I thought I would share our daily rhythm. I take a very structured approach to educating my girls, which makes me rather an oddity amongst my home educating friends, who mostly favour an autonomous approach.
How our days generally progress:
Monday – Thursday
7am – The girls get up, bring pillows & covers down to the living room & I read aloud for an hour while they eat breakfast.
8am – They read quietly. Elianna usually reads her ‘Literature’ choice, sometimes ‘popcorn’ style with me, Rose reads a science book.
8:30 – Latin with Elianna, Rose gets dressed & does her chores
9am – Rose works on her maths lesson & then she reads to me from her ‘Literature’ choice (currently Beatrix Potter) Elianna showers, dresses & does her chores.
10am– maths for Elianna, free play for Rose.
10:30 – Writing, spelling, and grammar for everyone. They work from different books, Ellie often takes herself off to her ‘reading room’ to work on this & I sit ‘elbow to elbow’ with Rose 🙂
Rose’s lessons are usually much shorter than Elianna’s, so get gets lots of chunks to play, throughout the day. She has such a vibrant imagination, I usually hear her chatting away, playing with her bears, or wooden animals, or lego figures…
11:30 -Memory work; poetry, Shakespeare, maths facts, grammar facts, and the periodic table song – but not all on the same day 🙂
12-lunch
1pm/1:30 depending on how the day is going!
Monday is usually our Pond Study day, so we are out for the afternoon.
Tuesday to Thursday are for History.
Dependant on the day, Elianna either reads from the Kingfisher encyclopaedia, outlines from what she has read, reads a primary source document & writes a paragraph about it, or reads from a history book & writes a narration.
Rose reads from a history book for around 20-30 minutes.
2pm/2:30 Free time…but no T.V. but often the girls paint, sketch, model with clay, or sew. Sometimes we do watch a documentary or film.
After dinner the girls often enjoy watching a T.V. program with their dad. Rose is tucked up in bed at 8pm & Ellie goes upstairs to read. She reads a chapter from whatever science book I have assigned.
Then she then either reads from her own choice, (currently she is taken with Greek/Roman/Norse myths, or comic books) or sketches & colours.
Fridays are completely different – we still have read aloud time in the morning, plus quiet reading time. The girls add anything they have read about in history to our time line, I have allocated time to work with Rose on anything to do with Little Passports ~ reading related books, looking places up on the map etc.then the rest of our morning is science & art. Friday afternoon is free for outings & meeting friends & family.
This year I have not got into a regular rhythm of picture study. I have ordered a few books from the ‘Come Look With Me‘ series. I will be using these during Friday morning Read Aloud time, so hopefully this will get us enjoying picture study again.
This is my guide for our days. We do not always follow this rhythm…but it gives me a structure to work with.
How do your days flow?
I find it reassuring to have some kind of rhythm as a guide for our days. We tried to go freewheeling for a short while but it work too well, so we’re back to following a rhythm as well.
🙂
I am very much a rhythm person. This year I am finding having actual *times* to do things helpful too.
Like you, I don’t do freewheeling well 🙂
Oops, meant to say that wheeling DIDN’T work too well…. sorry about the missing word!
Oh no! More typos! I’m not well, so I blame my cold for all my mistakes. Now, what I want to say is, “freewheeling didn’t work too well”…. I’d better go to bed now!
ugh, colds, they sap the brain & body. I hope you are better soon!
I got what you were saying 😉
Our days work so much better with a set order. In fact, I find that we do the daily items regularly with no difficulty but the weekly items are so much more difficult to remember and get right even when I have a piece of paper to remind me.
Thanks for your comment, it is great to speak with like minded educators. I am nodding away at your observation! As I mentioned, most of my home ed friends are autonomous, so they think I am completely bonkers!