Special Guest Edition: How We Homeschooled Today by Emily Phillips
Happy December! It’s been ages since I shared a Special Guest Edition, where homeschooling Substackers share a day in their family’s life. A reminder for new readers that you can find all previous editions here, and if you’d like to share your own day in the life please get in touch. All kinds of homeschooling are welcome: religious and non-religious, big families, small families, unschooling or full-on classical education and everything in between. I’m always especially keen to hear from families with older children because we hear a lot online about the delights of homeschooling little ones, but much less about the teenage years.
Many thanks to Emily for finding the time to share today’s post. As you’ll see, on this day Emily began her morning at 4.30. She has six children. Her life on this day is a model of efficiency. For anyone else who, like me, reads it and feels just the tiniest bit inadequate, remember that there are many ways to raise a happy, well-educated child. Just because your day doesn’t look like Emily’s doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong!
Hi! I’m Emily of Withyweather Farm & School and A Warm Hearth here on Substack. Today I’ll be sharing a typical school day for my family. I chose to document a day that didn’t include outside appointments or activities, so I could give you all the best example of what an in-home school schedule looks like. In case you’re interested in reading more, I’ve shared here what our homeschool curriculum looks like this year, as well as a post on three days in our life earlier this spring. Thanks so much to Catherine for inviting me here today! Without further ado: Here’s how we homeschooled today.
It’s a Tuesday morning at 4:30am, and my day began the night before. In order for me to execute what I aim to do in a day with six children and homeschool, I have to get my ducks in a row the previous evening. This means that 1) meat for breakfast has been thawed out, 2) schoolwork is laid out and ready to go and 3) I got to bed early enough that I can get up at 4:30. [Note from Catherine who has almost never seen 4.30am and would love to know how: Emily says she tries to be asleep by 9pm on the days she plans to get up early.]
So here I am, up at 4:30 nursing the baby while my husband does his morning exercise. I lay the baby back down, then come downstairs and start cooking breakfast. After breakfast is cooked, I walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes while saying my daily prayers and doing some morning reading. By the time I’ve eaten, my kids are starting to wake up - about 6:30 am. I head upstairs to ensure everyone makes their beds and picks up clothes on the floor. Several fights amongst the four boys are broken up. My 6yo daughter goes downstairs to finish making toast and then heads outside to take care of the chickens and geese. It’s 22 degrees this morning, and she comes back in to tell me their waterer is frozen solid. I tell her I’ll help her sort things out when we all come outside for our morning walk after breakfast. We’ve had a sudden dip in temperatures which means the winter poultry setup hasn’t been completed yet. Did you know you can break up ice in a shallow waterer by flipping it over and stomping on it? Neither did she!
Breakfast happens around 7:30 this morning, and I read Builders of Our Country while my kids eat. Today we are reading about Miles Standish and the Pilgrims, including Squanto and first Thanksgiving story. My kids have seen the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving “Mayflower Voyagers” movie a million times, so they’re already familiar with the story. After breakfast, my 11yo does the dishes and cleans up the kitchen, while my 7yo wipes down the table and pushes in chairs. Everyone brushes their hair and teeth. By 8:30 I’m extracting my 3 younger boys from a game of “spy” involving them wearing their bathrobes and playing with flashlights in a darkened room to drag them outside for our morning walk. It’s chilly and windy outside, but off we go. I’ve found the morning sun exposure and exercise to be very helpful in cutting down on the kids’ energy for fighting with each other throughout the day. We walk for maybe 15 minutes, then come in. Now we start school.
As I mentioned before, I’ve laid out each child’s schoolwork in individual piles on our school table. Each child (the ones who can independently read) has sticky notes with a list of their daily chores and school items for the day. This was a genius idea I learned from Lane Scott, and I will never go back! Sitting on the couch - because that’s where my toddler is playing currently - I work with my 7yo first on his reading lesson - 100 Easy Lessons - then his general workbook, and finally his math worksheet. By now I’ve ended up back in the schoolroom area. **side note: none of my boys have been ready to read before age 7. This is okay! Don’t panic if your six year old isn’t ready to read yet!** I put two roaster chickens in the oven for dinner later.
My older kids have begun working on their subjects they can do independently from me. Once they’ve finished a subject, they put it in the “Mom Check” pile on a side table. The other kids are coloring copied pictures from a Lord of the Rings coloring book. Next I help my preschooler with his workbook and art study. Today he’s looking at “Ice Skating” by William Charles Anthony Frerichs. I love hearing his little comments and ideas about the painting. He is also pleased to show me that he can write his name completely - albeit backwards.
My 6yo girl has just been taught to crochet by her grandmother, and she has been happily occupied with handwork all morning. In addition to crocheting, she has a little embroidery sampler to work on. I think this is enough for her to do today without pushing handwriting practice or reading.
