wanted to blog about what our routine WAS before the big shift. I was actually really enjoying it, so it will be good to have it written down in case we have the opportunity to return to it at some point in the future.

I like to think of what we had going as a "loose" homeschool routine. I say loose because Olive is only 3, and thus really not ready for something too rigorous. I tried to keep things lighthearted and play-oriented, while also getting them both used to the discipline of having a school routine. One thing that is important to me in this season is spiritual development. Especially since Lucy got her first "real" Bible before we left the US, we spend time first thing in prayer, hymn memorization, Scripture memorization, and Bible reading. I don't have time to do a lot of prep, so i just choose the hymn that we are memorizing for the month based on an acoustic hymns album I have, and the Scripture we are memorizing for the week based on the Seeds Family Worship album. Both are easily accessible from iTunes, so I just have to have my phone with me to get it started. After an opening prayer, hymn and scripture recitation/singing, we read a story from Lucy's "real" Bible. She looks through, finds one with a fascinating picture, and we go from there. I like it because it is usually a good challenge for me to search for Jesus in each passage and present Him to them through the story.

*Here's a little glimpse of one of our Scripture Memorization passages

*Here is the girls' Hymn Recital recently, singing Great Is Thy Faithfulness...as you can see, they have inherited fabulous musical talent from their parents, LOL.

At the conclusion of Circle Time (above), we head over to the Calendar and go through the days of the week, today, tomorrow, and today's date. We also cover weather and seasons during this time too. It's funny because my "Seasons" to choose from never represent the ones here, which are either Dry or Wet...so we go with whatever season it is back in America.

 

After Calendar, we may do something like work on Handwriting or reading from The Story of the World. I really like this book by Susan Wise Bauer because it covers both geography, history, and people groups at the same time. We have a lot of maps and such throughout our school room, and since our family has done a lot of traveling, I can usually pull out some reference point for the kids based on that lesson. For example, when we were studying about the Egyptians, I was able to talk about when we flew through Cairo on the way to Greece. Even though we didn't tour Egypt, we saw pyramids from the sky and such, and they remember that. If we've also been reading about the Egyptians in the Bible, all the better because we can locate those things on the map as well.

The next hour or two are also loosely structured. We may go play outside and see what bugs we can find. We may write letters to family back home and walk them down to the post office (a 5-10min walk from home). We may do puzzles or play a game. We may go swing on the quad area near our home. It varies from day to day. We eat around 12-1, play some more, and Olive heads down for a nap at 2. Two o'clock begins actually "learning time" for Lucy and I, which is when we cover Reading and Math. We've been working through "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" since last summer some time. We probably could have been done by now, but we've had to pick it up and put it down for various reasons at various times. She's making progress though, and really enjoying it. For Math I am using a curriculum my sister told me about called RightStart Math. We are enjoying that as well, though it is a bit harder to be consistent with that as it requires some prep from me ahead of time, and Math doesn't come intuitively for Lucy or I. So, we're getting there...slowly, slowly.

We are usually done with "learning time" by 3-4 and she then does an audiobook or quiet reading time until Olive wakes up. I begin dinner prep usually by 4 at the latest, and we try to eat somewhere between 6-7.

Like I said, this routine has changed up a bit since beginning Swahili, but maybe after the 3 months of language learning, we will return to it. Of course I didn't mention in there tending to baby, washing diapers, hanging and taking down clothes from the line, doing boatloads of dishes, etc. etc.

What does your typical day look like?