Homeschooling at the Academy, Part 1

For the next several days, I thought I would publish a series of blog entries on what a typical homeschooling day looks like at our house. While all days are different in reality, I thought a glimpse into the normal routine might help some of the visitors to this blog. We have quite a split in the readers here - our families and family friends for whom we may be the only homeschoolers they know, and our church family and friends here, most of whom homeschool. But I get alot of questions from the first group, mostly along this lines of, "So what exactly do you guys do?" or "So how do you teach _____ ?" I don't expect these posts to address every detail, but I thought a glimpse into our lives might help our families and those of you who don't homeschool understand us a little better. So my homeschooling friends, please bear with me and don't think I am saying this is the way it HAS to be. This is just the way it is in our house, this year. This could all change next year.

Smith Academy for Girls
Current enrollment:3 (with 2 more in our pre-school department)
grades: 5 (Kora, age 10)
3 (Aubrey, age 8)
and K (Brynna, age almost 6)

5:00 - Yes, our day starts at 5 a.m. And no, there will be no pictures from this part of our day. I'm up, but it ain't pretty. Yes, I know this is disgustingly early, and no, I am not a naturally early riser. But we do this to have time to work out before the day really starts. From 5 until about 7:45 a.m. is set aside for exercising, making and eating breakfast, and showering. Kelly exercises first, showers, and is usually off for work around 6:30 to 6:45 while I am still running on the elliptical.

7:10 - Kora and Aubrey get up and get dressed, make beds, and read Bibles.

7:30 - Kora and Aubrey come downstairs, bringing any laundry from their room and bathroom that is to be washed that day, and start eating breakfast. Brynna and Hailey get up, get dressed, make their beds, and come down for breakfast as well. Lauryn gets up usually between 7:45 and 8. I get her dressed, make her bed, and bring her down for breakfast.

8:00 - Kora and Aubrey begin morning chore time. They unload the dishwasher, start laundry, clean the downstairs bath, etc. The other three are still finishing up breakfast.

Kora and Aubrey dusting the entertainment center.

8:30 - Lessons begin. From 8:30 to about 10:30 is usually Language Arts and foreign languages. Kora and Aubrey both do their grammar, spelling, dictation, and Latin assignments for the day. Kora also does a Mindbender (beginning logic exercise) and Greek.

Here's Kora using the dictionary for a grammar exercise.

Aubrey copying this week's spelling rules.

Brynna is still working through her phonics book, but we should finish that up next week. Today she was reading sentences like "The psychologist helped Eugene conquer his fear of spiders." She then has a page of copywork (handwriting), a page of math, and a spelling assignment. Her work generally takes about an hour.

Brynna copying sentences for handwriting work.

10:30 - Usually this is about the time the two older girls finish up their other work and start their math. This is not a hard and fast time - there's no bell ringing to tell them to change subjects. One of the beauties of homeschooling is that you work at your own pace. There's no waiting for everyone else to finish. When the girls finish one lesson, they put it in the pile for me to check, and move on to the next. Sometimes they are starting math at 10, sometimes 10:45. But this is about average.

Kora: Saxon 7/6 (sixth grade book); Aubrey: Saxon 5/4 (fourth grade book)

And this post is long enough. I'll continue about our day in part 2. If you have a question about something, please leave a comment, I'll be glad to answer. If you look over on the right hand side of the blog, there is a section on the curriculum we use if you are wondering.