My 9yo 3rd grader is next. He accomplishes cursive practice and some spelling on his own. I help him with math, writing, Latin, a spelling test, and literature. He practices typing on the computer for 10 minutes, then heads down to the basement to play Legos with his younger brothers. By this point, three children are done with their schoolwork for the day. I put some frozen gluten-free Costco pizzas in the oven for lunchtime around 11:00, as we didn’t have enough leftovers from dinner last night to show up as lunch. I begin feeding my toddler an earlier lunch while helping my 11yo with math. He’s late to starting schoolwork because he had some other things to do beforehand. He’s already accomplished his drawing practice on his own, but today most of his subjects require my assistance and direct teaching. I’ve found it to be quite overwhelming having everyone at the school table simultaneously, so I try to work with each child individually as much as time allows. Some days that isn’t possible for various reasons. But I much prefer the individual work, as it also gives me precious special time with each child!
We accomplish some math and then it’s time for the rest of the family to eat lunch. I read a little more from “Builders of Our Country”, then lay the toddler down for her nap around 12:15 while the kids finish eating. I direct my 9yo to do his after-lunch chores of putting away the clean dishes in the sink and cleaning up the dining room. I tell them they can play Legos in the basement while I lay down for a while, after their chores are done. I close my eyes for about 30 minutes, then head back downstairs. The two chickens are done cooking and I put a sugar pumpkin plus a butternut squash (from our garden - yes, I’m proud) in to roast for dinner.
My 11yo works on the rest of his math, literature, Latin, composition, and spelling with me. I squeeze in paying some bills and cleaning up paperwork at my desk. I start an Azure order for this month’s pickup and take care of some administrative items. After I’m done at the computer, he does his typing lesson and I move to drawing Lego Ninjago ninja characters with my 5yo. My 11yo heads outside to do some around-the-farm jobs for his dad. I hear the toddler wake from her nap and hurriedly color a picture for a few minutes with my 6yo, then head upstairs to get her up. We come downstairs and I take out the squash and pumpkins and put in some vegetables for dinner (thank you again, Costco). Everyone’s done with schoolwork!
Around 4:00 my husband comes home from work and I do our daily exercises with the kids. Usually I do this in the morning after breakfast, but I decided to make them happen in the afternoon instead as a “movement break” since it’s cold outside -meaning we won’t be playing outside much - and I think my kids will need some activity spread throughout the day. Several of my children are in myofunctional therapy, and I’ve found it to be easiest to just make everyone do the exercises rather than spending 15 minutes with each child who needs the work. In addition to myo work, we also do timed dead hangs from our Swedish ladder, squats, crawling, stretches, and cross-lateral movements. I treat this as “gym class”. Even the toddler has begun dead-hanging from her little play gym and it’s so adorable.
Everyone works together to clean up the house before dinner. We eat around 5:30, then head outside for our traditional nighttime lantern walk to celebrate the feast of Martinmas. I’ve collected various candle lanterns from thrift stores and garage sales over the years, and each child gets one with a little tea light to carry as we walk through the cold snowy night. We discuss the story of St. Martin of Tours, the various meanings we can assign to a “candle in the darkness” and how we should be grateful for protection from the cold weather - unlike the poor beggar whom St Martin divided his cloak to warm.
After our lantern walk, we clean up from dinner and head to bed!
That’s a rough recap of our homeschooling day. I wanted to add, regarding homeschooling with a toddler about: it’s hard. Way harder than not having a toddler around. Experience as a mother has taught me that the getting-into-everything phase with little ones is blessedly short in hindsight, so I’ve learned to accept the frequent interruptions and need for peripheral vigilance while accomplishing school. Sometimes my toddler - 18 months old currently - will play for a few minutes alone in the next room. Sometimes I’ll assign a child to busy her for a short time while I get an important task done without her cute presence. But usually she’s just a tiny agent of chaos. Today, for example, she pulled all the worksheets and finished colored pictures out of their organizing trays, drew in several of my children’s workbooks, pulled many books off the bookshelves - pretty funny to see her studiously reading Orsinian Tales upside down - took spices out of the pantry and pushed them around in her little doll stroller, asked me to read the same book 40 times, and nursed a ton out of boredom and a desire for connection. If you’re struggling to homeschool with a toddler: I see you! I am you! And do not fret - too much - because this phase will very soon come to an end. The light at the end of a tunnel is a 2, then 3, then 4 year old who plays much more independently and maturely. The days are long but the years are short, as they say.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to share a day in your homeschooling life, please do get in touch. And if you’re not subscribed to How We Homeschool, sign up for free and never miss a post.
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My husband loves taking our children on night walks and they always come back thrilled with experiencing the spookiness of it, haha. I bet they'd be over the moon about getting a candle!! I'm going to add that in! :)
I enjoyed reading this! We're currently on a homeschool break and I'm trying to brainstorm our rhythm for January. This was very helpful for ideas and expectations, especially because you included the ages of your children. This winter we will have four under the age of five, plus the two older who are not yet ten. It's a tricky mix! Homeschooling with toddlers/preschool age is challenging, and it kind of multiplies with the addition of each one. At the same time, I've seen how it's forced me to incorporate more outside time and breaks that do benefit the older children. Anyway, I found it helpful and inspiring to see how you're making it work with your own age mix! Thanks for sharing, Emily, and for hosting, Catherine!