Home Education Day in the Life 2019 with a 10 yr old, a 8 yr old and a 6 yr old

This year, when I started trying to write out my day in long form it turned into a massive beast. So… bullet points it is!

(You can find my other day in the life posts from 2018 and 2016 here.)

(Also, none of these links are affiliate. I just like this stuff and we actually use them so I wanted to share them with you.)

Home Ed Day in the Life 2019
  • Got up and went for my morning walk listening to the brave learner audiobook
  • W (my husband) was supposed to go the gym but we end up talking about ‘what is education’ instead
  • Have breakfast with W and FB (10) and then W leaves for the gym and then straight on to work
  • FB decides to do his table work at 8am so that he can play on the gameboy
  • FB does his spelling (using The Moffatt Girls’ Build a Word bundle – not chopped up, and in page protectors, with dry erase board pens), and maths (still Maths! No problem. I still think it’s a great program, but it still has the problem of expensive answer keys for primary. Luckily that’s not a problem with secondary maths which is why I plan to keep using it when FB turns 11.)
  • The girls have woken up and are reading and listening to audio books in bed.
  • 8.30 – FB has finished his tablework and is playing pokemon for half an hour, the girls are playing with the playdoh sets my youngest got for her birthday. They don’t want breakfast yet so I will take this half hour to have a shower and get dressed.
  • 9.15am I am dressed and so is LR (8)
  • LR has breakfast and we watch a YouTube video to help her get on with the game she is playing at the moment.
  • While we watch HB (6) has breakfast too and I knit a row of my current shawl.
  • After, LR does her spelling and maths and FB and HB watch alphablocks
  • I realise that due to our trip to see family last week and the day trip FB went on on Monday, various things like headphones are spread around the house and we can’t find them when we need to. I start making a ‘hunt for and home’ list we will use later.
  • LR goes off for her game time. HB starts table work. (She is practising sight words, letter blends, Ready2Read and maths.)
  • In the middle of HB’s tablework it starts raining and we have to go rescue the washing on the line. When we have finished table work she asks me to play with the playdoh with her. It’s fun, and I sort out some space in a cupboard and a basket so that we can keep all the bits together.
  • Then she goes to play her game for 30mins and I go convince LR (who I have slightly forgotten about) to stop playing.
  • I get some household stuff done while games time is still going on. when I’m done (lol, when is househld stuff ever done?) I also sit down and sneak another row of my knitting.
  • We decided to have an early lunch.
  • The food order from Asda arrives.
  • Put the food away and play music. (pokemon and mario medleys)
  • I read a chapter of Story of the World. We have only just started and my lot are really not sure about it but I point out that friends of theirs really like it and so they give it a go. We read about nomads and early farmers. I have lots of resources to share and so plan to add something each day for the rest of this week and most of next. (I just found out that the entire archive of Time Team is available on online. Speed archaeology!)
  • There is more playdoh and looking at books while I read
  •  The girls play with a birthday card balloon pop game
  • We are working on annotating a map of Breath of the Wild so we gather together and make a giant list of all the things we want to add to the map. (The children are going to draw them and I am going to make them into stickers. We got the giant map from Red Bubble.)
  • The children start drawing things for the map. HB draws some amazing Taluses.
  • There is more play and dancing and tidying up and eventually I start making dinner while the children watch Antiques Roadtrip, which their grandparents introduced them to. They want Raj to win but he has some big losses unfortunately. That brass mask was a bad call, sadly.
  • W is back from work and we all eat dinner together.
  • W and FB go for a walk in preparation for a long sponsored walk with Cubs that it happening in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately they get caught in heavy rain but it doesn’t seem to bother them. The girls are playing the pokemon trading card game.
  • When they get back the children and I go upstairs to get them ready for bed (and tidy their rooms.) We all curl up in our bed and I read some of our current readaloud – Heidi. (It’s good!) Then we do bedtime maths. When the pig comes up we all sing ‘piggy, piggy, pig, pig’. If the pig doesn’t appear then we set off the answers till it does. Sometimes this takes ages but tonight I remain in good humour.
  • W comes up to take over and tuck the kids into bed and I should get up, but everything has slipped a bit this evening at it is already nearly 9pm. I am knackered so I read in bed.
  • W is knackered too so we go to bed not long after the kids do. I am reading the novelization of Giant Days while I wait for the next collects of the comics to arrive at the library. And now, sleep.


