A Homeschooling Day in the Life

Depending on how you look at it (or who's doing the looking), you could say we had an extremely productive school day (or you could say we did no school at all).

At about 7:45 this morning I called Jonathan and Madi downstairs to watch a DVD about the Korean War (one of those Decades DVDs). During this they prepared and ate breakfast. At 9:00 we met One Blessed Mamma and kids at our Friday hiking/nature spot, Kiwi and her kids later joined us. The kids spent a little more than an hour hiking and exploring (Madi fell in the stream). Then Jonathan banged his head pretty hard on a branch and he was ready to go. We had an adventure hiking out of there as I was worried about Jonathan, Madi was still pretty wet and muddy, and Jake's legs kept getting scratched by prickers (he was sure to let me know it was my fault he wore shorts!!). Jonathan and I saw a gopher tortoise in his home on our way out (Jake and Madi took a different route and missed it).

Once at home, Jonathan took some advil and a shower and felt much better. The rest of us bathed too (you get pretty dirty there!). By that time our little buddy Baby X was getting dropped off. Madi fed him while I got lunch ready. During lunch we continued with the 50s DVD and learned all about Jonas Salk and Polio. Baby X napped for a little while during the movie. Then Jonathan and Madi took him to play outside while they took a load of laundry off the line and out another one on. Jake vacuummed up all of the crumbs and cheerios that he and Baby X had gotten on the kitchen floor. Somewhere around this time I was able to finish my book (Breaking Dawn) and check email. I found out that the deadline for the magazine "for kids by kids" was going to be extended another day or so so my kids could get to work and write articles for it. {I had known today was the deadline and we hadn't done anything about it} I'd considered having them sit this one out, but instead "encouraged them" to get cracking on articles...so Jonathan wrote one about FDR and Madi wrote one about the spring break camp (also "for kids by kids"--the same kids!).

Jake and I read How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World (our last day for that Five in a Row book--I think we did about 8 days actually). The pictures in the book are done with watercolors, so Jake did a watercolor picture of an apple tree. We brought some ocean water home from the beach the other day, and we poured some in a pie pan and set it in the sun to "evaporate the salt from the seawater".

I then brought Baby X to his Mom while Madi packed for a slumber party tonight. On my way out I yelled up the stairs for Jonathan to do some math, but never checked to see if he did or not. At this point there was just barely enough time to squeeze in one more segment of the 50s DVD...Dwight Eisenhower...then off to Theatre. After dropping them off I went to the library to check out another 50s Decades DVD, as well as some episodes of Happy Days, and some books on the 40s and 50s. Now here I am. You make the call was it a productive day of school or no school at all?