A Typical Day in Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool
Each homeschool day is so different from another. That's the beauty of homeschooling! But, I find it helpful to see a snapshot of a typical day, so here is our Charlotte Mason homeschool in action!
This year I have a 6th grader, 4th grader and 2nd grader. Many of our school days take us out of our home in the afternoon for clubs, co-ops and activities but today was a restful day at home.
Part 1: Our Morning Routine & Habits
The morning starts with my husband leaving for work. I have late sleepers so usually everyone is still in bed and I take an hour to check emails, get my content ready for the day and get myself ready. My phone "bricks" all my social media apps from 8:30 am-noon so I try to work as much as I can before then.
My youngest usually gets up first and the other two wake up shortly after. I usually let them sleep as much as they need to unless we're headed out in the mornings. This morning she grabbed her math and copywork and her yoto player and joined me in my room to work on her subjects while I finished my Bible study.
They all make breakfast on their own. I usually meal plan something easy like toast and yogurt, eggs, cereal or oatmeal. This morning was peanut butter toast and protein yogurt.
There is a lot of flexibility in the mornings in our routine, mainly because I am not a morning person. I just ask that each of the kids eats breakfast, cleans up, gets dressed and finishes their individual work before lunch. Individual work includes math, copywork, grammar, reading practice (for my youngest), and one "individual reading" or assignment.
An individual reading usually is a science, history or literature assignment from a book we're not reading together as a family. This could also include a Latin lesson or a written narration for my 6th and 4th grade students.
My youngest may listen to her assignment on audiobook if I'm not available to read to her. Any books that are finished need to be narrated and they'll either come find me to narrate or do a written narration as assigned.
I have read all of these books or have a cheat sheet for the main points of the assigned chapter (from the Ambleside Online Cheat Sheet Group) so I am able to make sure they're understanding the parts they should be.
This morning my 6th grader did math, grammar, copywork , poetry recitation, a reading from "The Mystery of the Periodic Table" and a written narration.
My 4th grader did her math, grammar, copywork, her special study (health), poetry recitation, literature reading ("Asgard to Athens") with narration and worked on memorizing her states.
My 2nd grade student did her reading practice, math, handwriting, poetry recitation and her history reading ("The Little Duke") with narration.
This usually takes about 2-2.5 hours to complete though most of that is not actual school. They are also required to do one chore a day (we rotate every month) and practice their musical instrument, so they'll do that during this time too. If they finish everything before lunch they can have free time to do what they'd like! Today my oldest was working on his cardboard suit of armor.
Part 2: Late-Morning Homeschooling
Next is lunch, somewhere between 11 and noon. We keep lunch super simple as well, and often my child who is hungriest will help with getting it ready. Things that can go in the oven, frozen leftovers that are easy to thaw (like soup or casserole), sandwiches or quesadillas or anything else that is easy to put together is usually what is on the meal plan. Today was leftovers, which is no one's favorite but is very easy to prepare!
During lunch we will do our "morning time". I wish there was a better name for it because we rarely complete it during the actual morning, but that's what we call it for now. This always includes a Bible reading, our memory work for the day, a poem (if they haven't done a recitation earlier), something from our music or art study (hymn, folk song, art study, composer study), one assignment from our family "table work" (nature journaling, timeline, map Work, handicraft, memorizing states and capitols) and our family study for the day (vocab word of the week, spelling, read aloud, Shakespeare, etc).
This, along with lunch, usually takes about 1-1.5 hours.
Today our morning time included our memorization work, spelling lessons, composer study, and Bible reading. My middle had done her health/special study earlier and her state memorization work. My youngest and oldest did their state work (6th grade-memorizing capitols, 2nd grade-memorizing all the names of the states) too.
After lunch and morning time we'll get into completing 1-2 shared family subjects, which usually is our history or a literature book we're reading as a family. Our history this year is Beautiful Feet Books Medieval History and I'm finding it's a lot of reading (usually 30-50 pages). I'm enjoying it a lot though and so are my kids. This typically takes another hour to complete.
Today we read from our history book ("Queen Eleanor") and our current free read ("The Door in the Wall"). The history reading my kids had to narrate but the free read is just for our enjoyment. My girls painted their nails while listening and my son kept busy with a Rubik's cube.
Part 3: Our Afternoon Homeschool Rhythms
By this time it's around 2pm, so we'll take a quiet rest time. Everyone is tapped by this time and needs time to recharge away from everyone. I take this time to work on house work around the house, respond to texts, rest and catch up on work. Today I worked more on a quilt I'm sewing.
My kids usually listen to audiobooks and play with toys. Today my oldest wanted to conduct a science experiment from his reading this morning, so we did that first before a quiet rest.
Around 3pm it's time for an outing or to play outside. We might run to the library or errands if they're close by. The weather was beautiful so my kids ran around in the yard for about an hour. Then my kids watched half of the movie adaptation of "Madeline" that we checked out from the library earlier this week.
Usually around 4:30pm I start supper prep while they're watching a show but tonight we had a dinner event so we headed out and met dad there.
Guarding The Hours: Rhythms & Routines
As the years go on the number one thing I've learned is how important it is to establish a rhythm and then guard it. There are so many things competing for our time--so many good things! But, just like I have to "brick" my phone so that my phone usage doesn't interrupt our school time, I have to block outside activities during school hours.
We try to keep all of our extracurricular activities to the afternoon time if we can. Errands, appointments and lessons are saved for this time too so that we can focus on school during school hours.
The shape of our day and the rigors of school continue to change as the years go by, so each year it takes time to find our new routine. Each year the Lord is faithful to meet me in my weakness and help guide my children in their learning. And somehow the faithful plodding of each day piles up into a full school year!
