It’s been a while since I shared the highlights of a day in our life as delight directed learners, and I felt ready to get back into the routine of sharing these posts periodically. Two days are never the same in our busy household of 12… let’s see what today holds.
This season of life has a been a very unique one for our family. I was diagnosed as having a subchorionic hemorrhage two months ago, after experiencing bleeding during the first trimester of my current pregnancy. I was told to lay down as much as possible, not lift anything and avoid long car rides, so our family rhythm was forced to make a shift overnight.
It took several weeks to settle in to this new normal and in some areas we are still trying to understand how to make it work. Moms carry a heavy portion of the daily workload in a home, so it has been a journey in figuring out what could just go undone for this season, and what needed to be distributed among the other family members.
We are starting the day with morning chores, breakfast, and a family devotional. It sounds really nice and neat when written out that way, but in reality people are getting out of bed at different times and accomplishing those tasks in different orders so it’s a bit of a purposeful chaos. Some join the assembled family just in time to listen to a little devotional reading, while the early risers have been awake for a couple hours by then and are ready for a second breakfast!
We’ve been reading through this book by Ruth and Troy Simons in the mornings although I hadn’t realized when I bought it that the text would seem to be written more for kids in a school system rather than homeschoolers. I’ve found it necessary to sometimes stop and share the message in my own words so that my kids can relate to the analogies better.
Jason typically makes a quick breakfast of eggs or smoothies for the early crew before he begins work for the day. Sometimes he goes into the office, but most of the time he works from home. Kids who get out of bed later make their own breakfasts. Today Leo was up earlier than usual and made us lattes with our favorite coffee, fresh cream, and honey.
Bella came in from milking the cow just in time to catch Jason before he started working. She had been asked to do a consulting job for a family who are looking to own chickens in their backyard and have no idea where to start. Bella was up for the challenge, but just needed a bit of coaching on the business side of things. At seventeen, she is moving past the skill building part of her education and onto actually making her goals and visions happen in a real world sense. Every once in awhile I think back to my early years as a homeschool mama and the challenges that seemed so overwhelming (this child learned to read very late!), and I marvel at how confident and competent she has become in spite of me. I had no idea then how amazing the teen years would be.
As everyone finished their morning chores and personal care they each moved on to various activities. Silas did his language arts lesson with me right away. Every child is responsible for completing a lesson in math and language arts each day, and Silas has realized that if he prefers to get his lessons done right away in the morning so he has the rest of the day for things like leather working or outdoor activities. He is not a morning person so it’s been interesting watching him figure out how to be intentional to make this happen. It’s so fun and rewarding watching kids grow up!
Leo finished his morning work then moved on to playing some guitar before joining Silas in working on leather project. They often work in the leather workshop they set up in the barn, but today was cold enough to come back into the house!
Many of our kids play instruments, and it is common to hear them practicing throughout the day. They learned the basics through online lessons with Voetberg Music Academy, and have taken off on their own from there. I think I’ll write another post on some of the free resources they have discovered on their own to continue their learning. Jason and I have never once told any of them to practice. We figured that if they were truly interested they would pursue advancement on their own. It has been so neat to see their passion for music grow!
While Leo and Silas were busy with their projects, I sat on the couch and took turns doing language arts lessons with the other four kids. We have been using The Good and The Beautiful Language Arts courses with all of our children this year and it has been a great fit for our family! I chose levels that were somewhat easy for each child so that they could just enjoy moving through the information without any frustrations or struggles. It takes me about 20 minutes or so to sit with each child, although we often make it stretch longer because it’s a time we all really like!
Leo and Elsie are my exceptions to the daily sit down time. Leo likes working independently, and Elsie adores anything related to language arts, so she works at it here and there throughout the day. Both of them are also taking the Latin course through Compass Classroom and really like it! The instructor has a dry humor they both enjoy and the material has been really interesting to them.
While I worked with Samuel, Jeremiah completed a Teaching Textbooks math lesson. We only have 5 weeks left of this year’s subscription so they’re in the home stretch! After it’s completed we’ll take a long break before starting again. (Springtime + baby on the way makes a great excuse!) Everett took a long nap today and happily played on the floor once he woke up. A pleasant one year old is a great gift!
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Anytime I’m on the couch you can pretty much guarantee I’ll have little ones climbing around me. Lydia kept busy sticking shapes to the window from our new math box. Benjamin has been wanting Elsie attention a lot lately, and she comes up with fun things to do with all the younger kids. This time she read him books in his bunk for awhile.
Samuel had told me earlier that morning that he really wanted nachos, so I found a recipe that was easy to follow so he could make them for lunch. We had the sauce over organic corn chips with our homemade pickles. Some days lunch is a bit of a free for all, using up leftovers from the fridge or just making something light like smoothies, so it was really nice to have someone offer to make lunch for everyone.
While Samuel worked on lunch Bella finished up the dishes that needed to be washed. She is so great about just doing dishes or other chores here and there as needed. I’m grateful for her faithful help!
The younger ones started getting restless and squabbling with each other so I made up a game on the spot. We covered a dry erase board with squares and after they tossed a dice they would draw that many dots on one of the squares. It wasn’t interesting enough of an activity to keep them busy for a very long time, but it was enough to distract them until the food is ready!
In the afternoon everyone scattered to their own activities. Older kids finished up their math lessons and then went outside for awhile to do something in the workshop. Apparently there was also an ongoing backgammon tournament for several hours happening in our bedroom, where kids kept taking turns playing the winner of the last game. We seem to go through phases with games around here, and this has been the favorite for a couple months now.
I read books to the little ones on the couch for awhile. The original Curious George book is Benjamin’s most requested story at the moment, and I could just about recite it with my eyes closed at this point!
Jason finished up work before 5:00, did a few things outside, and suddenly it was time for our evening routine. After eating together as a family we go straight into our evening chores and then get little ones ready for bed. We read one chapter of the bible aloud then a few of the kids got out their journals to write about the day. The younger ones told me what they wanted to say and I wrote it on a dry erase board for them to copy. We have a journal challenge going right now that awards a chocolate bar at the end of the month to anyone who wrote sixteen times or more. It’s been quite a motivating force!
Before Jason had a chance to take the little ones in to do their bedtime routine of a book and a song, I had both Lydia and Benjamin fall asleep on me. He got to have a time reading with James alone, while I read to the middle crowd as usual. We’ve been going through all of Glen Rounds books and really enjoying them. I have some cowboy wannabes, so these books are right up their alley!
We said goodnight and sent the rest of the kids to their beds and that was the end of another day!
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Thank you for sharing! Sounds like a wonderfully busy day! I am going to check out the music academy you linked. Although you might have to check the link. On my phone it wouldn’t let me continue to the website because it said it might be a scam. But I found it on google. Also, I’d love to see a post about other free teaching resources you use!
I’ll double check that. Thanks!
You coined a new word Julie: PURPOSEFUL CHAOS
You need to take the credit for it!