A day in a homeschooling life

It's been a long time since I've done a day in the life post.  Yesterday (Monday) wasn't a typical homeschool day, but it was a pretty nice one, and despite our best efforts, we got a little work done, even though we weren't supposed to.

Monday is my husband's day off, so my expectations for school work are low.  I try to plan for a 4-day week so we can be free on Mondays to do something fun as a family.  Lately, Mondays have been pretty busy with medical appointments and such, so it's a family fun day in theory only right now.  But, it's nice to be able to hang out with Dad a little too.  So, all I demand on Monday is Bible study (we use The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study: A Survey of the Bible by Starr Meade) and math.  Oh, if we have a read-aloud going, we'll try to read some too.

Monday everyone was up pretty early.  Dad had some dental work to be done, so he was out of the house shortly after breakfast.  There was still some snow on the ground, and rain on the way, so the kids went out to sled.  We have a hill that's little more than a slight incline, but it still makes for fun snowboarding practice.  So after the kids finished their Bible reading, they were out the door.

Two hours later (!), Dad had returned, the rain had started, so the kids came in.  Just as they walked in the door the microwave exploded, so there was some excitement and cleanup needed, including making a whole new pot of hot cocoa.

(The microwave didn't exactly explode.  I was running it with a bowl of soapy water inside to create steam to soften up the crud that had accumulated.  I guess I created a little too much steam because suddenly the door burst open and water came shooting out all over the stove, surrounding counter, and me.  The water wasn't hot, so I didn't get burned, but soapy water flew everywhere, including into the pot of cocoa and all over the new stick of butter in the dish.  Between the explosion sound and my scream, it must have seemed like something pretty exciting was going on.  My microwave is really clean now.)

Wet clothes were put away and hot cocoa was consumed while the kids checked out American Rhetoric and youtube for an assignment for their speech class.  They did that for a while, then I set them to their math.  One had a final exam (Life of Fred fractions) and one worked on Khan Academy exercises.  I ran out to fill some prescriptions for the dental patient.

Somewhere in there, the kids ate lunch. I don't know what they had, but it probably  involved bread and cheese.

After lunch we wanted to settle down to our current read-aloud, The Iliad, but we remembered that my boy had some biology work to finish up from last week.  So he and I did that while my girl practiced piano. 

Somewhere in there, a few loads of laundry were completed.

Finally in the afternoon we sat down to read.  I made it through one book (chapter) before my voice gave out.  It was a long one.  We talked about it for a while, then it was time for me to think about dinner.  While I did that, the kids did some personal reading.

So we got in PE, math, history/literature, science for one, music for the other, all on a day we don't do school.

Today won't look anything that.  We'll be more structured with our time and our work.  But next Monday won't look anything like that either.  Typical day? Not really.  But a good day in a long homeschooling life.