Homeschool Day in the Life: Amy, homeschool mom and homeschooling content creator

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 Amy, wife and homeschool mom to five children, and also a homeschooling content creator.

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.

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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!

Meet Amy

Amy Sloan @humilityanddoxology and her husband John are 2nd-generation homeschoolers to five children from kindergarten to calculus. Amy and her family adventure together in North Carolina where they pursue a restfully-classical education by grace alone. 

If you hang out with Amy for any length of time you’ll quickly learn that she loves overflowing book stacks (the librarians literally know her by name), giant mugs of coffee (although she’s currently on a caffeine detox and requires loads of sympathy), and beautiful memory work (all the poetry and Shakespeare, please). 

Amy considers memes and GIFS one of her favorite love languages, and at any moment she could break into song and dance from Hamilton, 90s country music, or Shakespeare. 

Amy writes at HumilityandDoxology.com and hosts the weekly “Homeschool Conversations” podcast.

Good Morning!

Good morning! I’m so excited to share our day in the life with you today. My husband and I are second generation homeschoolers. We have five kids: two boys (15 and 5) and three girls (13, 10, and almost-9). Our homeschool is characterized by lots of great books, beautiful poetry memory work, melodrama, goofiness, sibling spats, philosophical discussions, wonder, delight, and lots of repentance.

My day usually begins between five and six. Oh boy, do I miss coffee! I have until 8am to get some work done on the @humilityanddoxology blog and Homeschool Conversations podcast, go for a brisk walk, enjoy a short Pilates workout from The Balanced Life, read my Bible, eat breakfast, and take a shower. Yeah. You can see that all that doesn’t happen every morning. {Let’s be real; often I skip the shower, unless I have a podcast interview or other activity scheduled for the day!} Today is a podcast recording day, so the shower took priority over Pilates.

Side note: life with big kids is awesome. You’ll notice I did not have to make anyone’s breakfast or help anyone get dressed today. How much things have changed from those all-littles years!

Everyone gathers in the living room around 8am for Morning Time! We usually kick it off with a World Watch News video. Then we move on to Bible reading and memory work, read aloud, poetry memory, and prayer time. Morning time is our favorite part of the homeschool day. It is a great way to prioritize relationships and shared family culture even with a wide age range and a variety of personalities and interests.

The teens move on around 9am to their independent work. Meanwhile, I’ll read aloud from our current history spine book to the younger three. We follow a textbook free history approach. I read aloud one core book at a time, then each individual has their own assigned and free reading related to the history time period. Right now we’re reading Famous Men of Rome and we recently finished The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum.

Our Kindergarten Approach

My baby is five. I am relishing every moment of this precious time together this year! Our family has always taken a gentle approach to homeschooling preschool. Five kids later, I’ve never bought a preschool curriculum!

Our approach to Kindergarten is still gentle, but I do begin incorporating some “official” school time together. The age for kindergarten has varied in our home, too. I have some 2E kids who were doing kindergarten work while still crazy little, but I have some other kids who needed to take more than a year at this level of work. I seek to focus on relationships and the individual needs of each child, not an artificially imposed checklist or schedule.

This often looks like a lesson from his favorite Kindergarten Math with Confidence, a little bit of reading lesson (this particular guy often can’t focus for a full lesson, so we end before tears start), and lots of time snuggled up together reading.

Especially in a bigger family, it can be hard to find one-on-one time with the littlest kids. I’ve found that it’s easier if I prioritize that time in the schedule first thing before I’m too exhausted by the day. The great part is that it helps fill up their little heart and makes it at least a teeny bit easier to give Mama and the other kids opportunity to work during the rest of the day.

Flexibility in Homeschooling

I love the flexibility homeschooling offers. My husband is working primarily from home these days (from the bedroom closet), but we still usually have our time of family devotions in the evening after dinner. However today he has a meeting in the evening. We’ve worked around work and online class schedules to find a time to meet up as a family midday.

If I were taking a picture of a more typical homeschool day, you’d see every child would be eating something different (mostly the kids fix their own lunches, either leftovers or sandwiches, or yogurt/fruit). The younger three often spend their lunch break doing something super educational like watching Dude Perfect YouTube videos. My older daughter chats with friends online, and my oldest son would probably be watching either disc golf or chess videos. I usually use the time to read, work, or just take a minute to myself.

If you are interested in learning more about doing family devotions, John joined me on an episode of my Homeschool Conversations podcast to talk all about how and why we do it. It’s Season 2, Ep 1 in the podcast feed, or you can watch the video @HumilityandDoxology on YouTube.

Memory Work

We love poetry just about as much as we love our books over here! Our memory work practice is one of our favorite parts of homeschooling. We began with some of my personal favorite poems: “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Death be not Proud,” “Ozymandias,” “Jabberwocky,” and Psalm 139, to name a few.

Right from the beginning I knew we had limited time sit still and concentrate for long periods. I decided to focus on what I consider to be the top priorities of memory work time. I believe this is Scripture and poetry, truth and beauty over random lists of facts.

The selections we have memorized have provided us with a shared family culture and lots of inside jokes. As I look back now, years later, our hearts and minds are filled with beautiful words, elegant rhetorical devices, and profound reminders of truth.

When choosing memory work for your unique family, mom’s enthusiasm is key. I believe it is the most important foundation for a successful memory work habit. You cannot expect your kids to respond with joy to the latest assigned poetry memory work if you’re over there mumbling or droning on or, worse yet, just listening to their recitations!

Get goofy. Be willing to embarrass yourself. Dance around. Have fun. I promise it will be contagious! A good first step is to choose something that YOU like, and share that love with your kids, rather than picking the thing you think that you’re “supposed to” memorize.

Good Night!

Good night, friends. My husband is gone for the evening, and it’s time to curl up and watch a movie with the kids. It’s been fun to share our day with you today! 

Homeschooling doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. It can be good books, beautiful poetry, or deep conversations. It can look like crying together, laughing together, being silly, or being serious.

I’d love for you to come join me @humilityanddoxology , and to subscribe to the Homeschool Conversations with Humility and Doxology podcast in your favorite podcast player!

Thank you so much to Amy for sharing your family’s day 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.