Typical Day

Maddy and I have a pretty good routine down now and as things are mastered new things move in to take the place. Below is a glimpse into how we spend most of our days. I feel that we should be busy for most if not all of the day. In this house, it is not sit at the table for an hour and BINGO done.

Maddy has to get up by herself with an alarm clock and must be properly dressed for the day. We think this is an important skill for her to have. She must be downstairs and ready for school by 9 in the morning.

We start off with breakfast and depending on her mood and her desire for a certain type of food what to have can be an interesting conversation.

Maddy: Sigh *eye roll* I suppose I have to help make breakfast again?

Me: Yep, what do you want?

Maddy: Hmm..I don't really want to help cook, I guess I will have cereal.

Me: We can make muffins.

Maddy: Yummy, well I suppose I can help make those.

Once the muffins are in the oven I have her get started on the laundry. She is currently learning how to sort between light and dark clothes. As I clean the kitchen I get to answer yes or no to the constant question of "Is this a dark?".

After we eat the muffins and pick up from that she has to wipe the kitchen counters. Now that breakfast is done we can move to the table for actual school work with breaks to move or fold laundry.

Table work will consist of things like making change, I will either give her money word problems to solve and make the change for or she has to make amounts for me. Recently to help with the desire of only using dimes and pennies I have started giving her change and she has to tell me the amount. We occasionally do a little addition, subtraction, and multiplication for good measure as well.

For English she has to read, we are working in 3/4 grade grammar workbook that is great and Maddy has writing prompts each week. Currently science is all about the human body since that is her main interest right now. (Post coming about that soon!). Social studies usually consists of reading maps and geography.

Table work for us depending on how well it is working will usually last about 2 hours give or take. After that we move on to life skills and housework. Maddy has to dry mop the floors twice a week and she also has to clean the blinds and do some other general dusting. We are working up to bigger things like the dishwasher.

Life skills is a fun one. We do things like her showing me how she washes her hair so I can give her tips on how to do it better. She cuts hot dogs to work on her cutting and handling forks and knives. We use the hot dogs to work with Bruiser so they are not wasted. She has to cut and tape things from books or magazine.

Maddy is required to write out the shopping list and helps decide what we will have for dinners during the week. When we go shopping she has to help find things and at times will have to go and find me in the store. We use the self check out and she scans everything while I bag. She is also in charge of paying for the groceries.

We love to have lunch out with friends and we try to do this once every two weeks or so. She gets to interact with people and try new foods and restaurants.

At any given time a "teachable moment" might come up and off on a tangent we go. Those are the really fun days.

On a great and perfect home school day we start 9 and finish about 2:30-3:00.