Just a Typical Homeschooling Day: 4th, 2nd, and Kindergarten aged boys

It's so hard to write about a typical homeschooling day because each day varies so much!  If I had to say what our days are typically like... this one was pretty typical.

We started our day with all the boys cleaning the bathrooms so they could finish their chores quickly and watch TV and play video games.  It has become our daily routine and one I'm not bothering to change since it is working out so well for us.

• The boys are eager to get up, get dressed, and do all their chores so they can have some free time to play before we start school.  
• They ask me what they need to clean each morning-- seriously!  
•  It allows me free time to clean and organize as well as exercise and wake up slowly on those days I need to. 

 It's working out great and I'm glad I was flexible enough to give I a try.  I find flexibility it key to finding what works for us while homeschooling.  This new routine sure is a far cry from my old rule of no screens until dinnertime!  Of course, it helps that they often choose to watch educational shows anyway.  This morning they all wanted to watch the new Wild Kratts episode.  It was nice that they all agreed on something to watch!
 
Once we settled down to start school (usually by 9)  I worked with the two older boys to completely finish their geography reports.  We cut out titles and letters using the Cricut, glued everything onto their boards and talked about what we have left work on in the next couple of weeks until our fair.

While I was working with the older boys Evan finished putting his 100's chart together; breaking open the eggs he found yesterday and matching up the numbers.  All the boys wanted to play with the eggs when he was done and they worked together to clean them all up when they were done.

The older boys worked in their cursive books and were so pleasantly surprised when I told them that was all I had planned for the day!

Cursive workbook

Alec read and wrote a few sentences in cursive today

Evan and I worked on some fun spelling of sight words.  Using the bag of paint we had put together for a previous lesson, I handed Evan a q- tip and had him practice his sight words.  He still doesn't know how to spell most of these sight words that we're working on this time around but he gave it his best shot.  After he tried a time or two to spell the word I would give him and sight word card and allow him to copy it. 

writing sight words on a baggie full of paint

 Once Evan was done spelling he wanted to read me another book.  We worked our way through today's story and then worked on Evan's geography report.  Evan had already dictated two pages of information to me about Madagascar and I was trying to work with him on filling up his board.

While Evan and I were working on his report Alec was working on a painting of cherry blossoms for his Japan report.  He painted brown branches and pasted little tufts of pink tissue paper to the branches as blossoms.

His completed painting

Alec worked on some drawing and coloring once school was over.  I offered to print out some Easter egg coloring pages as well as other designs for him to color in.  He enjoys art so much and I try to encourage him and support his interests whenever I can.

While he worked on that his two brothers were working together to put together a whole garage and town using blocks, the Batcave, our trucks and Lincoln Logs.  They were all working very hard but with a lot of bickering.  So much so that I had to send the boys to their rooms to cool off a bit before lunch.

We watched a funny and engaging history movie today during lunch.  History is one area of homeschooling I think we often neglect; especially American History.

When I saw this series of videos put out by Disney about our presidents I thought perhaps this was a good way to cover American history with the boys.  Typically anything by Disney is a big hit in this house so I figured it was worth a shot.

They seemed to enjoy it quite a bit and while it moved fairly quickly through the first 12 or so presidents of the United States and all the pertinent history of the time.  When the movie ended I asked if they enjoyed it and would like to watch the next movie in the series.  The older two boys readily agreed; only Evan said he'd rather not.  He's a bit young still and so I told him he doesn't have to watch the movie next time if he doesn't want to (but, if I know Evan, I'm sure he will anyway).

The boys all started playing together as soon as the movie was done.  They decided to move their entire town/ set up into the other room and worked together to do this.  They were back to getting along and playing quite nicely.

They got up periodically to check on our cup of caterpillars that we had gotten in yesterday afternoon.  The boys enjoyed this hands- on science project so much last spring that they begged me to get more this spring so we could do it again.

We're also toying with the idea of growing lady bugs, frogs and praying mantises too.  I'm not a huge fan of bugs and insects but the boys really do seem to learn a lot this way and it sure is more memorable than reading a book about it.