I am a homeschool mother of 6. I don't have everything figured out, but I can help you with the experience I do have.Please join me as Christian mothers who seek answers through prayer in study in raising our children in a Godly way.
Beginning our homeschool week, Monday I had huge plans for our day. However, the wind graciously woke me up and informed me that we wouldn’t be going on a hike for homeschool. I’ve gone before with older kids, but it is tough on toddlers with how strong our wind gets here. Despite the wind, I still had some fun promising plans. My children were asked to get their reading done for 30 minutes and their spelling.
When they finished that, we started my fun plans for the day. We played guess in 10 countries of the world. My kids don’t actually know the names or locations of different countries. That is why I made the focus or theme of our homeschool this year is world geography. Our kids were really slacking in this area, I felt, so I thought they would really benefit from spending some extra time on it. I’ve bought several games to go with our theme, but I didn’t decorate or anything. Moving on, I don’t play the guess in 10 game the way we’re supposed to. I have my kids say different clues. They don’t get to guess until they’ve asked 10 questions unless they have the country totally figured out. Sometimes I’ll give them a break and just say find Argentina. Whoever finds it first gets to hold the card. At the end of the game, everyone adds up their cards. Whoever got the most cards wins. One of my sons was really difficult with this game. He has been in the past as well. Therefore, I decided we’d play it after lunch too. Before lunch and after we finished guess in 10, we played Clumsy Thief Jr. We decided my oldest son we disqualified. He held his cards to the very end so that he would get more cards. He also knows how to make 10 really well, so the younger kids didn’t get the practice they needed.
The last game that we played was Allowance. Two of my children in particular really need practice with money, so we try to do money focused games frequently. We also did our Bible time with a scripture story and a song. We finished off our circle time by reading Little Women. I bought my kids playdoh with a playdoh playmat. It is especially for my toddler boys, however. During school hours it really helps them have fun while we do school. I bought all kinds of cooking utensils from the dollar tree as well as play doh toys to add to our play doh collection.
Monday night we had a family night. Our church the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has their members spend time teaching out of the scriptures and having fun together. My oldest son decided for an activity that we would do maps. My husband also asked that we would work on a birthday card for a family member. One of my sons kind of blew up though, so I took care of him while my husband had fun with the rest of the family. It ended up being an ok day. It’s just really hard when especially older kids that don’t take naps are tired.
We had a mostly uneventful day. I did the Good and the Beautiful English and Math with everyone. After lunch break, I did circle time with all my kids. I also read a picture book to all my kids, but especially for my 1st grader and toddlers. We worked on our Biblioplan history, and we read Little Women for our read aloud again. The one bad part of the day was dealing with some unexpected temper issues from one of my kids. He didn’t like that he wasn’t treated fairly in his mind. That caused me a lot of grief. By the end of the day, I was pretty upset. I went out to the barn to talk to my husband while he worked with a 3 year old horse named Junior Pickles.
I had enough attitudes and mom life by dinner. We got the youngest kids to sleep, and I promptly told my older kids to get in bed because I wasn’t staying up waiting for them to come and say goodnight a million times. I had planned to lay down and just watch a movie with my husband. However, his boss called and told him that he needed to unload calves off a truck in 45 minutes. Therefore, we changed plans and started a date night together unloading calves. It was a much needed break from motherhood and grumpy attitudes.
At the middle of our homeschool week, we slept in on Wednesday. We were pushed even later because I needed to help my husband get trip permits to haul cows in a trailer to an auction in town. We stopped at the store to get lunch and water. Despite what time we left, we still made it their in good time.
In the last hour of my coop I teach the kids 6 and under. We talked about lizards. Mostly we discussed bearded dragons. Our family has a bearded dragon we bought several years ago. I took my kids to the zoo and had them do a report on an animal that was there. One of my sons chose to research lizards, and then he wanted one. My husband promised him if we was better for me during homeschool then we could get him a lizard. When we went to pick out one at PetSmart, the guy that worked there told us that bearded dragons make the best pets, so we chose one of that kind. Our beardy we think is a boy and is named Trecker. However, we just call him Liz. Liz really should be his name. That’s short for lizard if you were wondering. The class really enjoyed learning about lizards. We even learned that bearded dragons wave at people and other lizards just like a human except a little slower. We watched a couple youtube videos of them waving.
After learning about lizards, we waited for my oldest son to get done with play practice. Each year the two older ages of kids in our coop perform a play. The teacher is fantastic, and the kids always do an amazing job. When we got done with that, we ate lunch while heading to the library. We hurries and picked up some books before it was time to go to PE. Our local library has plant starts that they allow people to bring from home to share and take as they want. I grabbed two plants that I still don’t know what they are. I already have one from the library that I named Crukeshanks after Hermione Granger’s plant on Harry Potter. I’m a die hard Harry Potter fan.
Happily, my son started his school with me. When he was done, I helped my daughter in the kitchen while I washed dishes. At lunch time, I went in a drive with my husband to deliver cows.
When I got back we did Bible time and circle time. Doing something different, I taught my kids how to make a powerpoint on the Mac version keynote. My 7th grader already knows how to do this, but I wanted all my kids to learn how. After I showed them how to do it, they picked an animal to learn about. I told them they would have until the end of next week to work on it. By that time Inwas super tired. I let my kids watch Magic School Bus while I took a nap. When I woke up, we worked on more school. My husband got home, and the kids played outside with him in the dark while I walked around our driveway. When we got back in, I did school with some of my kids. Making an executive decision, I decided to just finish everyone’s lessons the next day which we did.
Friday I started my day by studying my scriptures and taking a shower. When I was done I worked on school with my 1st grader. We didn’t get all her school done, but we did most of it. The rest of my kids worked on independent work while I made myself breakfast. After that I did school with my preschooler. We’re doing The Good and the Beautiful Kindergarten Prep because we finished the preschool book. The rest of the morning I spent between my 4th and 5th grader while they worked on math.
To end our homeschool week, my toddlers painted with their reusable paint with water books. They also jumped on their trampoline, played with blocks, and played in their room. There is a bullet point list of things up above you can click on to take you to Amazon.
Around 3:30 I left my younger kids with my husband. My older kids and I went to the temple in a nearby city with other parents and youth. We went out to eat after, got a Walmart pickup, and drove home. I no longer have a bumper on my car because I’m an awesome driver. You can read about that in last weeks post. I teased the kids riding with me that if there was too many groceries they could be my bumper. When I hit a deer with them as my bumper my husband would ask if the car is ok. I’d answer yes honey the cars fine. It gave me and my teenager a good laugh.
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