Did You Ever Wonder?

Yesterday was a good day at our house.  We were able to really get a lot of good school time in and play catch up from our busy Monday and Tuesday.  I thought I would give you all a little peek into what a "good" school day looks like at my house.  I do have to confess, though, that my house is a mess and we will be doing lots of clean-up this weekend.  Floors need to be mopped, bedrooms  and bathrooms thoroughly cleaned and groceries purchased, but "school" is going well.

The children start waking up around 6 to begin their Bible reading.  Devin makes breakfast unless Kaelan and Aaron volunteer.  Everyone then gets dressed, showers and/or works on their chores.  At 8 Aaron and Kaelan take turns on my computer doing Teaching Textbooks.  Then they work on their language assignments which consist of Daily Grams, copywork and handwriting.  Jordan worked on his list of literature (Frankenstein in Learning Language Arts through Literature--English lit) and American history (Carson's Basic History of the US).  Some days he begins his school work at 7 AM and works on it again in the evenings.

At 9 I gathered everyone for our "group time".    We all sit in the den with Bibles.  I gave Jackson a couple of Bible verse coloring books to color in quietly will we took turns reading Proverbs 13.  Caedmon played in the floor.  We sang our hymn of the week "All Praise to God Who Reigns Above"  We are reading one chapter each week from Douglas Bond's book, Mr. Pipes Comes to America and learning the hymn from that chapter.  From our memory box, we reviewed our root cards (English from the Roots Up--one root per week) and our memory verses.  We listened to a cd of Gregorian chants for our studies in A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers (this was background music until it started bothering me---we are noisy enough without background music!).  Devin was then dismissed to clean the kitchen or do her reading (either John Piper or AW Pink, not sure!).  The rest of us have begun a study about Africa (my brother is moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo this summer) so we read a chapter about David Livingstone in Missionary Stories with the Miller's.   Then, because we didn't finish it last semester during our study of South America, we crossed the Atlantic and read two chapters of Martin Rattler by Ballyntine.

We took a short clean up, bathroom, move the laundry break and then continued with geography by  identifying 6 geographical terms  and defining 10 terms specific to African geography.  We are using Around the World in 180 Days, but we are doing it on MY terms--180 Days is more like 360 or so for us.  We pulled out atlases and the children sat in the floor with their books and found the highest mountain, the largest lake, etc in Africa.  Jackson (5) has his own geography notebook and busily copied down Sahara, Indian Ocean, Asia, Africa,  and Nile River.  He has no idea what he is writing, but he loves to write and is copying from the Bible as well.  So cute!  He has started several notebooks and has one he uses at church.  Jackson then moved to the dining room to do some of our activity bags with Devin while Caedmon enjoyed a snack of Cheerios.  The other three and I continues in our geography studies by reading about Egypt in Abeka's Old World History and Geography (we don't do the whole book!!  I just use it as a resource!!!)

Then it was time for lunch.  I had set out a bag of chili to thaw and we had that with tortilla chips, cheese and onions.  Jordan left with his dad for work.  He works with his dad on The Homeschool Channel editing programs that will soon be shown for  your encouragement!!!  Aaron and Kaelan each practiced piano while I moved some more laundry and did "school" with Jackson.  He and I  read from If You Lived in Colonial Days and he did some narration for me, worked on letter recognition and handwriting, did a few pages in Explode the Code and Singapore math.  Aaron and Kaelan worked on a map puzzle of Africa (from Timberdoodle) while I finished with Jackson.  I don't remember what Caedmon was up to at this time.  Devin was practicing her violin.

We then went back to the den where Jackson and Caedmon played with plastic African animals while I read three chapters from Animal Stories from Africa.  We then switched over to American history and I read two chapters from The Light and the Glory regarding the Puritans.  After a clean up break the children watched Living Free, the sequel to Born Free about lions in Africa while I did some work at my desk for The Homeschool Channel.  (it looks like my children didn't read anything on their own, but I promise you they did!  I had to ask them to take their books off the table at lunch because I didn't want them getting chili on them!)

Devin made up some dough for flatbread and she and Kaelan baked it on our tortilla press while I continued with the laundry and got the others to do a few chores and shower.  I baked some garlic, made hummus, opened a can of olives and heated up some chicken and rice for dinner.  We ate VERY quickly   and made it to church.  After church the boys and Devin cleaned up the kitchen and we all collapsed into bed.  On non-church nights we have family worship with Jeff leading.   He teaches from the Bible and uses Balancing the Sword after we have a time of singing.

So, that's a look into our day and life.  Time to get everyone rolling around here!   We have another busy day ahead of us.   May you have a blessed and productive day!