What does a typical day look like?

I educate my children every minute of the day, dynamically and relevantly, and utterly flexibly. I accommodate my toddler in our activities – sometimes she will just play with her own toys and entertain herself while I’m with the other two (as long as she is in the same room then that’s fine); sometimes we’ll be doing something that she insists she wants to be part of so she joins in. For a short period of time when she became really mobile things were extremely fluid and we had to adjust, then it all got easier again. I’ve noticed that she seems to pick up information by osmosis and demonstrates her understanding of things, or her memory of letters and numbers, or new words, even without any direct coaching from me.

Two mornings and three afternoons a week we have scheduled activities. When we are at home we might spend our time outside gardening or playing if the weather is suitable, or inside reading books, using online reading or maths programs, or researching any topic that happens to have come up in conversation. We follow all avenues of enquiry for as far as they go, so Google and YouTube are our best friends.

The children explore through play and discovery, but they also bombard me with questions during their play, so their play and their learning is thoroughly intermingled. Whenever I don’t have an answer, or enough information for them, we go to the encyclopaedias or Google to find out more. Sometimes when they return to their play they put into action what they have learnt, and sometimes it seems as though there is no impact – until some time later when they spontaneously exhibit their comprehension.

Some days we work on projects, and some days are absolutely free-flowing by nature. We typically do not do workbooks or anything that resembles ‘school work’, but these things do occur occasionally when the children make that choice of activity. Handwriting is usually practiced by writing letters to the tooth fairy, or birthday cards, or thank you letters. Maths is practiced whenever we go into a shop, and at any other opportunity that is relevant. Reading occurs every day – on the computer, in a book, on the side of a truck, in a newsletter, etc.

We have a regular time for lunch and my toddler’s nap, a fairly regular time for dinner and bed, but the clock does not dictate our routines.

On a typical day I’d get up at 7.30am to find both my girls already up and building some fantastically balanced construction out of Lego, with compartments for all the various people and animals in their collection. The play extends in all directions, eg. there may be supermarket shopping in another corner of the lounge using the Shopkins collection and Cuisenaire rods as money. Through the next hour the children play (learn), get their own breakfast, get dressed, and organise themselves for the day. My oldest will pack a bag to take with us when we head out, with everything we will need for the various activities we will be attending.

We quickly run through chores – in our house we work as a team with my ten year old doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen, my nine year old doing beds and bathroom, and me starting work on dinner in the slow cooker. We have lunch in the car on some days as we drive to activities, we talk about lots of different things as we drive. This is one of the largest components of unschooling for us – discussion. The kids ask me anything, and if I don’t know then I ask them to remind me to Google it when we get home and we research it together. Sometimes we talk about a book they’ve read, or a documentary we have seen recently, and I answer in a way intended to extend their learning and understanding. We spend a lot of time driving in a week, so spend a lot of time discussing ‘stuff’.

If we are attending an activity that only one child is participating in then the other uses the tablet to play games, read, or work through an educational app such as science or maths. We also have a fortnightly trip to the library. My children are avid readers and usually borrow about 30 books each or more (we bring suitcases on wheels!). I don’t choose their books for them or limit the number we take home.

Some evenings after dinner we have swimming class – my girls have learnt to swim through our local swimming club and one day will move into the squads. After swimming they shower at the pools and change into their pyjamas so they can go straight to bed when we get home. Most nights I read a story to my nine year old and she reads one to me. Later in the evening my oldest might come out to tell me something interesting about the book she is reading – some cool facts about leopards or something. She’ll show me the book and ask me to have a look on the library website for more books by the same author so she can put them on hold. I will remind her we have a busy day tomorrow and she will need some sleep!

My oldest is gifted (twice exceptional). He goes to Mindplus (formerly One Day School ) every Wednesday and has done since he was six and a half. His giftedness affects lots of aspects of our home education – for example, we need online programs where we can change the topic and level rather than just work through it like a text book page after page. After breakfast I do vision training with him as he has issues with tracking and focusing on near objects. This affects his ability to follow text while reading and his ability to write. It has also caused gross and fine motor delays which we address with various types of physical intervention. This has varied over time according to his needs.

My twins go to a Montessori preschool so either myself or my partner takes them there first thing in the morning. If I’m dropping the twins off, my oldest does his music practice (drums, keyboard , recorder) while I’m out. When I get back we sometimes go to the library. We then start with some dictation/spelling (handwriting is a real issue so we tend to separate the function of handwriting from the creativity of writing communication); then it’s reading comprehension which covers elements of vision training (a purchased online program). We use another online program for maths and breaks are taken when required to eat and pick books. At least twice a week we will substitute one or other of our online programs with textbook work on grammar or comprehension and punctuation. We may do proof reading also. We often start a new maths topic with a practical example using resources such as money or place value cards or dice.

