A Real Study Day: What our Homeschooling Days at Home are Really Like

Knowing we were going to be home for the day today, I tried pretty hard to stick to our "home" schedule.



I let the boys watch TV and play video games until 9 while I exercised, cleaned and got myself ready for the day.

They each picked a bathroom and cleaned the toilets, sinks, and floors with me going back and forth acting as supervisor.  It was so nice to see shiny, clean bathrooms! I look forward to the day that they can do the job without me by their sides too.

I pulled Evan aside to work in his Verbal Math book and sent the two older boys upstairs to practice their division facts for the three's.

 Once Evan and I were done with his lesson, the two older boys took their math minute test and each got 14 of the 16 questions right.  I was really impressed for the first day with these facts!

I offered to pull out their spelling words from last week and told them they could write them on the windows with dry erase markers.  They all thought that sounded like a lot of fun!

I found dry erase markers and pulled out all the spelling word lists.



I picked up their lists and started quizzing them all; imagine my surprise when they got them all right!  I printed out all the next lists for each of the boys.

I can't believe they learned these spelling words so fast.  Perhaps they just needed a review of spelling rules.
  
Ian has kept himself busy between lessons today trying to make a starburst loom bracelet.  He usually doesn't like to use the loom because he gets so frustrated but he decided to give it another try.  The first bracelet fell apart when we took it off the loom but I was proud that he didn't give up.  He re-loomed the bands and started over.  He did ask for quite a bit of help along the way and I gave him help whenever I could.  Somehow we messed up somewhere along the way and the second bracelet fell apart too.  This time I couldn't blame him when he quit; I would have too!  He did tell me he would try again tomorrow. 



I really wanted to finish the bulk of our schoolwork by lunch since we enjoy our lazy afternoons and so I pulled Evan aside for a mini reading lesson today.

I asked the older to boys to read silently in their rooms for a bit while I worked with Evan. 

Evan and I worked on the second half of his first reading lesson in The Reading Lesson book.  He did great sounding out chunks of words and remembered all of the four sounds we learned last week.

 He then read the book Kites to me.  With simple words & a review of color words, Evan had little trouble reading the book to me.  He's gaining in confidence and fluency too.



After reading the boys played outside for a bit and then we settled down for some lunch.  I read the next chapter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Alec finished reading the last chapter after lunch.  The boys were thrilled to finish the story and asked if we could start the next one in the series.

I told them that if they still wanted to listen to stories I could read our New York books; it's the next state we're covering in our 50 states unit. 

Alec pulled out the coloring page for New York and colored in the state flower; which is a rose.  We studied the state flag when we got to that page in E is for Empire.   They promised to sit and listen when I came back into the room so I finished up the book and we read A Walk in New York too. 



  
We finished up our day with a quick writing assignment.

In preparing for our post card swap I found blank printable postcards for the boys to practice writing what they wanted to say to each of the families we're exchanging postcards with this month.

I let Evan dictate his sentences to me and I wrote them out for him but the older two boys worked hard on writing their own with correct spelling and punctuation.  I can't say they loved this writing assignment but I think seeing such a small box to write in helped them cooperate and get it done fairly quickly.


Before they started writing we brainstormed all sorts of facts about Connecticut that they could use in their writing and hopefully that helped too.  I'm sure by the time we get to the end of this post card exchange they'll be writing postcards in their sleep.

I asked the boys to pack their own dinner to take to  Alec's soccer practice and warned Ian and Evan that I was planning to walk the track around the field for the hour that Alec was practicing.


I told them they didn't have to walk with me but should bring a football or soccer ball or other outside toy to play with to keep them occupied.  Ian chose to walk with me for most of the practice but Evan sat in a chair and watched the practice.  He had fun hanging from the extra goal and trying to walk on the reused telephone poles that are in the parking lot for curbs.  He pretended they were balance beams and even tried jumping from one to another.  
 
It was a very loong day and our schoolwork took a bit longer than we would have liked but we did have fun and learn a lot so I can't complain.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Share Our Lives: 5 Items I Can't Live Without

Prime Purchases in February 2023

Let's Look At... Our Grocery haul