Special Guest Edition: How we homeschooled today by Jamey Fisher Perkins

Jamey writes here on Substack at Raising Feminist People, and you can also find her on Instagram. She kindly took the time to share a day in her family’s home ed life, including a detailed list of their favourite resources (at the bottom).

If you’d like to be next, get in touch! All shapes and styles of home education are welcome, from unschooling to school-at-home and everything in between.

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Today is Tuesday, 16th January. It’s cold. 

I have two children, A who is 8.5 years old, and Birdie, who is 5.5. We live in Cardiff, Wales, in a house that’s very full of books, bicycles and musical instruments. 

Facts about us: I have ADHD and rheumatoid arthritis, one of my children has ADHD, and one has an unspecified neurodivergence. I write about the connections between feminism and parenting, and create learning support materials for families that put inclusion at the heart of learning.  Our family’s approach to home ed is consent based but adult led, because this best supports my children’s learning styles. For us, this means that I base our educational plans and goals on my children’s interests and requests, and we have a rough daily schedule that we frequently diverge from. 

Our days are fairly varied throughout the week: three days a week the children are with me and we prioritise family and independent lessons/work, our science co-op, and outings. I work two days a week; one of those days the children are with a friend of ours who helps to lead some lessons but is largely unschooly in their care. The kids get up to all sorts on that day, and it’s always fun. Another day a week, A attends a drop-off home ed forest school. Our weekends are full of music lessons, playing, swimming, climbing lessons, and allotmenting in the less-frozen months. 

This week is our first week back at all of our lessons, clubs and classes after the Christmas break and our most recent round of covid. 

I wake up around 7:30 and ignore the cat for a bit. It sounds like both children are still asleep but I’m wrong—they’re looking at books in their dark room. Why do children like to read in the dark? Most mornings one or the other of them will be downstairs when I wake up, building things from magnetic tiles and listening to an audio book. 

From Jamey’s Instagram

By the time I’ve showered and done my ‘morning jobs’ (feed cat, make tea, turn on the dishwasher etc), the children are downstairs listening to Yoto stories. I settle in with my tea to write a short newsletter article just as the food shop is delivered, so Birdie and I unpack it and I spirit away the fun bits that are not really great for breakfast (chocolate chips and olives, anyone?). Excitement over, the kids go back to yoto-land and I make a few notes on my article, but the clock is ticking and the sky is bright, and I’d like a walk in the cold crisp air. Everything is a time juggle: today I’d like to write an article, go for a 25 minute walk/run, and shepherd the children through their day of lessons and activities. 

Nobody is going with me for a walk, and my husband T has already gone upstairs to his office, so I shelve the walk for later and set A up with his Pokemon writing class video and some porridge. After he finishes, we sit together to do some of his independent work: some grammar, Latin review, music theory, handwriting. He has second breakfast and goes to his online maths class. We have a maths curriculum we use, and this class is a bonus/extra. We don’t do any follow up activities—it’s more for exposure to other topics and a bit of social fun. 

While A’s doing the class, I convince Birdie to join me at the table for some breakfast and lessons. We review some vowel blends, write some silly sentences, and read his mini book for Pinwheels. I record his narrations for the last 2 chapter books we’ve read as a family and he makes some illustrations. Then he gets really into punching paper shapes out of the sentences he’s read, so I leave him to it and tidy the kitchen. We pick up the snippets and practice his Shakespeare memory work. Small children reciting poetry and Shakespeare are very, very cute. 

A finishes his lesson and dances about for a bit, and then goes to the piano. He loves music and plays piano and recorder, and a bit of trombone. He goes between his piano and recorder pieces for a bit, maybe 20 minutes? Birdie is inspired and picks up his trombone, too, but something goes wrong and there’s a brotherly argument. Alas.

I invite Birdie to do some Nessy on the computer while A gets dressed to change the dynamic. He does a few exercises, and then we do his daily lesson at Beast Academy. A’s upstairs in his bedroom doing something—reading, or thinking about Pokemon, or relaxing. He wanders down and does some more music practice. Done with formal learning for the day, Birdie’s set up his lego train track and is doing something that looks complex and involved regarding trains and lego ships. I take the opportunity to pack up some lunch since we’re going out. 

We rarely go to the big social home ed group in Cardiff because my children don’t tend to enjoy free-form social playgroups, but I’ve booked us in to go today. I like to see people I know, and I try to go every couple of months to see if there are any new families there that we really hit it off with. It’s hard to drag the kids away from their lego, but the venue has a cafe with nice cake, so that helps with motivation. We load into the car and for some reason start talking about the tune ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. We spend the drive listening to about 10 different versions of the song, seeing what the constants are (lake of stew/canoe, little streams of some liquid, dogs with rubber teeth) and what’s changeable (what the liquid is, what grows on the bushes, etc). We chat about what makes a song ‘a song’—how much can you change before it’s a different song? 

We park and get waylaid at the adjacent playground for a bit. It’s cold. 

Once we finally make it inside, Birdie heads straight for the mat of toy cars and A hangs by me, asking when we can leave… until he discovers that the small pond has iced over. He merrily chucks things into the pond and pulls out big ice sheets until he can no longer feel his hands. I chat with a few other parents until the children are thoroughly frozen and want cake. Back in the car, they munch on cake and sliced cucumber (balance!) while we listen to Arthur the Always King and head home. 

