Homeschooling Day in the Life: Cassie, homeschooling mom to six young children

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 Cassie, homeschooling mom to six young children, and lover of practical parenting tips.

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 Cassie

Cassie @cassiegoossen is a homeschool mom to six kids ages 6 months – 9 years. She is a business owner. She is a worshiper and prayer warrior. Cassie is passionate about helping everyone she meets encounter Jesus in a real authentic way.

She loves encouraging mamas with practical, grace based parenting tips. If she has any free time left at the end of the day Cassie likes to snuggle up with a good book or girly movie.

Cassie and her husband Dean have built a life they love in the beautiful lakes area of Minnesota.

Slow Mornings

Hey new friends! We are – well, mostly me – so excited to share our day with you!

There are so many reasons I chose to homeschool but one of my top three is slow mornings! I am NOT a morning person and I love to be cozy in my robe for as long as possible. I love making my kids breakfast and savoring every last drip of coffee in my cup.

My little shadow always finds me in the bathroom and wants to talk my ear off while I get ready for the day. She follows me to the kitchen for breakfast prep. Adults say that something else starts in the kitchen 😉 but I like to say that school starts in the kitchen! I wasn’t even looking for a teaching moment this morning when she starting counting each egg that I cracked. We have to work on what comes after 10 but it was a pretty good start for never having “practiced” counting.

How We Homeschool

“How many hours per day do you do school?” Who else has gotten this question as a homeschool mom?

For us the “sit down and focus” portion of school usually happens between 9:30-11:30am. We mix and mash what works for each child. Having a bunch of kids learning at different levels can be tricky but we have found what works for us! I absolutely LOVE the days that go as planned and we sit and do school together. It really fills my heart to sit and teach my kids! It’s not perfect, it’s usually messy and it is often full of interruptions and rabbit trails, but we are together and that’s my favorite place to be.

Quiet Time

Quiet Time–it’s mandatory around here. The littlest two take a nap and the big boys either finish up school leftover from the morning or have quiet reading time. My six year old is learning how to read so I try to set aside 30 minutes to work with him on reading one-on-one.

In my dream house we have a wall full of books but no matter what we make time for reading! In high school and college I loved theater & performing in musicals, so read aloud time at our house is never boring. I’m all about making the voices for each character or adding silliness to stories we have read 2,000 times. My big boys have recently started liking more chapter style books and it’s fun to see their reading excel and become something they LIKE to do!

Curriculum

Curriculum is a massive topic that I am NOT a pro at. I’ve learned by trial and error. I’ve tried a lot of things. I took a month off last year to get my bearings after I felt like I was failing my kids.

My older two boys are 12 months apart in age so they having been learning together at the same level since the second was born. This worked so we just kept that going when we started school. My next boy was born the second week of September so he would automatically be “held back” if he went to public school. Turns out his personality is definitely more suited to learning at home at his own pace. My fourth son is not even supposed to be in kindergarten but of course wants to do whatever brothers are doing! Here’s what’s working for us right now:

The main curriculum we use is Gather ‘Round Homeschool. It is a unit based curriculum that we really like! My favorite part is choosing the next unit WITH my boys! They get to help pick based on what they are interested in! Currently “transportation” is where it’s at for a house full of boys!

For Language Arts we are using level two of The Good and the Beautiful. So far I love how SIMPLE it is for me as the teacher!

This is our third year using Master Books for math and the boys really thrive with their layout!

And that’s it. We don’t use a set curriculum for anything else. That might change as the boys get older but for now this suits our needs. There is a big world out there and we use every opportunity to learn!

Ending Our Day

Wednesdays always end with Date Night for this mommy and daddy. We come home to kiddos ready for bed and eager for a story, prayers and snuggles.

Once the house is quiet it’s time for this mama to sneak into my office and prepare for the next couple days of school, catch up on messages for my home based business and catch up on tasks for our non-profit ministry. Thank you for following along with our day!

Thank you so much to Cassie 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.