Why, How, and What do We do?

As you may know, we began homeschooling Elf eight years ago because of abuse in public schools.  He's now a freshman in public school full-time.  We continue with our younger children because we find that that's best for them right now.  (Woodjie is severely autistic and school just wasn't working.)  We can work at their pace and move on to the next topic or subject when they are ready.  So this post is just a general outline of what a typical day usually looks like.

Rose, Woodjie and Emperor go to tournaments every Monday.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014.

5:30

Emperor wanted to get up early to watch one of the games of the World Chess Championship.  I poked him and went back to bed, trusting he would wake Elf at 6 am so that he could get to school.

7:20

Rose's alarm goes off.  She's a big girl now!  I hear the alarm and get Woodjie up.  The little children have a picture schedule and know to do their bathroom routine, make their beds, and come down for breakfast.  They brush their teeth and I comb hair and that sort of thing and clean the kitchen.

7:50

Rose begins mathematics at the computer while Woodjie copies his spelling words and writes three sentences about a topic.  They switch when Rose is done.  As I have time between checking their work and helping them with their problems, I pull each younger child to do reading as they are at different levels. 

9:30

Woodjie and Rose are done or almost done with their work, and have a little free time in their room upstairs.  I am helping Emperor review his social studies today.  I do very little actual teaching of Emperor, except in this class.  Most of my other work with him entails reviewing his workbook and asking him a few questions to be sure he understands the material.  For chess, he has lessons with a grandmaster and plays in tournaments.  His abilities exceeded mine in that department when he was about 10.

10:00

Make lunches and drive Emperor to school where he is a seventh-grader part time.  At home he takes chess, Latin, Reading (a required subject for homeschoolers) and social studies.  His science, PE and computers, high school honours Algebra I, choir, and English language he takes at school.  He also is a member of the Crochet Club.

10:25

We arrive at Patrick's community college and drop him off.  To save gas, I've packed our schoolwork and we head to a nearby library, where we usually picnic outside the van and then go in to do schoolwork at a table.  It's getting a bit cold to sit outside today, however.  Lunch is eaten in the van.

11:00

Science workbooks.  Right now, we're learning about the colours of the rainbow in science class.  Roy G. Biv and all that.  I also pull out our English worksheets and when we're done, the children browse in the library and read some books.  They each get one book to check out (I can't lift much and besides, we'll be back Thursday) and read the others at the library until Patrick calls for pickup between 1:15 and 1:45.

2:00 pm

Home.  Showers for little people and they are allowed to play games on the kindle for an hour. 

Now, obviously, on other days we'll switch subjects or that sort of thing to be sure that everything is covered.  And just like in public schools, we have days where children are sick and can't make it to class, or field trip days or just plain old days off.  Actually, we homeschool through the entire year, so my children have fewer days off than public-schoolers, but they are also working fewer hours per day so it works out nicely.