A Day in the Life ~ August Edition

We are a homeschooling family with four children. However, we are only homeschooling two kids this year. Our adult son (24) is disabled and still lives at home. He attends a day program for brain injured adults that is a huge blessing to him. He was homeschooled from 3rd grade through graduation. Our 13 year old daughter has many, many special needs and emotional problems. We decided that it was necessary to place her in a very intensive special education program this year with our local public school system. She is also living outside of our home this year while she gets some much needed psychiatric care.

6:45 am - 7:45 am ~ I woke up a few minutes late this morning. I quickly made my way to the kitchen and made my husband and adult son (Tim) breakfast. I then packed their lunch. It is unusual for Tim to be awake so early in the morning. I talked to him about how he wasn't feeling well and got him some medicine. His seems to have a summer cold and it is bothering his asthma. After my husband left, I got into the shower. I then made all of my minions (washing machine, dryer and dishwasher) do my bidding.

7:45 am - 8:45 am ~ The kids woke up and started looking over the new goodies. This is the first day of our second five week unit. We have no budget for homeschooling this year, so I decided to add in new things each five weeks as I was able to earn the money on Ebay and Amazon. Fortunately, I had a great deal of curriculum already. It is fun to have "box day" every five weeks. Tom Sawyer (12) sat down with his Brick Shakespeare book while trying to avoid the camera. Little Red Riding Hood (10) was disappointed to see that her new French workbooks had not arrived in time for box day and went off to take her shower. Meanwhile, the WiFi started acting up and Tim, who hates anything that is not part of the routine, started stressing out. Luckily, it was easily fixed. The kids watched CNN Student News while eating apples.

Level 3 All About Spelling, Paddle to the Sea, Brick Shakespeare, Vocabulary Rummy,
and The Cricket in Times Square (from the library). 

8:45 am - 9:15 am ~ We got into the car and took Tim to his day program. One of the things on the table for box day was two free coupons to Chick-Fil-A. The kids were very excited about getting breakfast out and took their coupons up to the takeout window. Tom Sawyer stressed about going up because he couldn't believe it was really free. We made one last quick stop at the bank. While in the car, we listened to Then There Were Five. We listened to this audiobook whenever we were in the car today.

9:15 am - 12:45 pm ~ As soon as we got home, we buckled down to school time. I let the kids go back and forth, picking the next subject. Little Red Riding Hood wanted to start with language arts. She did three pages of Explode the Code Book 7 and Tom Sawyer did three pages of Wordly Wise Book 2. We moved on to The Cricket in Times Square (literature). We only had two chapters scheduled for today but the kids loved it, so we ended up listening to four chapters. We moved on to silent reading time. Tom Sawyer read How to Train a Dragon Book 11 and Little Red Riding Hood read The Sister's 8 Book 1. I also sat down and read a book during this time. Next up was Journal Time. I set the timer for 10 minutes and they wrote whatever they wanted. Their journals are not graded. I am just working on getting them to enjoy the flow of writing. We moved on to geography. We read about New York City, where The Cricket in Times Square takes place, and found it on the map. The kids then filled in a writing form about New York. They used the computer for extra research. By this point, there were many complaints about hunger and I had to force them to continue. We had only two more subjects after all. Math was next. The kids both picked out one of the six math workbooks we have at the moment and worked on some review problems. We will be returning to Teaching Textbooks for our next five week unit. We finished the day with Bible. We listened to the book of Luke from The Bible as told by Max McLean while doing a lesson in Draw to Learn the Life of Jesus.

12:45 pm - 1:00 pm ~ We all had lunch. We ate homemade potato soup, pickles and fresh baked bread.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm ~ The kids had their media time. Little Red Riding Hood played on the Wii and Tom Sawyer played Minecraft on the computer. I talked to my Mom and continued doing laundry. I also called a few doctors to set up appointments.

2:15 pm - 2 :50 pm ~ The kids played outside and I did some weeding. I also started researching what is wrong with our 16 year old dog. She appears to have a hematoma of the ear. There is very little to do for it besides surgery so we won't be taking her to the vet. She is very old, blind and deaf. We are just trying to keep her comfortable during this final stage in her life. I did discover that she may have an ear infection, so I looked up homemade ear washes for dogs.

Our three year old dog Boomer

2:50 pm - 3:15 pm ~ We picked up Tim who was feeling worse even than this morning and was ready to go home for some more medicine.

3:15 pm - 5:00 pm ~ The kids went back to playing outside while I attempted to make fudge. The fudge did not come out this time. It is way too liquidity and has to be eaten with a spoon. The kids were delighted all the same. I also made up a solution of tea tree oil and olive oil to wash out our 16 year old dog's ear. Dear Husband came home and I started dinner.

5:00 pm to 7:00 pm ~ We had tuna patties with rice, spinach, and cabbage apple salad for dinner. Then the kids headed back outside with daddy for some more swinging and trampoline time. At last they had to come in for a 25 minute chore time. The laundry pile was very high and needed folding. We had a family folding session and swept the main rooms of the house. Our Amazon order arrived so the kids got to have box night. Their French and Spanish books arrived!

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ~ They are now watching a little bit of Family Feud with Daddy. Then they will have showers and story time. They can read in bed for a little while after 9:00 pm.

Well, this is a pretty typical day for when we don't have any appointments. We do have out of the home afternoon dance classes or doctor appointments about three days a week.