A Day in the Life of Homeschool Mama Mariel

Here’s a look at the Day in the Life of Mariel, a busy mama who not only homeschools her daughter, but is also a public school teacher. 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 Mariel

I am so excited to introduce @marielhowsepian to you! She’s taking over the account tomorrow to show us her day in the life. I think you’re going to love seeing how she does her day because she’s actually a public school teacher AND a homeschooling mom! There are so many ways to homeschool, and I think Mariel does such an amazing job of showing this. Hope you all enjoy!

Good Morning!

Good morning! My husband and daughter are still asleep, so I’m trying to be as quiet as possible while I get ready for work. My husband and I tag-team homeschool, so today’s Day in the Life will be a little different. I’ll post now, and hopefully at recess and lunch, and then the bulk of my posts will be after I get off work. I’m the planner, so this is part of my morning routine. My planner isn’t pretty, but my fountain pen rocks. What is your planning routine?

Swim Team Practice

This morning we are at swim team practice. The city offers residents a deal that is too good to pass up. It works out to – I kid you not – $3.67 per class. Gemma needs to move, so swim has been great for that. It gives her the opportunity to set small, reachable goals, and see success from hard work. It also gives her friends to laugh with and cheer for. If your kids are involved in sports or groups, what benefits have you noticed?

Library Time

We popped over to the library after swim to return a heavy bag of books, and pick up half a dozen I had reserved online. Here is Gemma using the self check-out. Her currently preferred authors are Polly Horvath, Stuart Gibbs (Spy School, Last Musketeer, and Moon Base Alpha series), and Mary Rose Wood (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series). What books are your kids currently loving? 

Learning Resources

These are some of the books Gemma used today. People often ask how my husband and I divvy it all up. Pete, my husband, reads aloud history, reads aloud Spanish (currently “Daniel el Detective”), makes sure that Gemma does (most) work I leave for her (including piano), and takes Gemma to swim, dance, and piano. I do math, literature, geography, artist study, composer study, French (I’m relearning what I learned in high school), Latin (we’re learning together), field trips, projects and rabbit trails.
Speaking of rabbit trails, what is your family’s current rabbit trail?

Screen Time

After reading about katydids in “Jack’s Insects” (the last of the work I left for her this morning), Gemma did spelling and Spanish on her Kindle. (For foreign languages, we use apps and books.) Now we both get to have some screen time before we read bedtime stories and get ready for bed. What subjects do you use screens for?

Bedtime

Bedtime. Is anyone else reading The Call of the Wild? It’s beautiful, and violent. I have to skip over particularly graphic phrases because Gemma has said she doesn’t want to hear them, but she’s so invested in the character of Buck that she doesn’t want me to stop reading this book.

At bedtime, we read two books. The Call of the Wild was my choice, and The Swiss Family Robinson was hers. I was surprised that she chose The Swiss Family Robinson, but I’m glad she did. I had never read it, and now I get to. ? Thank you Learning Well Community for allowing me to show you how our family homeschools!

Thank you so much to Mariel 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.