A Day in the Life of Homeschool Mama Kara
Here’s a look at the Day in the Life of Kara, homeschooling mama to three beautiful kids, who loves books, nature and adventure, and strives to add all of those into their daily learning. 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 Kara
Kara is a homeschooling mom to three beautiful kids, living in central Iowa. As a night owl, Kara loves sipping herbal tea at night, however her kids are early birds so she forces herself to go to bed early so she can be up and functioning when they are ready to start their day. She loves reading, baking, and all things nature! Kara works to not take herself too seriously. She’s an introvert, but loves being silly with her close family and friends. Follow along to see Kara’s homeschooling day!
Good Morning!
Good morning! I’m Kara! You can find me @letterstolyra. I’m mama to three kids ages 6, 4.5, and 2.5 living in central Iowa. We are an unexpected homeschooling family! When we began having kids, I quit my job at the local college and stayed home. We knew we’d like to have our kids home for preschool, but planned to send them to public school starting in kindergarten. We felt the Lord calling us to continue to homeschool, so we tried it out, but were quickly certain it was a wonderful path for our family!
Once we decided this was the direction we were going for the long term, we slowed things down and adopted a Charlotte Mason approach. So, I’m excited to have you join us for a day of habit training, good books, play and outdoors!!
Starting Our Days Slow
Wednesdays are our casual days. Even before all the changes to routine hit, we always kept Wednesdays more low key because it’s my husband’s longest work day and we usually have w+f on Thursdays. I liked keeping a less busy day before that. Either way, we always start our days slowly because I am NOT a morning person. I want to be, but it’s just not in me.
Every day starts with books, breakfast, devotions, and our daily housekeeping tasks. Oh, and dandelion coffee. Yum! After all that, the kids start playing while I throw in a load of laundry and get myself ready for the day. Then we finally all head upstairs to make beds and I help the kids get ready for the day. And we are finally ready to leave the house (back in the day) or move on to whatever is planned for the day!
Handcrafts + Handwriting
This table was lovingly built by my husband, and it gets so much use. We have meals here, make crafts, learn together and so much more! Every bump, scratch, and leftover paint splotch is a sweet memory together. When we work on anything specific, this week is needle felting, my younger two take a turn or two, but they do their own thing most of the time and then head off to play together.
We don’t do formal school yet, but my daughter loves handcrafts and handwriting, so we make sure to have those in our day. After we do those and Bible study, the kids play or help me get lunch ready! In between we spend a lot of time outside and playing. Then we have lunch, play a bit more, and then it’s rest time for my oldest and naps for the youngest.
Rest time for each person is very important for us. It helps each of us to recharge in our own way. I enjoy reading or catching up on something, my oldest loves doing her own crafts or drawing, and my middle sometimes naps and sometimes enjoys cars or legos. After that hour, we’re all ready to be together again!
Quiet Time
Quiet time/rest time, whatever you call it, it’s mandatory over here!! I began doing a quiet time for my oldest when she was two and stopped napping and I had a six month old. It was a labor of love to train my two year old to do quiet time, but so so worth it!! I started with 10-15 minute increments of her playing alone while I could watch nearby. Slowly, I made that time longer and longer, and now my oldest, at newly 6, can do 1-2 hours of rest time. She has been doing at least an hour since age 4, it worked for her! Start where you need and go from there, it’s definitely worth it if you need some recharge/alone/work time.
My four year old does quiet time with her half the time and naps the other half, and the two year old still naps. Every child is different, but as an introvert this time to read or nap or get stuff done, depending on my mood, is so so helpful!! If I worked, this would be perfect time to get stuff done. Today, I’m going to do my Bible reading and rest because that’s what I need to finish the day strong. Do you do quiet time in your family?
Tea Time
Tea times are a staple in our home! We do fun/fancy themes about once a week. And we drink a casual tea time several times a week. It’s a great way to get back together after rest time and chat before we continue our day together. Sometimes we read, or do a craft, or play a game! The options are endless. And tea time does not require tea or anything fancy!! Juice, milk, paper plates, doesn’t matter, it’s a time of togetherness. And now we will spend the rest of our day outside!!
Being Outdoors
We spend most of our days outdoors. Today was cloudy, wet, and dreary, so taking our books and meals outside didn’t work out so well. However, we did spend much of the afternoon and evening outside. It’s our favorite place to be! Whether we’re picking weeds in our garden or going exploring, we just love being outside together.
This evening after being outside we made our own pizzas and read books. Now it’s time to get ready for calming down and bed! Once the kiddos are in bed, I do a quick once over through the house to reset it for the next day, get any activities or crafts ready for the next day, and then read and hang out with my husband. We used to have something most evenings at church, but now we don’t, so I’ve gotten a lot of reading done these last two months.
Thank you so much to Kara 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.
