A Typical Day

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What does a typical homeschool day look like in our larger than average family here in Singapore? Actually it is only typical for this season of our lives. It keeps changing when the family’s needs change. As the old adage goes, the only thing constant is change, is definitely true here! How we homeschool and even the curriculum we use have changed. How we do chores has also changed. In fact, how we parent has also changed 😀

At this point in time, we have 7 children, aged 13 down to 2.5 years old. It is very different when I started out homeschooling with just 4 children, aged 6 and below, while heavily pregnant!

But to prevent this post being a mile long, I will just address homeschooling mainly and some chores. I have been thinking of writing this for a l-o-n-g time, since last year actually but I never got the time to do it. But recently a few people have been asking me how our days are like. So I thought that I should get off my butt and write it down.

Some Background

This is our 8th year homeschooling. I have mentioned in my previous posts that we use our local curriculum for the preparation for PSLE. And we use Student of the Word* for our Bible.

UPDATE: It is with sadness that I discovered that Student of the Word no longer exists. 

Before each school year starts (we start in August and if you want to know why, please read Homeschool Planning). I do up my master planner. After which I transfer 6 weeks’ of work into each child’s individual planner.

Please also note that this is the way we homeschool now. We did not start out this way.

Morning Routine

Every morning upon waking, everyone showers and brushes his/her teeth. Then each child will take out his individual planner and check through the list of work to be completed. If he/she wakes up before me (which is almost the case :P) he/she will work on his/her work immediately. Work is interrupted when breakfast is served, eaten and cleared up by the breakfast helper.

If however, a child wakes up after me, then he just eats his breakfast before starting on his work. Sometimes a child may decide to just play instead of work before breakfast. That is fine with me 🙂

Bible Together

Once the breakfast table is cleared, we start our Bible lessons using SOW with children aged 6 and above, or 5 if they are matured enough to understand and follow along. While this is going on, the 4 and 2 yr old will play by themselves. Then the children are excused and they either start their day’s work or continue from where they left off before breakfast.

One-on-One

I will then take the 4 yr old one-on-one. The 2-year-old often sits in and observes what we are doing, sometimes offering the answers before big sister does 😀 I only do one-on-one with the pre-schoolers. The older children do their work independently.

If during this time any of the older ones have a question for me, they will just have to wait. After all, I only spend 30 minutes with the little ones. Once nursery/preschool school is over, they go back to their play. Then I start helping those who need help and/or go through work that I was not able to do so the day before.

Lunch

Usually, this takes me to 12 noon. This is when I will start lunch preparations or give instructions to my chef-in-training what to prepare/cook. Lunch is served at 12:30pm.

Read-alouds

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will usually read aloud to all at the lunch table (including the 2 yr old) a book that no one has read before. (Yes, I hide these books from my avid readers so that they will be all ears instead of spacing out on me or talking to each other when I am reading.) On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I eat in peace with my newspapers or iPhone 😀

Naps and Snacks

After lunch the two lunch helpers clear up – one to clear the table and sweep the floor, the other to wash the dishes. There is usually a little break for me here before I send the 2 youngest ones to nap. I usually take a short 10 to 30-minute nap too 🙂 Then while she continues napping I will clear some emails or start dinner preparation.

Next comes snack time 🙂 While the children are having their afternoon snack, I start grading their work. I always make myself feel better by grading and clearing the work of the younger ones first 😀

Science

On Mondays to Thursdays, I do Science with the middle children, using the Exploring Creation series by Apologia Science. Once that is done, I attack the work of the older ones which require more brain power from me. Ahh!! This is where I often am tempted to drink another cup of caffeine-filled drink!

Grading Work and Corrections

I try to go through any mistakes made on the same day so that the work is still fresh in their minds and, more importantly, so that mistakes are quickly corrected. I try not to leave work ungraded until the end of the week. But I don’t always succeed, of course 🙁

I now have a secret weapon in attacking the huge pile of Maths workbooks to be graded! My 13 year old who is great in Maths! 😀

I pay him to mark them all! Then I go through the corrections with each child. Sometimes (quite often lately I am afraid) my brains are so fried I even need him to explain the Maths to his siblings!) But I do not allow him to teach them unless I say so.

Why?

Well, first of all, patience is not his strongest point 🙂 And since his mathematically-wired brain sees numbers differently from the rest of us, his explanations sometimes serve to confuse them further. So I will make him explain it to me and then I explain it to them. 😀

Done!

My homeschool day is officially over by 5pm. It is often interspersed with lots of interruptions, and sometimes even a grocery trip or two! 🙂 The children’s day is over the moment they hand in their workbox to me. Unless they have lots of corrections to do or they need to re-do certain pieces of work.

Once all that is done, I am free to prepare/cook dinner. Depending on what we are eating, all I may have to do is cook, preparation is done by the 13-year-old. Otherwise, I do everything by myself.

Housework and Showers

While we have our dinner, our Roomba is usually tasked to vacuum the Living Area and Kitchen. Once dinner is over, it is brought to the Dining Area to finish up. It is our best purchase ever!

If Henson is home, he helps me with the dishes and showers the 2 young ones. Otherwise, I do that too. By 9pm, everyone is rounded up and we start our bedtime routine. We read a chapter from the Bible, have our prayers and the middle children are packed off to bed. The 2 older ones are allowed to stay up because well, they are older 😀 The  2 younger ones are allowed to stay up because they still take their naps. By 10pm, this group are also packed off to bed and peace and silence reigns in the house finally!

Me time?

Not really. I either clear work that I could not clear in the day – usually my 13 yr old’s work which requires me to read and absorb stuff that I haven’t paid any attention to for a l-o-n-g time!

This is also the time when I clear my emails, veg out over Facebook or do whatever internet research I want/need to do. Bedtime for me is, unfortunately, more often than not at 2am though I try very hard to sleep by 1am.

Come the next day, the circus begins its show all over again 😀

This, of course, is generally what happens here but there are always interruptions, unplanned outings, visits from friends, etc that will throw us off our usual routine but it is fine as long as these interruptions are not a daily occurrence because then I can’t keep up with the grading of the schoolwork 🙁

So there you go, a typical day in our house.

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