Homeschool Shenanigans

I am on the road today on official Shenanigans Inc. business, and I thought this may be a good day to show you what a typical day of homeschooling looks like around here.

The madness begins at 8:00 am.  I discovered last year that Elliot's weakness is "screen time", and since then, our mornings run very smoothly. The deal is that if Elliot finishes his morning routine by 7am he can get one hour of screen time before school starts.  You should see that boy spring out of his bed!

At 8:00 am we work on Spelling, Cursive, Logic (Elliot), Math, and Grammar.

 

At this point, I sit at the table in my jammies with a cup of peppermint tea "motivating" the boys to focus on their work.

We usually wrap this up around 10am, and then it is time for a snack and child-led gym class (tee hee!)

I wish I could say that our snack is always healthy, but it is usually something very sugary and oh, so very yummy!

Gym class usually starts out on the bikes, then moves to football, and finishes up with weapons training:

I love these boys!

At 10:30 am the boys curl up to read.  The curriculum I am using this year (The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer) recommends children read adapted versions of the classics.  At the moment, Elliot is reading the Odyssey and he loves it!  In fact, I usually can't tear him away from it.

Avery is working his way through the Magic Tree House series (I am sure you could argue that these books are classics  . . . tee hee!  Sometimes you just have to read what you are interested in).  After reading, the boys write a summary about what they read, and then they alternate between practising the piano and doing one-on-one sound work with me.

Then it is lunch time!

After lunch, the boys and I work on a History or Science lesson.  This is their favourite part of the day!  In science we are working on an Astronomy unit.  On this particular day we were learning about the planets in our solar system and modelling them out of clay.

For the record, Avery's solar system includes Pluto.  He finds it very disturbing that Pluto was removed because he is too small.  SMALL IS POWERFUL!  (the Webster motto)

The boys love our afternoon lessons because they typically involve hands-on lessons like the one above.

In history, we are using a program called The Story of the World.  It is amazing!  Unfortunately, I have lots to say about it and will have to leave it for another day.  

That's our day in a nutshell.  If you throw in a little whining, some arguing, lots of hand-to-hand combat (I swear this is only between the boys and I never get involved), and lots of laughs, you have a typical homeschooling day at Shenanigans Inc.

And we better get to it . . .

Have a great day!