Special Guest Edition: How we homeschooled today by Amy Challis

Amy writes over at The Nurture Diaries. She’s home educating her three girls here in the UK—a six year old (A), and 3-year old twins (L and Q), and she kindly took the time to share one of their recent days together. Thank you Amy!

If you’d like to be next, please get in touch. All shapes and styles of home education are welcome—small families, big families, unschoolers, school-at-homers, religious, not religious…. I love seeing how families are making it work for them.

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It’s hard to describe the feeling of immense relief that came over me this morning as we did not get ready for school. Our local primary schools are all back for the new term now, yet by some wonderful miracle my girls and I are still tucked up warm indoors. 

Home education with very young children is not all pyjama mornings and quiet play, however. It is difficult even on the best days. It is worth the trouble on our worst. Come what may, I’m glad to be easing slowly back into routine as we find our (slipper clad) feet again this year. 

My daughters are aged 6.5 (A), 3 (L) and 3 (Q) years old. My eldest is neurodivergent and has never been to school. I have the enormous privilege of being at home with them, which I thank my lucky stars for every day. 

I hope you enjoy a peek into what a homeschooling day looked like for us in very early January. Our days are constantly changing, just as the girls are forever growing and changing, but I suppose that’s the magic of raising young children - every day is new. 

The girls have been waking increasingly late over Christmas, so it’s not until nearly 8.30am that we finally arrive downstairs. The winter sun is already up, and A heads straight to the dining table where I have left out our wooden ring and seasonal ornaments. Decorating the ring is a small gesture, one which we adopted when my eldest was very small and I was first reading about Waldorf education.

One of the twins goes off to play as I put the kettle on, while the other is still fast asleep. I enjoy the smell of coffee in the air which no morning is complete without. Everything is still for a moment—and then it is not. Several things happen in a short space of time. There are suddenly water cups to fill, hot crumpets to butter, a mug of tea to be delivered to Daddy. A third small child is awake in my arms (still heavy and warm from sleep) and the downstairs floor is covered in new favourite toys, fresh from Christmas. There are requests for chocolate for breakfast and requests for TV (which were both gently declined). Eventually all four of us are gathered around the table. 

I light the candles and bring the old wicker book basket out of the alcove. We talk about our word of the day, our question of the day, enjoy some Shirley Hughes, an Angelina Ballerina story and perhaps some others that I’ve forgotten. I can’t remember if we read any dragon books, as this is A’s new favourite topic after watching the How to Train Your Dragon film and series. I’m hoping her enthusiasm might be directed into some topic work soon (hopefully a History project on Vikings!) but we’ll see. It is early days and I can’t quite bring myself into full planning mode yet. Maybe next week!

There is lots of wriggling while I read aloud, lots of getting up and down from chairs. I find the trick is to simply keep reading even when it looks like no one is listening! 

In our animal of the day book we read that the Goliath frog can jump a full three metres in one leap! A is keen to find out if she can jump three metres too, but… I can’t find the tape measure. This is hardly surprising as most days I struggle to find clean socks for everyone, let alone anything else. Instead I stretch out my arms to what I think is a metre and use this to estimate the length. The girls run back and forth, leaping as far as their legs will take them! A is sure she was only a little bit short of making it. 

I clear the breakfast plates and lay the workbooks on the table. Luckily for me, A wanders over and asks what we’re doing this morning. 

A is learning to read at the moment. It’s not something that she’s taken to easily, nor something that she particularly enjoys. Some days I wish we had started earlier! Other days I wonder if we should scrap phonics altogether. For now, all the while she’s making slow and steady progress, we will keep going. 

We use flashcards to revise some of the sounds that she learnt before Christmas and naturally has now forgotten. This is followed by a full Jolly Phonics lesson. She also spots a whiteboard I have left on the side with a reading challenge on it. There are two words to read which feature sounds or rules she’s learnt recently and, if she gets them correct, I give her some loose change (usually 20p). This is a win for everyone involved: I’m pleased with the extra reading practice and A feels very cheeky for winning money from me.

At this point her patience wears thin and A asks if we’re finished at the table. We are! We will tag maths on another morning. Phonics has run on longer than it usually would (15 minutes is usually plenty) and I’ve still got some thinking to do about maths, as our curriculum is moving a bit too slowly for A. 