Dear Home Ed Mother Me, a year ago

Dear Home Ed Mother Me, A Year Ago,

I know you have read all the articles about how some homeschooled children read later, and how they get there in the end, and I know you are trying to have faith in the process, but at the same time you are holding your breath, waiting to see if it is true or not for you.

I know you have filled the house with books, books that you actually read and that you read to your children, and I know you watch as your eldest, now eight, plays with his lego and listens to audiobooks for hours. I know you are aware that his vocabulary is good – see what all that reading aloud has done – and that understands what he is listening to. That he understands a great deal about a great number of things.

I know that together, you and your son, have worked your way through your reading program, and that you have looked for ways to sneak in reading practice in ways that your son can tolerate. I know you have thought hard and researched whether there is an underlying problem, and come to the conclusion that you don’t think there is one, but will keep your eyes open. I know you have walked the thin line between not pushing him to hard, but also not avoiding the whole topic because it feels so hard.

I know you know that he has grasped the general rules of sounding words out, that he knows quite a few sight words, but he is unwilling to read more that about 5 sentences at a time.

But here’s what I – you a year in the future – know that you don’t yet know:

I know that a few days before you go on holiday in the summer you will go to the library. You will pick up a funny, silly chapter book about pirates on a whim, because the cover caught your eye and you are going to the seaside. I know that you will read the first chapter to your children the first night you are all away, and that they will want more but that it is time for bed. I know that your son will nick off with the book before going off to his room (it is probably a key point that he has his own room, and that he isn’t keeping anyone else awake with his bedside light.)

The next morning he will tell you he read three pages of the next chapter and you will hold your breath. He will tell his grandparents too, and you will start to smile because maybe this whole homeschooling thing won’t actually ruin your children. But you will also wait to see what happens next. He will take the book to a restaurant, and when he goes to the beach. He will have his nose in a book throughout that holiday like he has been doing it his whole life.

He will finish the book, and then he won’t really know where to go next, but he will also know that he has finished a book, and that he did it for fun, and that is an important spark.

He will start reading Beast Quest books.  Then he will start inhaling them. He will have a sleepless night at another grandparent’s house and not care because he will read two and a half Beast Quest novels through that night, and be mighty proud of himself. He will pick up a book called ‘Spirit Animals’ at the library (which will lead to a conversation between the two of you about cultural appropriation) and he will inhale that too, even though the print is smaller that Beast Quests and the page count is longer.

You will, nonchalantly, as if you don’t really care, stick a reading word test in front of him, and idly suggest he tries reading the words until he gets three wrong in a single set. You tried it before, in late spring, while panicking about your ability to do all this, so you happen to have data to compare him against himself. In less that two months he will have jumped four grades.

He will move into his own room and your early bird will start sleeping later because he is staying up reading in his bed. You will go to the library on a Tuesday and on the Friday have a pile of books to go back, which is good because the reservations you and he put in have turned up.

You will buy him eighteen Beast Quest novels for his birthday and two months later there will be three left under your bed, waiting to be read, being over taken by library books for new series that he wants to try.

He will read the first two Harry Potters, and go straight on to the third.

He will devour books. He will build lego figures of the characters. He will offer up their stories in other conversations, connecting information together. You knew he loved stories, he has bathed in stories since he was small, but now he has them at his fingertips.

I know you have read all the articles about how some homeschooled children read later, and how they get there in the end, and I know you are trying to have faith in the process.

Have faith in the process. He gets there in the end and it is SO worth it.