What do you do all day?

Every wonder what your homeschooling friends do all day? Now is your chance to find out! The Heart of the Matter blog has a fun meme today - "A Day in the Life" of homeschoolers.

Below is my submission:

I'm up at 6 or 6:30 (depends on the bedtime the night before) to shower and dress. I hate getting up that early and I hate getting showered and dressed right away, but I've found that it is the best way to make sure I stay on top of my day. So, I do it.

Next, I make tea or coffee, read my Daily Office, and spend some time in prayer. The kids are still sleeping while I look over my day, chores, errands, meals, etc. I often get a chore or two done (laundry, a bathroom cleaned, etc).

Around 8, I wake the kids up. They take care of getting themselves up, dressed, beds made, teeth brushed, etc. When they come down, breakfast is waiting for them. I have one child who must have a good breakfast, so I make a full breakfast almost every morning. After they are done with breakfast, they do their morning chore (only one - any more than that and we never get to school): DS 11 feeds and waters the dogs, DS 8 cleans up the kids' bathroom, and DD 6 feeds and waters the cats.

On Wednesdays, we have Classical Conversations. We are there from 9 until 3. But during the rest of the week our days look like this:

I try to get the kitchen cleaned up while and school books out while they do chores. But sometimes the dishes wait until after lunch.

School starts at 9ish.

• First we have family prayer and bible reading. I'm using a wonderful book: The Anglican Family Prayer Book by Anne E. Kitch. We do "Morning Prayer" - part of it and use the weekly prayer cycle to guide our prayers. This is really quite informal.
• Next is Math. We all do math together. I give the eldest his math practice problems (review) and do math instruction with the other two. Then I give them a table activity to work on (puzzle, drawing, etc) while I teach eldest his math lessons. While he works on that, the younger two and I play a math game.
• Then we read a poem or two (or three) and whatever family reading we are enjoying. Right now it is "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew". This we enjoy while snuggled up on the couch.
• Next we pull out our Veritas Press timeline cards. We do a few different things with them: shuffle them up and put them in order or make up buzz words that cue us to the title, or read the backs and learn a little something to flesh out our history a bit.
• Back to the table to work on English, Grammar, Writing, Phonics. How this goes each day is a bit of a toss up. I often get the eldest started on some grammar work (from Classical Conversations "Essentials") and then play a game with the younger two. Then I switch off working with either my 8 or 6 year old while the other one plays on Starfall.com (a great FREE online phonics program). My eldest needs more help in writing, so we often have to do more of this in the afternoon. I'm working on adding copy work for the youngest two. They could do this while I work with the eldest.
• Then we pull out our Classical Conversations memory work. We just spend a few minutes looking at this. I often skip this, because we have a CD we listen to in the car quite frequently with good results.
• Finally, we spend a little time reading aloud in our subject of the day. Monday is Christian studies, Tuesday is history, Thursday is folk tales/literature, and Friday is science.

Now, we break for lunch and a bit of relaxation (the time is around 12:30).
At 1:30 we all retreat to our rooms for "Read or Rest". I expect the kids to sit quietly on their beds and either read (or look at books) or rest. My eldest LOVES this time - the other two often balk.
At 2:30, we start our afternoon session. This includes chores, individual reading, and soon will include family lessons of French or Latin. Then we finish with a snack at 4:00 and they spend the rest of the afternoon playing outside.
I get to enjoy some time catching up on emails, phone calls and such.
I'm thinking about making Friday into "Fine Arts and Fun Science" Friday. These are things we often don't get to. My eldest son would still do some math and grammar, but then we'd enjoy a day of Picture Study, art lesson, science experiment, etc. It sure would be fun! We'll see...
Now, go by The Heart of the Matter and check out the rest of the submissions!