A Day in the Life . . .
"Sleep in" till 6:00 instead of 5:30.
Putter in kitchen at chores, make cup of coffee, answer a half dozen emails for half an hour.
6:30 Baby wakes and I retrieve him. The five-year-old comes downstairs.
I do my abdominal exercises in the den, with a baby crawling all over me, while continuing to watch my IEW teach-the-teacher DVD to learn how to teach our next composition unit. The seven-year-old comes downstairs and empties the clean dishwasher.
7:00 I wake up the three- and nine-year-old and bring them downstairs.
I make hot breakfast (croissants, sausages, leftover quiche, green salad). I forget to read the saint of the day.
8:00 I take the five children on a walk. Having not carved out time for our individual Morning Prayer time, we take a homily with us and listen on my phone ("Spiritual Flyswatters"). We stop often and discuss, stretching the 15-minute homily to 30 minutes.
~8:30 We get back home and it takes twenty minutes to start Morning Basket time as kids fuss and tumble and use the potty.
9:00-9:45 Morning Basket Time: Sing Credo, pray O Come Holy Spirit, CCE memory work, scripture memory work, 2017 composer list, daily rotation (today: Animals of the Bible: snakes).
9:45 I change a poopy diaper and nurse the baby down for nap, leaving the other four kids eating morning snack and with instructions that they must do their music practice diligently (John piano, Mary violin) while I am upstairs. High goals but low expectations. They meet my low expectations.
While upstairs, I take a two-minute shower, dress in day clothing, and make the bed. I hear a few songs being played downstairs, but also lots of wrestling.
10:00 I come downstairs, throw in a load of towels to wash, and load the breakfast in the dishwasher, while sending the three-year-old outside to play and admonishing the two oldest to really practice their music.
10:15 I teach math to Margaret.
10:22 Baby starts crying, which is highly unusual, as his morning nap is always 90-120 minutes. John and Mary are done with piano and violin, respectively, so I tell them to "go to desk work" as I whisk past toward the baby. I nurse him and lay him back down, where he gratefully goes back to sleep.
High goals, low expectations. The kids meet my expectations: One child hasn't done anything at all and another has started computer work instead of desk work.
10:30 I gather John and Mary for an IEW composition lesson in the school room. Margaret and Joseph play in the same room and require repeated reminders to be quiet, and disciplining.
11:00 We are done, so we go back to the kitchen: Mary does Teaching Textbooks math and Math Facts Pro on the computer, while John does Seton Religion, IEW Fix-It Grammar, and Prima Latina lesson at the table, and I teach All About Reading and All About Spelling lessons to Margaret. Meanwhile, Joseph plays with Magformers in the den, and I eat a piece of cheese.
11:20 Thomas wakes from his nap, so I put him in the outdoor swing with instructions that nobody may take him out, and I give everyone a ten-minute recess. I check email, switch laundry to drier, and chit chat with Chris.
11:35 I bring Margaret into the kitchen for her Math Facts Pro, then send her to do her piano practice in the den. Then I bring in the baby, who wanders around sweeping the kitchen, leaving Joseph to play outside, while John does his Teaching Textbooks math and Math Facts Pro on the computer, and Mary does her All About Spelling lesson, IEW Fix-It Grammar, Seton Religion, and IEW Poetry memorization at the kitchen table.
12:00 I clear the table for lunch, get the three-year-old new dry underwear after an accident, and make lunch.
12:15 We eat lunch, and I read aloud the saint of the day, as well as a section from "Under Angel Wings" for our daily holy reading.
12:45-1:00 We clean up lunch, with John putting away all the food, Mary loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and Mama shaking out the table cloth and sweeping the floor.
1:00 I take Joseph (3) to Quiet Time in his bedroom. I spend 15 minutes of one-on-one time with my boy, reading him stories and generally paying attention to him, which is a highlight of our day I try always to do. Today I also manage to take the baby into the master bedroom and play with him on the bed for 15 minutes, which may be the only 15 minutes all day I can focus entirely on him. Meanwhile, John, Mary, and Margaret are in the den playing cards. I gather the mail from the mailbox.
1:30 I send Margaret to the Bonus Room for her Quiet Time, where she works diligently on coloring a picture of Hansel and Gretel. I direct John and Mary to clean up the messy den before they can read the incoming letters from their grandfather--which inspires them well!
1:45 Mary is sent to the den to do her piano practice and John is sent to the kitchen table to finish the desk work (Latin flash cards, All About Spelling lesson, IEW poetry memorization). The baby is running wildly getting into mischief, so I strap him into his high chair and give him a squirty applesauce.
2:15 Today Chris is available to take the three oldest children to their 2:30-3:30 Music Theory & Technique class, for which I am so grateful. I get their supplies loaded up and send them off, then retrieve the by-now shrieking baby and get Joseph out of Quiet Time.
I send an email for my St. Gerard's meals ministry at our parish. Joseph and I fold the load of clean towels.
3:00 I turn on a cartoon for Joseph and then go nurse the baby down for nap. I have a quick snack and write a lengthy email about planning the All Saints' party for our parish homeschooling ministry.
3:45 Chris brought the children home. In one of our funniest moments of late, Chris walked in the door and saw the cheese grater next to what looked like a giant bowl of freshly grated mozzarella cheese. He took a nice big handful and popped it into his mouth, only to discover that it was grated, raw cauliflower (for my Cauliflower Fried 'Rice'). What a disappointment! Chris and I laughed till we cried.
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| This is not cheese. |
I served a small snack at the kitchen table while I read to the children "Madeleine Takes Command" for our daily History work.
4:00 Mondays are bathroom-cleaning days, so I sent each of the three oldest children to their assigned bathrooms while I rotated, supervised, and helped. The baby was woken by the noise, and Joseph given a feather duster and sent to his room to "dust."
4:30 I began cooking dinner while the kids raced around, making too much noise and mysterious crashing sounds. Then the kids appeared, so I let them watch a show, and they chose "The Story of Seabiscuit" with Shirley Temple" (1949).
I embraced the silence and put on news videos to listen to so I could catch up on all this terrorism business while I cooked. I finished the meal 10 minutes before Chris could join us, so I sat and read "The Eternal Woman" by Gertrude von le Fort. I'm not "into it" yet, but I'm trying to plod ahead.
5:30-5:45 We ate dinner. Why does it take an hour to cook even a simple meal and 15 minutes at the longest to eat it?
5:45-6:15 John loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, Mary swept the floor, I washed pots, and Chris occupied the younger children out of the kitchen.
6:15-7:00 I bathed the three youngest kids and made sure the two oldest took showers. I spent 15 minutes praying with and reading a book to Joseph, who I tucked in at 7:00.
7:00-7:30 While I read aloud one chapter of "Swallows and Amazons" and one of "Farmer Boy," the girls play spa by brushing my hair, massaging my bag, and brushing my legs with water.
7:30 Chris prayed rosary with the olders and I stayed upstairs tucking in the baby and the five-year-old.
8:00 I hauled the laundry downstairs to load for running in the morning, and joined the gang for the end of their prayers.
In the evening, I'll do a little computer work, read, and that will be a wrap!
I love this. Sounds like a typical day for a homeschool family!
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