A day in the life

Lately I've had several people ask, "What do homeschoolers actually DO all day?" so here is a bit about how we organize our schooling activities. This is not necessarily typical of any other family! It seems that the more homeschoolers I know, the more I realize that everyone does things differently.

I tend to categorize our studies into math/science and liberal arts, so that's the way that we study them. We do math and science on the same days. English, history, and geography are also on the same days. We don't have an exact schedule for which studies belong on which days because that can change depending on the week. We do different outside activites several times a month, and the days (and even times of day!) are not always consistent. It would drive me batty trying to set an exact schedule of days and times. Instead, we work it around what is best for our schedule, making sure that math/science days and lib arts days are done at least twice a week.

Today was liberal arts. Our history study right now is Ancient Mesopotamia, so we used the dough that we made at Thanksgiving and made our own cuneiform tablets. Spyder decided that cuneiform was actually much harder than Egyptian heiroglyphics (which we studied last year). Cuneiform used about 600 different symbols, and Spyder and I both had a difficult time remembering any of them. After the cuneiform tablets were made, we took some of the dough and made a model of a ziggurat.

We also read pertinent selections from The Story of the World, Ancient Mesopotamia, and The Mystery of History. I had wanted to read a bit from Gilgamesh the Hero, but the children wanted to move on to geography, so that will wait til next time.

Geography today was pretty easy. The children both played Carmen Sandiego on the computer, working together -- YAY! Spyder also did a crossword puzzle, and Sass did a coloring sheet.

We read part of Gail Carson Levine's Cinderellis and the Glass Hill before Sass fell asleep on the couch. Spyder and I had hoped to get to the end of it today, but poor Sass was exhausted. She'd gotten up at 5:30 am with Skeeter, so by noon she really wanted a nap! (So did I, but I didn't get one!) While Sass was snoozing, Spyder and I talked about parts of speech and did Mad Libs until Brittney and her children stopped by for some serious play in the backyard.

After our friends had gone, Spyder decided that he wanted to learn German (no idea why though). He got out an audio course that we've had for years. He put the first cassette in the player, and he worked on that for almost an hour. I finally had to dig out my old German/English dictionary and my college German texts. He was thrilled! I have a feeling that we'll be scouring the libraries tomorrow afternoon for an course that comes with a book.

That was it for the "official" schooling, but during room time tonight, Sass drew pictures of ziggurats. LOL! I suppose some of the information did sink in. I always wonder if it does.

Spyder spent his room time looking through my German texts, then reading Mystery in Massachusetts. He finished Mystery in Massachusetts, then he moved on to Skinnybones.

Tomorrow, on to new adventures in astronomy, earth science, multiplication, and division!