Afternoons vary – we could do swimming, dance, music, Spanish lessons, or Coding lessons. Evenings might include drums individual lesson, hockey, boys brigade, or band practice. Along with this we have at least two day trips a term organised by one or other of the homeschool groups we belong to. As the twins get older we are having to modify our routines and next year plan to have each twin home for two days out of five so that they can get used to being taught at home. This will give us time to ease ourselves into a routine that works for three!

We started homeschooling because my daughter is profoundly gifted and was bored to the point of acute daily distress, despite attending a highly supportive school where she had been accelerated by two years. Both my husband and I work part time from home and need to have time each day for our paid work. We and believe in learning as a “seeded” process of discovery. We have a simple daily routine so we can manage our work hours.

We start the day with a family fitness session at 9am (if everybody is out of bed in time!). I start work at 9.30am and my husband spends the morning with our daughter focusing primarily on seeds related to maths, science, technology, communications, media, and music. After lunch, our daughter has personal time while her dad starts his work, and this continues until I am available at 2.30pm.

The work I do with our daughter might follow on from ideas developed that morning (eg. researching a related topic in an area of my strengths such as literature or classical civilisation, or doing something crafty connected with the morning’s investigations), or might continue from what we did the previous afternoon, or might start from an unrelated seed (such as a trip to the beach), or may involve a formal class or other structured activity away from home or a playdate.

Evenings are often spent watching semi-educational TV as a family, playing games or reading stories aloud to each other. The daily routine varies if my husband needs to be out of the house for his work – sometimes he can take our daughter, but if not then she spends the morning with me in my home office, doing her own quiet work (eg. writing, drawing, maths, English, workbooks, etc). On these days she also has plenty of time to simply sit and read – one of her favourite things of all. We have a “curfew” of 9pm, at which point our daughter heads upstairs so that my husband and I can have some adult time. She rarely goes straight to bed, she normally sits up and reads or plays quietly for another hour or so.

We spent three months travelling around USA in a house bus. Before we left we planned our trip carefully. We had been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder series and I found out that many of the places she used to live held pageants about her life each summer. We wanted to visit many famous and beautiful places as well as learn some of the history and geography of this enormous country. We were also interested in the different cultures – Amish, Native Indian, Hispanic immigrants, farmers, city living, celebrity culture, etc. Every day was different and filled with educational experiences. My children each had a blank note book which they used to journal our trip, draw some of the sights, and record their experiences.

On a typical day we’d travel for a couple of hours, marvelling at the scenery, stop so the children could run around and play. Once we were near the Rocky Mountains and we stopped at a huge pile of inland sand dunes. We stayed until dusk, running around and playing, and then continued our journey. Late into the night we came across a poor woman broken down on the side of the road with her two children. We couldn’t get their overheated car started so we made room for them to join us and we drove them to their apartment about 30 miles away. She was so grateful that she invited us to park up in her garage and have breakfast with her in the morning. We had a wonderful cooked breakfast of hot ‘biscuits’ – these are a kind of scone mixture, brought already mixed in a tube. You just slice off sections and bake them in the oven! She also made us some really sweet cereal and pop tarts, which were sickly-sweet thin pies filled with a variety of fillings, toasted in a toaster and eaten with your fingers. When we left the children wrote in their journals. We talked, helped the children with their spelling, reminded the children of place names, etc. My younger ones dictated their journal entries and I did the writing, or drew pictures (eg. of us all sliding down the sand dunes) which I captioned.

I work evenings so sleep until 9 or 10am. The children eat their breakfast, brush their teeth and walk the dogs before I get up. Over a cup of coffee I’ll ask them questions about how their evening went (when I was at work) then we get on with lessons from about 10.30am. I’ll spend around an hour doing math on computer with each of them then my older one will read alone while I read with the youngest one. There is piano practice twice a day, some chores are required to be done, and then I head off to work at about 3.30pm.

Their Dad arrives home and takes them both swimming (they do competitive swimming and training is three times per week), or to piano lessons, skating, or shooting. We use the common room for learning as I rely a lot on the computer for resources. My daughter is seriously dyslexic so she follows a special reading curriculum from the UK. Math is also an online program. Their “schooling” is around two hours a day.

We were home educating both children when our oldest asked to go to school. It was not our intention but, after making changes and trying some different approaches to homeschooling, it was the right decision to enrol her into school in the end. It has worked out well for her, it’s probably harder on us having to deal with both school and homeschooling actually. I was contacted by the school twice last year and complimented on our daughter’s sound academic grounding, her respect for teachers and caring attitude towards classmates. It has given us much more confidence in our approach.

Our typical day involves dropping my older child to school and then spending the morning doing course work with my younger one. Maths, English and spelling are done every day, with reading and science alternating. Afternoons are spent on extracurricular activities such as sports practice, homeschool swimming classes, dancing, or free play. If we are going out for the day then textbook activities are fitted around this. We have no set finish time. On top of curriculum activities, we do problem-solving games, or design costumes and put on plays (which our older one participates in when she gets home from school).

