Homeschooling Day in the Life: Katie, Homeschooling Mom With a Relaxed, Charlotte Mason Approach
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 Katie, homeschooling mom with a relaxed, Charlotte Mason approach.
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 Katie
Katie lives in Minnesota with her husband and is in her 8th year of homeschooling their three children. She is passionate about following Jesus, raising biblically literate kids, a relaxed Charlotte Mason approach to education and cultivating a slow, family-centered life. She loves thrifting, hiking MN state parks and listening to audiobooks.
Homeschool Prep
Preparing for our homeschool day the night before has been the one thing that helps our mornings go smoothly. Each night before bed I lay out our books for the next day and, for my oldest student, I make a checklist of his work. Since our curriculum is primarily from living books (vs workbooks or worksheets) my oldest does his work independently and my younger two will work towards that in the coming years as they become stronger readers.
Mornings
In the morning my kids wake up when they please and know to get started on their individual work after breakfast. Individual work is typically recitation, spelling/dictation, copywork, reading practice and math. Each child makes their own breakfast, gets dressed and does their work at their own pace. I’m around to help instruct or read to anyone who needs it and check their work. Then they will move on to their readings for other subjects like history, science, geography, literature etc.
Lunch
By lunchtime, my two younger children have finished all of their subjects and narrations and we do our shared family subjects. Today’s were picture study and our Bible/habits curriculum, Habits & Hymns. It’s nice to do this over lunch when everyone is focused and sitting together.
Afternoon Activities
After lunch we clean up and head out to our afternoon activities, usually nature club, co-op, or heading to the library. If we don’t have anything planned in the afternoon we practice a quiet rest time for about 90 minutes. If we’re driving somewhere I capitalize on that time and play an audiobook that’s either our current read aloud or another subject a child didn’t get to yet. There are so many great audiobooks available these days!
Nature Club
Today was our nature club, so we wrote in our nature journals about biomes and took a hike. It was hot but we saw a lot of fall colors starting to pop up! The kids got to play their own version of capture the flag afterwards. This community has truly been one of the greatest gifts in my homeschooling!
Family Connection
Our late afternoons find us all tired and in need of time to process what we’ve learned for the day and connect as a family. Usually the kids watch a cartoon together while I prep dinner, then each of us has a chore to do before dad comes home. My husband is so good about playing with our kids so after our meal and our family Bible time we spend time playing in the yard outside, playing card games or going for a walk.
Read Aloud Before Bed
Right now we’re working on reading through our entire picture book collection so I will read 5 books to my kids and then I like to wind down with an audiobook and a cup of tea and an early bedtime. Thanks for spending the day with me!
