Homeschooling Day in the Life: Allie, homeschooling mom in Texas, who loves helping other moms with intentional slow and simple living

A homeschool day in the life looks different almost every day, right? Over on our Instagram page, we love to give you a peek into lots of homeschool days regardless of how they change day to day.

Today, we’re going to give you a peek into the homeschool day in the life of Allie, homeschooling mom in Texas, who loves helping other moms with intentional slow and simple living.

We can all learn and be inspired by one another, regardless of our homeschool approach. It’s not about looking good for social media, it’s about the connection going on inside our homeschool walls and sharing with others what works for us.We might all homeschool a little differently, but we can always look for ideas from each other that inspire, encourage and equip us in our own homeschool days. So each week we create blog posts for you to access later of each of those “days in the life”. We hope you keep coming back for more inspiration. Keep going, mama! These days at home are so worth it!

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Meet Allie

Allie @intentionally.allie is a homeschooling mom in the lovely state of Texas! She loves guiding mamas in how to pursue an intentional walk with Jesus through slow and simple living.

She gains her homeschooling inspiration from her mom, mother-in-law, and so many of the other homeschooling moms in her church.

Allie loves family time, reading, and serving in her church and she’s so excited to share her day with us!

Mornings

Most weekdays look the same around here for me from 0530-0730.

• wake up
• coffee for me and my husband (who’s an interventional radiology nurse) and pack his lunch
• if I need to get breakfast in the oven or get sourdough started for the day I do it now
• back to my bed for coffee and quiet time. Literally one of my favorite times of day. Could not do my day without it!
• make the bed
• get my workout in
• shower and get ready for the day (side note but this has made a huge difference for me as a mama. I just started doing this in the last 2 months and oh my goodness!)
• set up for morning time with my kiddos

I LOVE mornings!! The quiet peacefulness is my favorite!

Morning Time

I always laugh and feel like I need to put air quotes around “Morning time school” because I know so many people use it to mean so many different things.

But regardless… This is what we do for “morning time school” in this current season and I’m sure it will change as the years go on. Oh, the beauty of homeschooling.

Since my oldest was a baby we’ve started our day with snuggles on the couch, warm drinks, and books. Obviously as time went on we morphed from board books and picture books, to include chapter books and now “school books”.

This is honestly one of my favorite times of day with my kids. I love the physical and relational connections that flow from morning time. It’s come to be what we consider our “normal morning”, and if we aren’t going to be reading together on the couch in the morning I usually need to explain that the night before so expectations are set. 😵‍💫 It fills ALL of our cups. That morning time quilt signals magic is about to happen ✨.

• We start with devotions. We’re currently going through The Gospel Story Bible by Marty Machowski. I really like it! Amazing connections are drawn from the Old testament stories to Christ.
• Next we do our read aloud chapter book. Half a hundred acre Wood does have read alouds that go along with their curriculum. Currently one is not assigned so we started Jotham’s Journey, as you saw the kids begged for more. That’s when you know it’s good.
• Now is when I open our actual “curriculum”. For the first time this year we’re using @halfahundredacrewood curriculum. I LOVE IT! I’ll share more about this in stories, but I’m not super rigid when it comes to what we complete each day. I basically use her curriculum as a guide for what books we should go through, and for what we should read each day. I don’t necessarily get to all 4 days every week. We just check off each day as we do it. The curriculum includes guides for Bible scripture memory, hymn study, geography, history, geography activity, art and drawing, orchestra and poetry, science, and a read-aloud.

Homeschooling With Toddlers

Attention all homeschooling mamas with toddlers!

Keeping your toddler happily occupied while you teach your older kids can make or break your school day. Relationship always comes over checklists, but we do need to get school done at some point. I’d rather have a happily occupied toddler than a sad one personally. This has helped us in huge ways!

This last year I decided to make a basket of purely fun things for my 2-year-old to enjoy only during school time.

• markers
• stamps
• notebook
• crayons + pencils
• STICKERS (lots of them!)
• glue

If she asks for it outside of school I just remind her “that’s special for when sisters are working on school. You get to play with it tomorrow.” It has worked like a gem! I’m talking 30 minutes to an hour easy. (Apparently we don’t use markers much 😆 because those and the stickers did it for her!)

For my four and a half year old (who only does preschool workbooks at this point) I decided to occupy him by filling blocks of time with different activities.

After morning chores he does his workbook with me while sisters are finishing up their morning chores. Next he has quiet reading for a certain amount of time. When his timer for quiet reading goes off he moves on to outside play time. (This is a big deal for him because he does not like to play alone. He’s grown so much in this area though with consistent practice.) When his timer for outside play time goes off he comes in and if the girls are still working on their school I either find something productive for him to do or he watches a school movie with our 2.5 yr old.

Core Curriculum

I know as homeschool Mamas it’s always nice to see what other people use on the daily. I hope this is helpful in some way. Most importantly though, remember… One of the nicest things about homeschooling is the ability to do what fits YOU and YOUR KIDS!

Don’t be afraid to switch it up! At some point you’ll need to use discretion for whether or not you need to push through the hard or allow the struggle to show you you need to change. Pray about it.🤍 God will show you what to do.

4th Grade

• Thankful Journal (we almost use this as part of the kids Bible. First thing after morning chores. These have helped encourage attitudes of gratefulness in a huge way!)
• Saxon Math
• Rod & Staff Spelling
• TGATB handwriting – I love how beautiful this curriculum is. But on a more important level 😜 I love how it’s set up to be done in 10 minute time increments. My kiddos set the timer for 10 minutes and work until it goes off. Some days they’re more productive in those 10 minutes than other days, but it all evens out in the end. When they finish a book we move on to the next one I don’t really worry about the grade level.
• Reading – Rod and Staff Bible Reader. Also, my kiddos love to read thankfully, so I probably don’t really need to make this a part of their school work but I do require them to read one chapter a day from whatever chapter book they’re currently working on.

2nd Grade

• Thankful Journal
• Rod & Staff Math
• Rod & Staff Spelling
• TGATB Handwriting
• Reading – Rod & Staff Bible reader, and she’s currently working through Narnia. Another fav of hers was Sophie Mouse.

Preschool

• Thankful Journal
• Rod & Staff A-F books

And that’s it! Super simple!

Thank you Allie for sharing your Day in the Life with us!

If you want to see more Day in the Life photos and videos, be sure to check out our Instagram profile. There are highlights of each takeover at the top.