A Look Into Our Homeschool Day: Kindergarten, 2nd grade, and Toddler

Every homeschool is different. Some start school in the morning, others in the afternoon. Some are structured while others are relaxed. I thought I would share how our homeschool day generally goes with a Kindergartner, 2nd grader, and a 1-year-old.

9:30-10:00 – I try to start school around this time every day. Some days we get started earlier depending on when my kids wake up. My daughter sleeps in quite a bit and is known to stay in bed until after 9:00 some mornings.

1st – I start every morning with our read aloud book. Right now I am in the middle of reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. While I read the kids either draw or play with Magna-Tiles. I usually read between 1-2 chapters. After I finish reading the kids add something to their garden lap book that we are working on to correspond with the book.

Usually, after this, my 1-year-old gets grumpy and needs to take a nap. If this is the case my kids get something out of their workboxes and start completing it while I get the baby down for a nap.

2nd – Next, we do history using The Story of the World. The kids take out their papers from their workboxes and color the coloring sheet while I read the chapter aloud to them. When I finished reading the chapter, the kids fill out their map and we do one of the hands-on art projects or activities listed in the student manual.

If the baby is still awake she is generally playing with the toys in the school room or sitting in my lap.

3rd – The kids now decide which workboxes to complete. While my daughter does her math, my son reads to me. This works out well because my daughter doesn’t usually need too much help with math and I can focus on listening to my son read. My son finishes his work much quicker than my daughter because he is in Kindergarten. He does his Explode the Code, Handwriting, and Math and then gets to go upstairs and play. My daughter does her math, handwriting and reads a chapter from whatever book she is in the middle of. Currently, she is reading Ivy and Bean: No News is Good News by Annie Barrows. Next, I work on spelling with her from All About Spelling. When she is finished with that, we call it a day.

Sometimes, we do a craft or an art project, but not every day. Today while I was reading The Secret Garden the kids drew a picture of the secret garden and colored it with oil pastels. They were really pretty, so I framed them.

This is just what I shoot for. Some days, it looks nothing like this. I try to be really flexible, especially with a 1-year-old in the mix. Sometimes my kids aren’t in an agreeable mood and sometimes they have bad attitudes. If everything doesn’t get done, I don’t beat myself up over it, there is always tomorrow. For the most part, we have good school days and have fun!

How do you run your school day? Are you organized or relaxed? Do you follow a strict schedule or go with the flow? I would love to hear from you in the comments!