Although we are mainly ‘school at home’ in our approach, I have also taken onboard some ideas from unschooling friends and this has enhanced our homeschooling experience. Instead of set reading activities, if my son finds a book he is interested then we will use that, or we change a topic given in a writing exercise to one that my son is interested in. Although set work from textbooks is usually for 3-6 hours/day (depending on my son’s motivation on that particular day), we also use daily life as an education tool.

With our child who is at school, she is used to us being actively involved in her education and willingly accepts our assistance with schoolwork and negotiating classroom politics, and she benefits from being “homeschooled” outside of school hours. We take her out of school for the day if there is something we feel is more beneficial to her education, or if we want to holiday as a family during the school term. Our philosophy was discussed with the school before we enrolled her and they have been very supportive.

I have two teenagers at home studying for NCEA full time at Te Kura after being homeschooled all the way through, and a third teen who is now at university. My children get up when suits (I only rouse them if it gets to 9.30am and I still haven’t seen them!). My son typically eats a big breakfast while he does his physics or maths booklets, my daughter doesn’t like breakfast and will go straight into some work.

With Te Kura the parent is the supervisor – I make sure the children are progressing with their work and I liaise with the teachers on the children’s behalf. On Mondays we go over their goals from the previous week and we set some realistic goals for the current week for each subject (eg. to finish chapter 7 by Friday, or send in the Digital Tech assignment to the teacher by Friday). I also check my records of their schoolwork to see if their work has been marked and returned (sometimes the Te Kura teachers are very slow and I need to follow up with them).

Most days the children and I meet together in the lounge while my son folds his community newspapers ready to deliver them or while someone folds the washing. We talk about the week, events coming up, maybe have a pep talk if there is a lack of progress! I will read something to them that I think is useful that they might not read themselves. We will revise memory work and because we are Christians we also pray together at this time.

The actual work takes place anywhere in the house. Now that they are older they are often in their rooms but they will also work on the desk in the corner of the lounge, on the couch or lying on the floor. If it’s something they need help with then they work at the kitchen table so I can help out. We have lunch together and also dinner (when my husband can be home too). The rest of the day we are more separate. Sometimes the children will do some study after dinner and spend a few hours studying on a Saturday.

Having said this, there is no such thing as a typical day. Every day there are interruptions, horse riding, Spanish lessons, piano lessons, tennis, or whatever activities are planned for the term.

A typical day for us would be as follows:

8.00am Wake up and start housework together, breakfast
9:30am Read a book or chat
10.00am Lessons are done online using a purchased curriculum (breaks added in as needed)
12.00pm Lunch
2.00pm Finish any lessons as required, read a bit together, play, go for a walk, etc

This changes depending on if we have something on during the day. Lessons are done inside or outside depending on the weather.

Our approach to home education follows the School-at-Home model mainly because of our family size and the fact that we stick to a daily routine and a set curriculum for the girls who are ten and over. With our preschoolers we enjoy Learning-Through-Play.

A typical day starts at 8:30am with the older girls at the family table. Our curriculum (purchased) has the day’s work organised for us and we basically set out to cover that together. My oldest will often take her work upstairs to her room and check back with me later in the morning. Any science experiments are usually done in the evenings.

While I’m with my other two older girls at the table I set reading and writing practice for the younger girls in their exercise books. Once the older girls are working independently the baby goes down for a nap and I focus on the younger children. I read to them and get the ones who can read, reading to me. After that they will do the work I set for them, then they might do a maths lesson on the computer, or a word game.

The older girls usually get through a whole day’s work by lunch time, although my oldest has a larger workload to do and will often work into the afternoon. Although our style is rather school-like we have always encouraged a joy of learning and have modeled that for our children. We often drop everything to answer a question or pursue a subject that someone is interested in. Our two preschoolers enjoy learning through play – we have used this method for all of our children and they in turn use it with their younger siblings and children of friends.

We unschool our two boys and we have another 6 year old with us three-and-a-half days a week. The day almost always starts around 8am with some form of construction such as Lego, train set, wooden blocks or hut building. The boys do that independently for a couple of hours while I get morning chores like laundry and meal prep done. Then I make myself available for a couple of hours for whatever projects they want to work on – this could be baking, art, crafts, looking up questions on the internet, making books, reading stories.

Sometimes the boys help make lunch, chopping veges for soup or making their own sandwiches, then have a bit of quiet time watching a nature documentary, a movie or they might do a computer game.

In the afternoons, we have three days with scheduled activities such as homeschool group sports and the other days we often go out for a bush walk, bike ride, a trip to the beach or into town, the park or a playdate. Or sometimes they help with work like gardening. We often spend 1-3 hours reading aloud in the evenings