"Still Alive!" (in my best Croods impression)

We're rolling into week 2 of our homeschool experiment and it will really be the first full week of mommy-led teaching in both reading and math. We had a bit of a hiccup with what I planned for reading, so we mainly just did math each day last week in addition to daily reading. We also had a couple of wonderful snow days, so rare in NC, of which we took full advantage.

Our day in a nutshell:

7:30- 8 Wakeup. The girls are responsible for making up their bed, brushing teeth and going potty before we go downstairs. Right now, they're waking me up, but I will start getting up at 6:30 or so to have some personal time. That is, if I can sneak out of bed without waking Eli, which hasn't really been possible yet. He is thoroughly attached to Mama.

8-9:30 Breakfast & Free Time - They will sometimes ask for a tv show so I'll oblige after they eat as I'm still waking up and need to clean up dishes. I would love to set up a kids dishwashing station to put them to work! It will be in our next house for sure. I'll usually feed the baby and putter around gathering up whatever stuff we need to get started.

10-11:30 Snack and reading: Right now we are using a mix of things as I see what works best. On deck we have All About Reading Level 1 for Gabster & Explode the Code. She loves doing workbooks, so that makes my life easy. She's a bit further along than level one in AAR, but the review is good and we're doing two lessons at a time. Towards the end it will all be new, so we'll do just one lesson a day. We alternate, so she does Explode the Code T/Th to reinforce. AAR is nice in that it involves some manipulation of letters with tiles. I can involve soon to be 4 Lil Bit nto the activities. I set her up with a dry erase board and she occupies herself practicing writing and pointing out letters she knows. She helps big sister with cutting and pasting too, so fun for all.

After AAR or ETC, we do Five in a Row. This is our try at unit studies. At first, I was underwhelmed. It's pitched to be an all encompassing curriculum, but it is absolutely not. It is a wonderful way to incorporate social studies and science for young learners though, using literature as the "spine" of the lessons. So again, this a great tool to involve Lili, while being able to ask Gabster lots of deeper questions to expand on things. We're starting with Katy in the Big Snow. It is a awesome book and chock full of things to draw from. I'm obsessed with Pinterest as there's so much out there. Tomorrow, we're drawing a big "map to Grandmas" imagining we're Katy, plowing through the snow unearthing all the buildings on the way. That will lead us into talking about community helpers, directions using a compass, addition with measuring snow, etc. So much fun! We'll spend 2 weeks per book.

12-12:30 Lunch

1 - 3 - Lil Bit takes a nap (thank God for that!), and Gabster and I do math. We are using Singapore Math for the main curriculum and it's a good fit so far. It is very easy for me as a teacher to direct and Gabster just loves math period so it's a breeze. We also use Life of Fred. It's a funny little series of a books that takes students all the way to calculus with the same character Fred. It doesn't offer enough practice in my opinion, but it's a nice change and brings math to real life situations. We do math for about 30 to 45 minutes depending on how much I have to stop with Eli. I'm thinking of adding in computer time at this point too, so a fun app or game that reinforces math.

3-5 Snack, free time and dinner prep - Gabster is spent at this point, so we're done! Lili is up and they go off for adventures. She usually does some art too and likes to write a story with what she draws, but it's really all whatever she wants to do.

It's working so well. I'm so happy. If we have to run out and do errands, we just pick up where we left off later. I love that this can really be done in whatever way we want. During all this time, Eli takes a nap in the Boba carrier, gets to play with food in the highchair and nurses on demand. He's cruising so I'm always keeping an eye out as he's super fast!

Oddly enough, my days seem to be easier? It's as if this has tripped my brain to be more focused on maximizing all my time so I can be fully present during lessons. Perhaps it's just what I've needed all along to really make staying at home work for me. I sort of fell into the stay at home mom role, and up until now I've always felt I needed to be "doing" something other than just managing the house and kids. This speaks to my inner geek, and I get so excited for the next day's activities. Life is good.