How does homeschool days look like? Join me this week to see how we spend time as a home educating family, navigating between schedule and extra activities.
General outline
Every day we start our education with music. Oskar doesn’t need to be reminded or rushed. He takes out books and plays the piano and then the saxophone. He prefers the saxophone to the piano, although he still dreams of a real piano. Dominik practices the trumpet. Just imagine the noise! After such a portion of music everyone is wide awake and it’s time for our usual activities. If you want to see the exact structure of our week look at my post where I share our weekly plan.
On days when we don’t have any additional plans, we finish learning quite early and have more time for additional projects, books and free time. In the afternoons we have extra activities, such as outside music lessons with teachers, swimming or football. And in the evening we all meet for dinner together with Dad and the rest of the siblings who go to school. Sometimes I am surprised by the conversations about philosophy, psychology, physics and space held at the table. You never know where the standard question ‘How was your day?’ will lead.
The days are still grey, wet and cold and, to be honest, we don’t feel like going anywhere. But I try to get them outside daily, at least for a while. If not for a walk than into a garden. Vitamin D and fresh air work wonders for good moods. And sometimes beautiful days still happen…
Charlotte Mason style education
This week’s Tuesday was exciting. Our local homeschool group organized a trip to a workshop at the National Gallery. This meant a whole trip to London for us – a train journey, a walk towards Trafalgar Square (where Oskar showed off his knowledge of Nelson), and meeting with friends.
The workshops led by an employee of the Gallery were very interesting and I sincerely recommend them!
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/primary-schools/practical-workshops
These are advertised as primary school workshops but they will accept home education groups.
If you can’t gather a group to book a workshop with a bit of planning and research you can easily re-create them for yourself. Just pick some of the pictures you would like to look at in detail, gather basic info about them and go to the gallery equipped with some sketchbooks and pencils. Let your children copy the specific details of the paintings or re-create them fully, according to their imaginations.
With our group and the educator, we stopped at three paintings, discussing each one in detail, and additionally, there were drawing exercises. Each painting was unique and beautiful in a different way. However, I liked the still life with lemons on a black background the most. I immediately thought that it would fit perfectly into our dining room.
After finishing the workshops, we had to go home quickly, so there was no time for walking around London. We brought sketches from the workshop with us, but Oskar drew a new, more detailed picture of lemons at home within a week. It turned out well and I liked how he tried to reflect the shadows on the fruit and the structure of the basket.
Meetings with people of different ages
On Wednesday we had another change of schedule – a trip to a friend from church who happenned to have a dog. Our friend was weak after surgery, so we took the dog for a walk. Oh, how fun it was. We don’t have a chance to have our own dog, so for the first time the boys had the opportunity to walk a dog themselves. We came back knee-deep in mud and the dog had to be washed. Life skills!
Creativity and socializing
Friday is the so-called fun day. We start like every day with music then we study the catechism and after a quick snack, we do creative writing. Oskar writes a book about the adventures of astronauts going on a space mission, and Dominik writes about the adventures of kittens. Our cat had kittens and they were the inspiration.
I prepared a list of words for both of them that they could use in their writing, and I also gave Dominik some ideas for the kittens’ adventures. Unfortunately, he immediately rejected them, stating that none of these adventures were suitable for a rocket.
See for yourself, were my ideas that bad? Maybe your children will adapt them:
- Kitten gets lost in the forest and meets a friendly squirrel who helps them find their way home – Dominik used this idea somewhat, one of his kittens dropped into fuel storage and was rescued by a friendly alien. Hurray!
- Kitten discovers a hidden treasure in the backyard
- Kitten goes on a magical journey through different seasons
- Kitten befriends a group of birds and learns to fly (I like this one!)
This term, Friday afternoons are reserved for drama classes, where we are preparing an Easter play with our home-ed group. Both boys have a lot of lines to learn and we still need to work on it. After drama, I take Dominik to football, while Oskar is working at the moment on a PowerPoint with a mystery story, where the reader chooses different variants of the action. The so-called You Choose story. A few years ago, his older brother prepared a similar PowerPoint and now Oskar took over. I expect lots of murders and sad endings, but who knows?
So what do we read now?
Our read-aloud: Old Greek Stories by James Baldwin. As I’m not English native speaker I use Librivox recording for read-aloud.
Oskar: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Joan Aiken
Dominik: Redwall, Brian Jacques
Mum: Paris, Edward Rutherford (And when do I read? Mostly waiting for them when they have their swimming, football or instruments lessons).
Summary
And so another week passed. In its unique way, full of experiences, trips and hands-on learning. Most of the time we stick to the schedule but at the same time homeschooling offers flexibility and opportunities that we would not have if boys were at school. We enjoy this style of learning and I hope you found here inspiration to start your home education journey.