This is all the formal work we do at the moment and it feels like enough most days. The twins have been playing with their Maileg animals during table time, making them little beds. I’ve been checking on them periodically. The room is quiet when we finish, and I find that they’ve created themselves a little cosy corner between the sofa and the toy shelf which they are now sat inside. This is very new! Usually there are plenty of interruptions from the younger girls as I work with A. Perhaps we’ve rounded a corner? 

By now it is 11am. A asks for some alone time and retreats to an arm chair by the window, with the request that I pass her some books with flaps to peruse. L has found one of A’s new Playmobil dragon toys and wants me to show her how to make the little stick shoot out of its mouth. I repeat the same thing with Q five minutes later. Then we lose the stick—oops! It turns up eventually, as everything does. 

At some point I unload the dishwasher, bring my husband another cup of tea, load the washing machine and probably microwave my coffee again. (Is there a limit to how many times you can do this?) Soon it is time to head upstairs to get dressed. We have our friends coming round later for a play date and we need to nip to the shops for some snacks to share. 

While the girls have a lively chat in Daddy’s office with his coworker, I take the opportunity to throw my clothes on alone and in peace. After a fair amount of fussing, the girls are ready as well. Two of them have bare legs, and one is wearing dressing up clothes, but we are mostly presentable. I grab my purse before we head out the front door to a surprisingly bright and mild Janaury day. 

On the walk I practise road safety with L&Q, and turning left and right with A. We pass a neighbour who makes friendly conversation about how much the girls have grown, which leads to some interesting questions from A on babies, and having multiples, and how rare this is.

On the way back, Q complains of sleepy legs. We play a game where we walk like different animals: stomp like an elephant, waddle like a penguin, gallop like a horse and so on. This gets the girls moving in all different ways, and soon their tired legs are forgotten! We probably look completely bonkers to anyone walking by, so it’s a good job I stopped caring about looking like a sensible adult years ago! Obviously A suggests that we prowl like a dragon and then we fly the rest of the way home. 

When we reach the front door there is excitement—there are not one but two parcels in the porch! We carry them inside and unwrap them. A finds the unicorn doll she’s been waiting for and our new Yoto player is here, bought with the girls’ Christmas money. 

There is a lot of faffing about and impatience as I set the Yoto player up, but eventually the girls settle down for a story and a packet of crisps because by now it is long gone lunch time. I put pasta on in the kitchen and invite A over to help make a quick cheese sauce with me, which she does. We eat and listen to stories and I wonder why I didn’t invest in an audiobook player months ago. 

Once our plates are empty, A sits back by the window and I realise her reason for choosing this particular spot: she’s waiting for her friends to arrive. I think she has missed them over the Christmas break. 

A’s best friends are two sisters aged 5 and 7 who are also home educated. They have a younger sibling who is 3, the same age as the twins, and a mother who just so happens to enjoy a chat over a cup of coffee like I do. It’s around 2.30pm when they arrive and the children settle in to play, the coffee flows, biscuit packets are opened and Christmas stories are shared.

The mother’s chat gradually turns to the topic of planning upcoming trips, and what would be accessible by public transport (as neither of us drive), how much different activities and exhibitions would cost, and so on. Finally, at around 6pm, the play date finishes after many grumbles. 

I’m not entirely sure what the children got up to all afternoon. At one point they were in the garden role playing as the characters from the Shifty McGifty books, and by the end of the play date the others had tied A to a chair with play silks! They are a funny bunch and it’s wonderful to see their friendships develop. 

A quick dinner of leftovers is thrown in the oven, alongside homemade chips which Q insists she helps chop. Afterwards, A says that she would like to make new cards for the Yoto player, make slime with her new unicorn toy and watch the film My Father’s Dragon on Netflix (as we’d just finished the book). I tell her that there isn’t likely time for all three, but somehow we manage a bit of each. We even finally locate the tape measure and try again to (this time accurately) jump as far as a Goliath frog. 

After brushing our teeth and changing into pyjamas (or not, anything goes by this time of night) we are all in bed with some books. We look at a dinosaur fact book before L heads off to bed with Daddy. I read a little from Dragonology to A and we talk about the Latin dragon names (a topic to dive into another day, as it really is far too late). I read Q one of her favourite Acorn Wood books and turn the bedtime audiobook on at around 8.45pm, although it is some time later before the girls finally fall asleep. 

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Thanks for reading. If you liked this, have a look at Amy’s newsletter, The Nurture Diaries.

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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