Day In The Life ... October Edition

Things are a bit different in our homeschool right now. After much thought and prayer, we have decided to set aside SOTW and the classical approach and return to Charlotte Mason.  Not to say that I ever left Charlotte Mason behind completely, but we were dabbling a lot in the classical approach.  It just was not a great fit for my kiddos.  We were slipping into workbooks and memory work and losing narration and living books.  To make a long story short, I witnessed a dislike of school developing, and the kids were struggling with retaining information (especially history).  So, we are in transition right now, while I find my way back to educating the children with living books in all subjects.

7:00 to 8:00 am~

We had a real slow start to our morning.  Most of the kids slept in and Tom Sawyer (8) woke up and read in bed for about an hour.  I took a shower, checked a few blogs, and added some movies to Netflix for Sunday nights.

8:00 to 8:30 am~

Breakfast  for everyone.  Most of us had oatmeal with bananas.

8:30 to 9:15 am~

Everyone did morning chores.  Little Red Ridinghood (7) put away the clean dishes from the dishwasher; Goldilocks (9) made all the beds; Tom Sawyer (8) took all of the dirty laundry to the laundry room and collected water glasses from everyone's room; and Timothy loaded the car for the various trips of today.  We then took our first car ride of the day to drop off Timothy at his nature center job.

9:15 to 11:30 am~

This period was the bulk of our seat work time.  I read from Let My People Go by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack.  This is a wonderful book filled with 12 Bible stories that are woven into a Freed Slave's life during the 1800's.  We read the story of Queen Esther (Bible).  The children narrated the story to me every few paragraphs (narration).  We worked on place value and estimation.  I realized that my girls need more work on place value (math).  The kids did an adjective work sheet and did Mad Libs (language arts).  We finished seat work time with a poem by William Wordsworth "The Kitten Playing with the Falling Leaves" (poetry).   While I read the poem, the kids picked out a piece of fruit or leaf from the book series, Draw, Write, Now, and learned how to draw it (art).  One child put in very poor effort and had to draw the picture again.  I do not expect perfection, but everyone is expected to put forth their best effort.  This can be very challenging at times to get out of some of them, which varies by day.

 

11:30 to 12:00 pm~ 

Free time while I made lunch.  The kids ran around and jumped on the trampoline. 

 

12:00 to 12:30 pm~ 

We had organic hamburgers, apples and organic onion rings for lunch.  This is a big lunch for us, but I have noticed with the change of weather that my kids are hungrier. 

12:30 to 1:00 pm~ 

We traveled to  Occupational Therapy.  A few weels ago, we purchased an in-car DVD player for long trips and my dh put it in for a day trip this coming weekend.  The kids were excited to see it in the car early and so they watched "Veggie Tales the Story of Queen Esther" (Bible). 

1:00 to 2:00 pm~ 

While Tom Sawyer was in OT the girls and I made a place value game and tested it out.  It was fun.  We then did a reading lesson with "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".   I made three copies of the poem and cut up two copies into individual words. Then the girls read it and matched their words to the poem so that we had three complete sets again (reading lesson). 

 

2:00 to 3:00 pm~ 

We picked up Tim and traveled home. The kids had free time and watched the last 15 minutes of the "Cat and the Hat" on PBS. 

3:00 to 3:40~ 

The kids did afternoon chores and then we sat down to tea time. Since we are waiting for our new chapter book to arrive in the mail, I read to them a picture book. We read Papa Piccolo, which is a wonderful tale of a cat in Venice who adopts two kittens.  Our next chapter book will be The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. 

4:00 to 6:00 pm~ 

The girls have one hour dance classes, one right after the other. All four of our children are in the "Nutcracker and the Mouse King" performance by Hoffmann this December.   Already, costume fittings are going on and excitement is in the air.  Goldilocks, who is taking modern dance, will be in a scene with other children playing in the snow.  Little Red Ridinghood, who is in Ballet I, will be cotton candy in the performance.  Tom Sawyer is taking a boy dance and theater class this year and will be a toy dragon that comes to life.  Timothy, who is in advanced Fencing, will be one of the soldiers. It  looks like it is going to be a wonderful experience for all of them.  Luckily, they all take classes at the same place, where all sorts of dance, theatre arts, and fencing is learned.  A wonderful husband and wife team own this studio and put on really great performances. 

Goldilocks practicing a snow angel. 

6:00 to 8:00 pm~ 

We returned home for dinner, more trampoline time with Dad and stories with Dad.  Lights out and goodnight. 

Blessings, 

Dawn