*"A Day in the Life of Homeschoolers"*

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Another day in the life of my home-unschooling 8 year old son:

Up at 8.00 ish. Played in room/told stories with lego characters.
9.00-13.00. Computer. Games. Today mainly Runescape. He was investigating how different defensive strategies in a mini war game affected the outcome. Had fun exchanging remarks with fellow players.
13.00. Lunch.
14.00 - 15.15 Official "home-school-work". Found on internet in what way 4 named buildings in Paris are used by the Govt. Wrote this onto the exercise paper. Another two tangram exercises.
15.15- 19.00 Mixture of internet, mainly Wrongplanet reading and posting today, after I dug up an old unused username for him, plus some playing with Lego, and teatime/snack.
19.00-20.00 Lego Bionicle video- game.
20.00 Getting ready for bed, and goodnight.
20.30 -21.00 Reading
21.30 Lights off.

Day in the life of our home school
7am get up and yoga and meditation
breakfast and bathing
930 art/ music/ sewing
10 short activity like writing skills or maths
1030 fruit and juice
11 longer activity like experiments, baking, gardening
1230 lunch
afternoons are free play for the kids where they do what they like- painting, reading, videos, insect hunting etc and I do painting or studying (Im doing an msc).
Later on we come together for dinner and then do a dog walk and more meditating and yoga before bedtime and stories.
I think home is a great place to work on lifeskills and helping your child find solutions for their difficulties. For example because my daughter has problems with spilling and falling we have got a mesh (fryer style) inner pan so she can drain veggies without lifting the pan off the stove.

I think that sounds absolutely lovely.

I can't imagine being able to achieve that level of active, varied, hands-on learning with my son. Too much structure. I find it a strain just getting my son to fencing or karate, and don't even attempt to do "homework"/correspondence course stuff on the same day!

But he is learning to read more and faster all the time, and speaks more and more fluently.

Generally communication is improving; for instance playing Runescape today he has been spouting complex and funny dialogue to go with the action. Commentaries etc. Also is increasingly using the public messaging/chat to joke and natter with people in game.

I also picked "Other" as we now use a completely computer-based program for his core curriculum. We do it for many reasons - 1) our state requires that home schooled kids do a certain amount of hours per subject, at home, and records have to kept. The time amount is hard for my son because he can do a week's worth of work in a couple of hours. And the record keeping....well I SUCK at keeping any kind of records. So it is nice to have the computer keep it for me. 2) My son has difficulty handling the 'social aspect' of being taught, and also has difficulties with self-starting. And he LOVES his laptop --- After reading one of Tony Attwood's books, we decided to spend the money on Alpha Omega's Switched on Schoolhouse program - we figured if it worked, great, because nothing has worked in the last 2 years since we pulled him out of PS. And if it didn't work, well then that is one more method we can sweep under the rug. Well we finally got lucky and it is a total hit. Since he is technically 3 grades behind on his basic studies, I set it up to where he has to do one grade in 3 months, instead of 9 months, but he is doing great with it.

Our typical day is quite chaotic, I am trying to provide structure but our family has been through so many changes in the last few months that it is pretty impossible. But it pretty much goes like this:

~9AM: everyone is up and I start breakfast, or the kids help themselves to muffins and juice and a piece of fruit.

~930: Devon (he is 11 btw) gets about 30 minutes to do what he wants, whether it be playing his DS or watching a bit of cartoons with his little brothers.

~10AM - If he is having a 'good day' he goes into the office and gets on his computer to start school - he works on the subjects that he can do alone and leaves the ones he needs help on until I can get a chance to go in and help him. (If he is having a 'bad day' due to lack of sleep, pressure changes, etc. then we usually skip school until he is feeling better, it is pretty much a worthless cause to even attempt it if he can't focus or function.)

~12pm - We have lunch, Devon usually helps me make lunch for the family, he helps his little brothers set the table and we usually lounge over lunch for 45 minutes or so, and we talk and joke around and whatnot.

~1pm- if it is nice outside, and he has finished his main studies, we let the boys run around outside for a while. We also take this time to do out outside chores. We have a small herd of goats, 5 dogs, and several types of gardens on the ranch so we use all of this as a teaching tool. My husband majored in Biology and Agriculture in college, and I majored in Zoology and Genetics, and Devon's favourite subject is definitely science -- so we use our knowledge to teach him facts about animal breeding, plant growth and diseases, and even what is going to happen when our goats start giving birth in the next few weeks. He latest little obsession is Scientific Nomenclature, he loves to memorize the scientific names of everything he comes in contact with.



~5pm - The boys and I come inside so that I can start dinner - Devon will either play a video game or work or surf the internet or something.

~6pm - We eat dinner, talk about what we have all learned throughout the day, and just spend time together as a family.

After dinner, I think that Devon is pretty much at his 'done with it for the day' point and he just goes to his room to be alone for the night.

I am very proud of the way my son has been doing with this computer curriculum. He may be only at a 3rd grade level for math (which my parents seem to point out a LOT), but he is doing high-level college science (which only his dad and I seem to think is just totally amazing!). This program gives you an up-to-date grade on everything they have done so far, and he gets A's and B's and this makes him very proud of himself (since he was struggling in PS so badly that he was getting D's and F's). I know that a lot of home school parents don't like to do the whole grade thing, but it really seems to boost my son's self esteem when he can print out his grade sheet and show them off to his step-sisters and his grandparents.


On that note...I am so glad I found some fellow home schoolers on this board. The only homeschoolers in this area are....uhm...how do I explain it?!?! "NT's with bad attitudes"??? yeah that works. hehe. They didn't seem to understand my son, nor did they seem to want to when we attended their little get-togethers.



A little funny homeschool quip, brought to you by my mother: Back when Devon was in public school, he always got upset because he had no friends and got bullied a lot. My mother's response was always "School is about an education, not about making friends." Finally (for many reasons) I decided to start home schooling Devon. My mother's first response was, "Well what about socially? How is he going to make any friends if you have him at home all the time?"