We have a bit of time before A’s recorder lesson, so I make some tea and do some dinner prep. I’m making veggie chili so I chop up veg and pop them in the oven to roast. I make the kids a snack (tomato soup + brioche) and we finally read our morning time stack of books (this varies each day, but usually is a page or two of history, earth science, physics, philosophy, religious studies, poems, art history), and start our new read-aloud, The Emperor’s Riddle. We get two chapters in and the recorder teacher arrives. A’s been taking recorder lessons for about 2 years and his teacher is one of his favourite people to spend time with. A has his lesson and Birdie and I play a round of Catan Jr. 

After A’s lesson, he joins us for a round of Catan and then the kids go off to read or listen to books. I do more dinner prep while A tells me facts from the book about cats he’s reading. Apparently, un-neutered female cats can have around 200 kittens in their life! Once the chili’s simmering, A and I work on his Pokemon writing assignment together. The children often have screen time at this point in the day, but Birdie wants to keep playing with the lego world he’s created. A opts for a few minutes of ancient video games—my husband has set up some type of emulator of original Nintendo games on a raspberry pi. I have no idea how this works, but it means we can all enjoy some old-school Mario and Bubble Bobble. 

I lay out supper and we all eat and chat about our days. The children are excited to tell T about the old versions of ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ that we heard that had cigarettes and alcohol in the song—they were scandalised and thought it was hilarious. Birdie goes to have a spin in the living room (how do small children spin and spin right after eating?!) and A plays some more music. Things get too silly for bedtime—and I remember that my Welsh class is starting quite soon—so we head upstairs for the bedtime routine. The silliness continues so I’m fairly relieved to hand over to T and log onto my class. I’ve studied for a couple of years now and have my first arholiad (exam) in just over a week. Yikes! 

Birdie’s still awake in bed when my class ends, so I bring him a snack and sit with him for a bit. I go downstairs to finish up dishes and lay out the table for tomorrow’s lessons. T goes for a walk (at 9:45 pm—this is what male privilege gets you) and I hop in the bath with a book. We finish off the night listening to some of Jon Ronson’s new podcast together. 

Thanks for sharing how we homeschooled today!

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I asked Jamey for her family’s current favourite resources and she kindly gave me the full run-down, so here it is:

We are using Math Mammoth for A, and two online classes via Learn Laugh Play, and Beast Academy for Birdie, with a heavy side of maths-related board/card games like Prime Climb, Crew in a Stew, Zeus on the Loose, Sum Swamp, etc. For grammar/language arts it’s a mixed bag: Birdie’s working through Pinwheels level 2 and supplemented with some phonics bits from Twinkl and First Language Lessons, and enjoying reading practice with the Katie Woo and Pedro Mysteries. A is working through level 2 of Essentials in Writing, and we supplement this with Nessy and Sir Link a Lot for spelling, with some odds and ends from Twinkl also. Oh, plus the occasional Pokemon themed writing class from Outschool. [Note from Catherine: Sir Link a Lot could be the spelling solution I’ve been looking for! I’ll be trying out the app asap.]

We have one or two family literature studies on the go at any given time, drawn from my Thinking Big curriculum and from Blossom and Root Year 3 book picks. Right now we're reading The Emperor's Riddle and Arthur the Always King. 

A mostly enjoys reading nonfiction books but has recently really liked the Skandar series and the Dragon Realm series, too. 

His Latin class is based on Minimus, and Birdie and I dip in and out of Song School Latin, and read the Mary Jones Vaughan readers for Welsh practice.  

Our science is largely based on Blossom and Root—Physics is Year 4 I believe, and Earth Science (wonders of earth and sky) is Year 1. History is all literature led—we’re deep in the middle ages—although we also read Our Island Story and the Usborne History of the World/Britain for more context, along with a good number of nonfiction books on the topic. I could write a whole post just about middle ages resources!  

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Don’t forget to take a look at Jamey’s newsletter, Raising Feminist People.

And if you’re new to How We Homeschool, you might like to take a look at previous Special Guest Editions:

Annelise Roberts, homeschooling her five children in Colorado and finding time for a nap!

Victoria, whose daughter enjoyed a day of horse-riding, piano-playing, and Pokemon.

Oliver Cresswell, regulating emotions and enjoying a new puppy in Nova Scotia.

Will Orr-Ewing on flexischooling alongside Charlotte Mason.

Dixie Dillon-Lane on homeschooling through sickness.

Eloise Rickman, on putting children’s rights at the heart of home education.

Ruth Gaskovski on building community.

Katherine Seat getting out of the house on a noisy day in Cambodia.

Renee’s account of a homeschool day with her son, who has autism.

Mary-Ann Horley’s account of home education at home and on holiday.

Allyse Hopkins’ very relatable day with her family of four in New Zealand.

Susie Wales’ life with her three boys in Florida.

Rachael Ringenberg’s thoughtful glimpse into her life with four girls in Vermont.

Joel Bowman’s ‘away schooling’, travelling around the classical world with an eight year old.

If you’d like to be next, get in touch! Everyone is welcome, whatever your homeschool looks like.

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