We’re a family of thirteen living in a very small home on our Missouri homestead. Since we follow a delight directed approach to homeschooling, no two days are the same. See what we did today!
Our middle daughter Elsie had a day away today. She went to work with Jason, and then was picked up by my childhood friend to spend the day with her and her daughter. Elsie brought some school books along to work through while she was gone. It was a fun change from the norm.
The younger children are typically up earlier than everyone else so I take advantage of that and make myself available to do some one-on-one work with them.
Lydia is five and has been going through the Preschool book from The Good and the Beautiful. She only has a couple pages left and she is so excited about it! I don’t require my little ones to sit down and do formal learning at this age, but it’s so fun that they ask to do it most every day.
Benjamin (3) enjoys “doing school” along with everyone else, so we have some books that he can color in and feel like a big kid.
Breakfast is usually a serve yourself meal. Today Samuel helped me make some cheesy scrambled eggs and a big pot of hot cocoa because when the milk was brought in this morning we discovered we were out of empty jars! No one was sad about it. 🙂 For a gallon of milk we whisked in 1/2 cup of cacao powder, 1/2 cup of sucanat,1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of vanilla extract.
Our oldest daughter is eighteen and has her own daily routine. She milks our two cows then often leaves for her job immediately afterwards. Today she had a day off so she worked on some outside projects in the morning before coming inside. By the time she was in to stay, Silas (14) was out of bed. He nearly always reaches for an instrument when he wakes up, and Bella was happy to join him. Together they researched some new songs to learn together.
During this time everyone else was working on their morning chores inside the house and out on the farm. The chores are pretty basic and don’t take long to complete, but some kids need a lot of prodding to begin (we’re working on that!). We also paused the bustle for a few minutes to read a short devotional together and say the memory verse that went with it.
The middle boys disappeared to their lego building while I finished cleaning up the kitchen. Leo (16) is pretty self motivated and went to work on some schoolwork in our bedroom. There is a quiet corner there, which is a rare thing in our house! He is working through one of the Language Arts books from The Good and The Beautiful (all of the kids are using their LA course this year) and also did some math practice using Learn Math Fast.
I checked in with Leo to make sure he was understanding everything, and spent a few minutes working on the laundry before heading back to the living room. Bella was sweeping the floor to bring a bit of order to the morning mess. She is such a blessing to me! Everett is as busy as you’d expect a one year old to be, but at this moment he was playing and not destroying or unloading anything. It’s a moment to highlight!
Silas and Samuel had been missing for awhile but it didn’t take long to figure out that they were out doing some leather work. In our barn is a space that the boys have turned into a work space. I’ve talked about their journey into leatherworking in this post.
Our children dabble in many interests, but over time you start to see things begin to “stick”, and leatherworking for Silas is one of those things. He has expressed interest in continuing this craft in his adult professional life, and I’m interested to see how that unfolds. For now, he often spends his free time in the leather workshop, creating whatever comes to mind.
WATCH A “DAY IN THE LIFE” WITH SILAS HERE
The day turned rainy. Lunch was some of the gluten free pasta from Aldi with homemade spaghetti sauce. I have frozen cubes of pesto that we made when the garden was still green, so I threw one of those into the sauce. It was really yummy.
James hadn’t completed his lesson of Language Arts yet so we went into the bedroom to work on that since the rest of the house was loud at this point. He is seven now, so he’s included in the basic daily requirements of one LA lesson and one math lesson. Baby Lewis came along with us, of course. Everett’s love for him is so exuberant that I can’t leave them alone for a minute. 🙂
Lewis laid by James while he read his Booster Book (this is the book that accompanies the Language Arts course) and then was ready to nurse again. He’s four months old now and doing so well. His challenging birth and time in the Nicu seems a bit like a dream now, and I’m so thankful that it is behind us.
The rain continued. I called Silas and Samuel inside to do their schoolwork. They weren’t thrilled about this but we made popcorn and they got started on math. Teaching Textbooks has been the go to for us when it comes to math, and I have been so very thankful that we started it years ago! Silas is all the way up to Algebra this year, but it’s likely as far as I’ll have him go in the sequence. I think that some practical life math skill building would serve him better after this. I have mixed feelings when it comes to upper level math. I do like my children’s brains to be stretched and challenged, but if they are on a clear path to a future that likely won’t utilize advanced math skills, I feel that it would be a better use of their time now to practice skills that more directly benefit their interests.
The younger kids were bouncing off the walls and aggravating one another (and me!) at this point, which is the sign that it’s time for some quiet time alone. I set a timer and had them all go to their own spaces to look at books or play quietly. Some of them go more willingly than others, but there is the promise of a gummy vitamin once the timer beeps, so that helps. They really like the Omega 3 gummies from Nordic Naturals!
After quiet time the house was bustling once again. Someone got the idea to do silly hairstyles and it got crazy pretty fast. Everett decided to help himself to the art box that someone forgot to return to the shelf. I looked over the checklist to see who still had unchecked circles. Jeremiah hadn’t done his math lesson so I got him started on that, and then turned my attention to making dinner.
Before long a whole group of kids headed out to play in the mud. Over two days time we got almost ten inches of rain, so you can imagine the amount of mud here on the farm! The quiet inside the house was worth the load of muddy laundry that would need washing that night.
After dinner cleanup and farm chores were done, the younger kids were put to bed and the rest of them settled in to listen to me read The Good Master, our current read aloud book.
It was a good day.
Thank you so much for allowing us to have a peak into your day. You’re doing a great job! You’re a blessing to your family.
Thank you April!
Hi Julie, I’m just wondering what will you use for Silas in regard to practical maths skills? My son is also doing Algebra and I’m not sure he needs to do more advanced maths either as he is more of a practical kid.
I haven’t found a curriculum that I love for this topic, but there is a cheap workbook on Amazon that goes over concepts relating to things like money and finances. It’s a good place to start the conversation. You could pull out pages that seem like an important topic to cover and then go from there. https://a.co/d/3QRkGUv
I know not consumed just came out with consumer math! I have not personally used it but definitely considering it for my older kids.
Also, I love your homeschool posts and videos! We are a military family so homesteading is not an option for us right now. However, I have 5 kids that we homeschool and I love your philosophy of education. It inspires me to look at and support the talents that God has put in each of them. Also, get excited when I see homeschool content!
Ooo I’ll have to check that out. Thanks for sharing Brooke!
I absolutely loved reading and learning about your days. I’m a momma of(almost 10, will be 10 in March God willing) and it’s such a blessing to see how other big family moms handle all the ins and outs of meals, schooling, normal house work, and child rearing in there. Thank you for sharing!
Congratulations!