How a day looks

For quick reference, I have a 7.5 year old girl, a 4.5 year old girl, and a 20 month old son.

My oldest is doing a sweep through American history this year. She's also studying Norse mythology. We're doing this with a lot of living books and reading time together.

My middle child is diligently working on reading and developing patience and listening skills.

My toddler is working on how many things he can possibly destroy in each moment.

Morning begins with breakfast and then free play time for the kids. I drink coffee and relax for a little while, then everyone gets dressed/teeth brushed, ect.

Then we sit together and I read to them. Sweet Pea needs to listen closely, the toddler doesn't listen at all unless it's a picture book, and Little Bird wavers between the two. Right now we are reading the Witch of Blackbird Pond. This book is about Puritans and has been a good look at the different way of life the Puritans followed. We've marked the time in Sweet Pea's timeline book. Today the places in the book that came up were Boston, and the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island. We brought out the map and found and marked the places.

After we did our reading together I made a snack for the kids. My kids love to snack. Sweet Pea took her snack and her reader- the Matchlock Gun- and went and read it by herself. Well, not totally alone- she snuggled with the cat who is always happy to keep her company.

While she was doing that the two littles and I read picture books while they ate. Once their food was gone Moose played with playdoh, then colored with crayons. Little Bird read me a short book. She colored me a picture then, too.

By the time they were done with that Sweet Pea was ready to come down and tell me about what she read. This is called narration when done a specific way and is part of our language arts approach. We alternate this with dictation. The dictation and copywork we do comes straight from the books Sweet Pea is reading. After she does her writing we dissect the sentences for their parts of speech and how they are put together. This is how we are doing grammar right now.

After that today Sweet Pea pulled out her math workbook and did four lessons.

I think she would have done more, but her father came home for lunch then and math can't compete with that!

After we have lunch together as a family, the girls went upstairs to play. They are making a play together and enjoy putting on costumes and coming up with songs.

The toddler practiced throwing a ball with my husband and I cleaned up lunch. We chatted about our mornings, and enjoyed coffee. Then he had to go back to work.

After lunch every day we have quiet time. The toddler usually sleeps for two hours. I will make a confession here- he often sleeps in my arms as I rock him. My 4 year old usually sleeps for 30 minutes or so and then she plays with her baby dolls or builds with her legos. I expect her to be quiet for 2 hours but I am pretty open to how she spends that time at this point. My 7 year old reads during this time. Sometimes she also works on a puzzle, does legos, or draws. She also uses this time sometimes to knit or make pot holders with a small loom.

When nap time is done I am planning on science. We are reading books about our planet and our solar system. We are also making a scale model of the solar system out of clay. So far we have made Mercury and Venus, so this afternoon we will be making Earth.

After that, it's more snack. During afternoon snack we do Bible and Catechism. The girls have piano practice to do, too, and then the rest of the afternoon is theirs to do whatever they want. At this time, too, we work on Latin and French.

And that's how our days go.