A Day in the Life of Homeschool Mama Chelsea

Here’s a look at the Day in the Life of Chelsea, homeschooling mama to three little ones, and a full-time work from home curriculum creator. At Learning Well, we understand that homeschooling doesn’t look the same for all of us. We understand it doesn’t have to either for us to learn and glean good things from each other. Each Wednesday, on our Instagram feed, we feature a new homeschool mama to take over the feed and show us what her day looks like.

Some of us homeschool for religious reasons and that inspires our homeschool days. Some of us homeschool from the road and never do school in the same place twice. We might have been homeschooling for years and years. Or we may have just begun our journeys. We understand that those details don’t really matter though. The common thread that binds us all together is our desires to educate our children differently.

We might all homeschool 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 Chelsea

Chelsea is a mommy to 3 little kids with big personalities (ages 6.5, 3.5 and 1). She and her family live a magical life a couple minutes (literally) from Walt Disney World and when “the world is open” they are there a few times a week! Chelsea and her husband are the owners of Let’s Play School and both work from home full-time creating hands-on learning for families around the world. They are about to enter their 4th year of homeschooling and are loving every second of it!

Good Morning!

Good Morning!! We’re the Lanese Family coming to you today from the Orlando area. If today were a normal day I’m sure we’d be ending up at Disney at some point throughout the day. We are a full-time work from home / homeschooling family. We are the owners of @letsplayschool ? Our business has grown and grown, so about 5 months ago Matt quit his corporate job for us to go all in and it’s been amazing!

Today we will be showing you how we juggle running our business while making our home and children’s education as magical as we can … even while social distancing. We hope you’re ready for some fun tips, crazy kids, and watching as we pack 200 Book Club boxes today (the goal today) ?. Excited to be with you all today!!

Morning Basket

Our lives are usually crazy busy but it’s so important to me that I have time every morning to do Morning Basket with my kids. Does your family do Morning Basket? We’ve been doing this now since Lucy (3.5) was 6 months old. So we’re right around our 3-year Morning Basket Anniversary ?☺️.

I try to change the contents of our basket up every month and over the years with their ages changing, the contents have really changed. We like to keep a few things the same. I always read them a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible, we do our @letsplayschool FUNdamentals and I always have songs, stories and games in there. It’s a special time of day for us.

Before social distancing began, we would always do Morning Basket at around 7am. Matt would make breakfast and while the kids were eating I’d read to them. Now that things are so different, we’ve found our family gets the day going more easily if we get up, get dressed and take a morning walk first. So we’ve been doing Morning Basket around 9/9:30am now. How does your family start the day? I’m not a morning person since I stay up late working. I’d love to hear how your day begins!

Routine + Schedule

Let’s talk about routine/schedules/lesson planning. I have been officially/unofficially diagnosed with ADHD. I talk about it often on my page @letsplayschool . As an adult, it has been the greatest blessing and also the biggest curse. I’ve never tried to “fix” it with medicine because I love who I am because of my ADHD most of the time. I can get ?? things ?? DONE! At least when they’re things I WANT to get done.

As an adult I’ve positioned myself so that I am my own boss and own my company so that there is no one telling me what and when I need to do things. That wouldn’t work for me. I would be struggling hard! I’ve tried so many things for my kids and I as far as routine/schedule and lesson plans. For us, I’ve found schedules cannot exist unless it’s like getting my girls to dance class. Even that feels like suddenly someone is ruining my life if I’m in the middle of something my brain is SET on. I get in crazy creative zones where I’m like one track mind. I have a hard time doing anything else if I’m in the mood to create curriculum.

We have FINALLY found the golden ticket to making our days amazing and productive as far as homeschool goes. Lilly Belle (6.5) is my mini and has many of the same traits I do. I’ve taken every single piece of curriculum she uses and wrote it out on these charts. Each week we use a new color highlighter to watch all the things get checked off (our favorite thing ever!!). She LOVES checking off as much as she can each week. Some days I’ve seen her do 10 math lessons in a row because she obsesses over these little boxes. For me it’s perfect because when I’m in a place where I am able to be all in with her we love to see the boxes disappear together.

I am HUGE on being all in with the kids. And because of my ADHD, when my zone is the kids… we have the best time!! When I see these boxes being checked off I see progress, memories and just all the learning ?????? I have these checklists as a blank freebie on our blog, Letsplayschoolblog.com – they’re a lifesaver!! Second grade here we come!

Working From Home Full Time

Working at home full-time with three littles means I have to get creative all day long and roll with the punches. Sometimes I really stink at it, but most of the time I feel like a pro. Lucy never leaves my side. She sleeps with us. She is always next to me talking while I’m working and even in my lap as I’m at my laptop.

I love this picture. It captures our life over here pretty perfectly. Messy house, working, and the cutest little kids right by my side! Anyone else work from home full-time … I mean even when we’re not in the middle of a global pandemic?

School Day is Done!

It’s 2:50pm and our school day is officially done! Lilly Belle and I did some reading this afternoon but she’s super tired. She’s been waking up at 6am everyday and baking ? (we help with the oven, but she does it all before we even wake up). The joys of having a fluent reader in the house – we’ve been waking up to cookies and cakes everyday this week!

Lulu doesn’t nap anymore either so while Liam is taking his afternoon nap Matt and I work and the girls do games (which is also school but they don’t know it) on the iPad. They’re currently running an entire pizza shop and before that had been coding. They have dance on Zoom in a half hour. Anyone else living the Zoom-life right now for extra-curriculars? We’re pretty Zoom’d out. Lilly Belle dances competitively, plays the Ukulele, takes voice/acting lessons and is Young Elsa in a theater production so our late afternoons have solidly been taken over by ZOOM.

Ending The Day

The best way to end our night every night! This has been everything during this time! The last 54 nights have ended this same way. No dance, no theater, and no play dates. Sometimes we read in the grass, go on a bike ride, or we may just take a walk. Tonight we started reading and they’ve ended up playing soccer instead ❤️. This time together is precious. I’m thankful for every single second with them! Has your family created any new family routines that you hope continue once “the world opens” as our kids say?

Late Night Work

It was a super busy work day today. Some days I don’t have to work at all until after the kids are in bed and we are learning through play ALL day. That’s our jam. My favorite days! You can see all of that over at @letsplayschool where tomorrow and all the days following are 100% different from the day before because…my kids are little. I’ll be here tonight creating curriculum for our Let’s Play School shop and watching Father of the Bride 2 while I stuff more laminating pages for our Book Club.

I hope I shared something that was helpful for you today. I told Matt this morning that I hope to help even just one of you with what we shared. Thank you all so much for following along with our busy, busy day! We hope to see you over at @letsplayschool ❤️.

Thank you so much to Chelsea 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.