school at home...

well, it seems as if school is on its way...we have made it through the first few weeks and are on lesson 20 in our curriculum...
20 lessons.
i cannot believe that we have started and finished 20 days of school!
i contemplated all the potential catasrophies of this set up and i am happy to say that we have not experienced any of those...the scariest of which included total mutiny, children dressed up like pirates, and kyle and i tied up with rope with duct tape across our mouths.
this post has taken me a little long to write because i didn't want to speak prematurely about how wonderful this all has been but i finally came to the realization that waiting for some sort of inevitable failure is such a pessimistic and grosely ungrateful way to live. 
tomorrow may be terrible.  i am not naive enough to think that if i say that homeschooling has been wonderful and without trouble that it means everyday must follow suit.  i also hope that writing this now will help me remember the good on the days that i most need it.

one of the things that i worried about most was the children's willingness to work with me.  it seemed that everyday homework after school last year was a fight.  no one wanted to do their work.  i had to cut playtime short or delay playtime altogether just so we could get the task done.  harper was the worst.  she would sit at the table and just stare at the pages, or roll around on the floor picking up her pencil for the 1 millionth time (the purposefulness of this was not lost on me), or just cry about how it was too hard and too much... but my reality has been much different than the school experience of last year.  which leads me to believe that my presuppositions about school were well founded.  it was just too much. 

so here is how our school days look now:

7:00 am--i wake up and do my quiet time and get ready. 
7:30 am--the kids get up and start rolling in to my room.
8:00 am-- we eat breakfast
8:30 am--the kids get dressed, make their beds, and brush their teeth while i clean up from breakfast.
9:00 am--we start school with bible. 
9:30 am--harper starts math and calvary starts reading.  i give instruction to harper, do a couple of problems with her, and then give her the assignment.  while i teach harper, calvary usually entertains finley and oliver jack with a book or the sensory rice.  then i read with calvary. 
10:00 am--i give harper instruction for her science or social studies while calvary gets the little kids started with a show.  then i give calvary his instruction for science or social studies. 
10:30 am--we go outside for a snack and playtime.  they like to ride their bikes and we also play games like mother may i or some sort of made up game involving a ball.
11:00 am --harper does her phonics and spelling.  and calvary finishes up with math.
11:30 am--calvary, oliver jack, and finley usually play with play-doh, stamps, puzzles or go upstairs and play together while harper works on her last couple of assignments.  she usually has an assignment that is once a week like art, gods of greece, or poetry that she works on during this time. 
12:00 -- harper finishes up with reading.  we read together and then she does her final assignments while the other kids help me prepare lunch. 
12:30pm--lunch
1:00 pm--nap for finley and oliver jack and playtime for harper and calvary.  they have been doing all sorts of things during this time.  they have made comic books, played iPods, played memory, and watched TV among other things.
2:30/3:00--wake up and snack time.
3:30--lots of friends have been stopping by to play which has been great or we go to the park or run errands.
4:30/5:00--start cooking dinner
6:00-7:30--playtime with all of us since kyle is home
7:30--get ready for bed and watch a show
8:00/8:30--bedtime

since i do a homeschool charter school funded by the state we have a few online classes.  calvary has three 30 minute classes while harper has one 30 minute class and two 1 hour classes a week.  they have one each on tuesday, wednesday and thursday.  it is really awesome to see them in their little classes and using the computer to learn skills that correlate with what we are doing together.  and since monday and friday are free i turned monday into our home ec day where were do some sort of sewing project, cooking, or art project and i turned friday into science and nature day where we do some sort of experiment or nature study. 

i am not sure how long we will stay with the homeschool charter school because it is so much structure for this free spirit...but that is exactly why we need it now.  it has been the perfect transition for us from a traditional brick and mortar school to a homeschool family. 
i also love that our whole life no longer revolves around school.  our life now focuses on learning, each other, and others to a whole new level.  i am grateful for this opportunity and i pray that it is an opportunity that my kids continue to enjoy in the years to come.