Homeschool Day in the Life: Meghan, mom of four + foster parent

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 Meghan, homeschooling mama to four kids, who has a heart for foster care and encouraging other moms

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 Meghan

Meghan @meghantucker is a wife and homeschooling mom to four (3 boys and a girl). She’s been homeschooling her kids since they started school and can’t believe they’re on their 10th year of homeschooling! 

Meghan co-founded Hip Homeschool Moms in 2010 with a friend and sold it a few years later when her babies were very little and life became busier. She knows the importance of having close knit relationships within the homeschool community, which is why she co-founded @hiphomeschoolmoms . Meghan loves the connections and friendships she has both here on Instagram as well as in other areas of her life. 

Meghan loves to travel with her family and also loves a good date night with her man, @iamjoetucker . Their family is also very active in their church @longhollow and would love to invite you to join them if you’re ever in the Nashville, TN area. 

Meghan has a heart for orphan and foster care, encouraging other moms to find beauty and joy in everyday little things, and being a maker of home. 

Good Morning!

Good morning, friends! I’m Meghan and I am so excited to share our day in the life with you! It’s just after 9:00 which means you can find us around the kitchen table starting school. We have breakfast around 8:00, then get teeth brushed and completely ready for the day before sitting down. With four kids it can be tricky doing school with the middle kiddos, while the four year old runs around crazy. I’m thankful our oldest, who is 15. He keeps her for an hour or so each morning (they play in the playroom, go outside, do a little preschool together) so I can focus on our 3rd and 6th grader.

We promote and teach our kids to be independent learners at an early age. That way when they are older (around 5th grade or so), they can pretty much do school on their own. I’m always there to help with any questions or projects that they need my help with.

I’m excited to share more today about our homeschool life with you!

Schedules + Routines

Schedules and routines–so important, even for us homeschool moms. It’s easy to plan out the day for our kids and forget that we need to make time for ourselves as well. I didn’t make this a priority when we first started homeschooling and I started to get overwhelmed. The household stuff wasn’t getting done because I was constantly with the kids, scheduling their stuff and their day.

My scheduled time is early in the morning. I know a lot of people aren’t early risers, and that was me too. However, I’ve trained myself to be an early riser just for the sake of getting stuff done before the kids get downstairs each morning.

What does it look like? I usually try and be up around 5:30am. Then, I make a cup of coffee and have my quiet time of spending time with the Lord. After that, I get the things done that I know will make our day go smoother, like: set out schoolwork for the day, do a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, make breakfast for everyone, and do as many of the daily chores that I need to get done for that day as I can.

Just getting up a little earlier in the mornings is a game changer for me. I share a few tips on this very topic over on my blog at meghantucker.com if you’d like to check it out.

Homeschool Organization

Let’s talk homeschool carts. I had seen these all over Instagram on different homeschool accounts, but never really thought I needed to use them in our homeschool until this year. And man, what a game changer they are.

Basically every child has a cart for their school supplies. The only one who doesn’t have a cart is my oldest who is in ninth grade. He does his school in a different room where all of his school supplies stay.

These allow us to have all of the supplies and everything we need for our homeschool day on wheels and close by. Everything stays organized and in one place which makes this “Type A” mom happy. ? 

Our Typical Day

A typical day – what does it look like? Here’s a sample:

8:00am: breakfast together – this is when we also listen to a scripture using an app on our phone. We also use the Character Matters cards from @septemberandco during this time, too.

9:00: we begin school. My oldest and youngest go upstairs or outside to play while the rest of us work on schoolwork for an hour or two. When I’ve completed school with the middle kids, my oldest (who is in 9th grade) starts his school work.

11:00am (ish): I begin making lunch and do a few things around the house while kids are finishing up school and starting their piano practicing/chores.

11:30 or 12:00: Lunch together and then the younger ones play together for a bit or go outside while my oldest continues to do school.

1:30pm: My youngest takes a nap usually and my 6th and 3rd grader read or do something quietly or go outside during this time. My oldest (9th grader) is still doing school right now.

3:30pm: Free time – everyone goes outside (we spend a lot of time outside), finish up any chores, piano work, or anything else that needs to be done, or they can work on an art lesson or do whatever they want. I usually make dinner during this time if it’s not a crock pot night. 

5:00 or 5:30pm: My husband comes home and we have dinner.

This time set up and schedule isn’t the same everyday – with church activities, friends, appointments, and outings we have, we are flexible with it (or at least try to be ?).

Curriculum

The question we get asked most: “Which curriculum do you use?” With homeschooling for 10 years now, I feel like we have tried it all – and that’s good. Because of that, we know what works for our family and what doesn’t. I always tell people what works for us isn’t always what will work for your family. I love chatting about homeschool curriculum and it’s so fun to chat about it with others who use the same curriculum as us. There are so many different products and resources out there and everyone has a different learning style or need. You have to do what’s best for your family.

With that said, here is what we use and have for the last four or five years and why we love it so much:

✏️ @masterbooks for bible, science, history, a few electives, and Lang suave arts/literature.

✏️ Teaching Textbooks @teachingtextbooks for math grades 3 and older. We’d use it before third grade if they had that option available. We have used @singaporemath for grades K-2 and @masterbooks for math as well for those early grades and loved both.

✏️ @thegoodandthebeautiful for typing, art/crafts and handwriting.

✏️ @creatingamasterpiecewithsharon for art class for my 3rd and 6th grader.

A few things we are checking out for next year are: @iew and @outschool. 

I have a more detailed look at our curriculum over at meghantucker.com.

Traveling

This is a favorite and important topic for our family-traveling. This is a huge reason that we began to homeschool our kids early on. Traveling has always been a huge part of my life. Growing up we would travel throughout the year to places all over the world and I knew I wanted to continue this with my own family when I grew up.

Traveling is so important to us. We feel it is one of our responsibilities as parents to have our children experience different things, different cultures, and meet all sorts of people. Travel shapes and forms us and gives us the opportunity to think about and experience things in a new and different way.

So where do we like to go? Pretty much anywhere. Every fall we go to the beach in Florida for three weeks. It is one of our favorite times to be together. We take our school work with us and continue life at the beach.

One of our favorite trips was this past May when we went out west for 16 days. It was right as some of the national parks were opening back up after the virus, so we were literally one of the only families in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and the Badlands. What an amazing trip that was for all of us as a family. Everyone is still talking about how great it was. If you’d like more info on planning a longer road trip out west with your family, I have a blog post at meghantucker.com.

We also have a fifth wheel toy hauler which we take camping about once a month. Having this bigger trailer allows us to go farther and stay in the 5th wheel and not hotels. Plus the traveling and the road trip itself create great experiences & memories too. 

We also love to go on cruises. We love to go out of the country and see new places and be with different kinds of people. Basically, if there’s an opportunity to travel and it works with our schedule, we jump on it. My husband has a flexible schedule, and with us homeschooling we can pretty go and take life with us. 

Traveling doesn’t have to be a huge production. You don’t have to go far or spend a lot of money to create experiences and memories with your family. A simple camping trip to a state park near your home is always a great idea. I love helping families create vacation ideas and then helping them plan those ideas out. So if you are looking to travel this year with your family please reach out to me! I would love to help you get something planned.

Thank you so much to Meghan 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.