MAGGIE: Okay, so next we’re going to talk about what does a typical homeschool day look like?
CHRISTINA: yeah, this.
MAGGIE: Subtitled, how do I get it all done?
JUNE: Which, first of all, there is no typical homeschool day.
MAGGIE: There is no typical homeschool day.
CHRISTINA: That’s true. That’s true.
MAGGIE: And we’ve warned each other about this a lot over the years. I mean, I know, especially you and I will look at other things that other people are doing and be like, “Should I be doing that too?” Great to talk to other homeschool moms. Definitely, definitely ask how they run their day because you can get so many ideas from that, but don’t feel like your day is ever going to look just like somebody else’s. So, I mean, some of this is sort of, I don’t want to say obvious like everyone should know it, but I feel like I’m stating the obvious that you have to look at the amount of work that you need to cover and schedule your week accordingly. Sometimes that means being careful of how many hours you’re outside of your home with lessons.
CHRISTINA: It’s easy to get too busy.
MAGGIE: Taking people to lessons. It’s easy to get too busy and not be home enough to be getting your schooling done.
JUNE: Which might surprise someone who is used to a really busy schedule to that homeschooling could actually… You would think, I really need to be home more.
MAGGIE: And some of the things I’ve tried to do over the years is say there are just certain days of the week that we don’t schedule anything else. Something usually creeps in, I’m just being honest, that I’ve tried. Okay, we’re always home in the mornings. That seems to work a little bit better, especially as your kids get older, afternoons just get full.
JUNE: You’ve got three teenagers.
MAGGIE: So I’ll go ahead and start talking about teenagers and maybe work backwards.
JUNE: I think a typical day for the three of us is really different.
MAGGIE: A typical day for us, my kids are all in a tutorial, so that means that they’re going to another location one day a week. They’re taking a certain number of classes there. They come home with their work for the rest of the week. Usually that night, early on, like when I had elementary school kids, I started training them how to make a schedule themselves. So even if I was scheduling it out, like that notebook I was talking about where I kept necessary materials, I also kept a schedule for our week. So they could see what it was that they needed to be doing every day, and I would usually write it out for them. And eventually, they took ownership of that. So I’m sure if you have high school kids, and they’re in a regular schooling situation, they’re probably already doing that. And so that’s just what you would keep doing is parceling out that work. For those classes, it’s more me making sure that they’re getting their work done. So sometimes that’s me looking over something, sometimes it’s just me saying, “Have you done this today?” So that it’s not building up toward the end of the week.
CHRISTINA: I think that’s a great life skill for children to need to learn how to look at everything they need to get done and figure it out on their own, keep a planner or a calendar, and prioritize and figure out how to do it.
MAGGIE: Because they’ll have that in a work environment. It’s project planning.
JUNE: And not to just always think you have an adult that’s-
MAGGIE: Not procrastinating, really getting those habits.
CHRISTINA: Sometimes those lessons are learned through experience.
MAGGIE: Through a hard way for sure, but there are still classes I’m teaching at home. And so then we just have to figure out what time blocks I do that during the day.
CHRISTINA: For me, I have high schoolers like that, and then I also have elementary school-aged kids and a toddler. I have six kids that are two to 17, and they’re all very different. Different personalities. Some like to sleep late. Some like to get up early, which really works out well because my oldest likes to wake up at 6:00 and get her math and science done when the house is quiet. So she loves that. She makes the coffee, she gets up and she is doing her quiet work when everybody else is asleep. I have a 12-year-old who, since she was born, could sleep until noon every day. This is just how she’s made. So she’s kind of slower in the morning. I try not to let her sleep until noon, but she is kind of just a slower start. So she’ll work on reading or something in the morning. That kind of helps wake her up, and we don’t jump directly into math for her. But generally, for everybody else, at breakfast we like to gather together, have a Bible lesson, pray, have something that brings our family together to start the day. And I think that really helps just to spend some time together before we all go our separate ways. And then I’m working with people on math, usually in the morning. And then we take turns. If I’m working directly with the fourth and sixth graders, then the older girls might read to the toddler, something like that. And then we’ll take turns. And then we’ll eat lunch together and have a read aloud, usually, when the baby takes a nap. And that’s really our favorite part of the day.
JUNE: Are the high schoolers part of that?
CHRISTINA: They are part of the reading aloud. So, we usually schedule their activities after that, so that’s the heart of our schooling, I feel like. So we snuggle up on the couch. I’m tired by that time, so I will usually lie down on the couch, and they’ll bring me my teacup, and we just get cozy. Some days that lasts for a long time, other days we read our chapter or two, and then we have to move on to something else.
JUNE: Is that when y’all are doing your read-aloud history?
CHRISTINA: Read aloud history or sometimes its just a fun book.
JUNE: Or even just chapter books?
CHRISTINA: Yeah. So, it’s both.
MAGGIE: So we’re still doing that too, even just with high schoolers. So I would encourage to keep that routine. That’s always felt like the heart of our day too, and so it was one of the things I didn’t want to let go, even when I started farming out some of the subject matter. Keeping that, we’ve said, homeschooling is a lot about relationship. So that’s the opportunity you have to really build that relationship. And so if you’ve never done that with your kids before, I would encourage you to try to do it. And it doesn’t have to be just you reading to them like they’ve gone back to bedtime stories, you can take turns passing a book around. And they’re great book lists for books that maybe they wouldn’t be reading for a class in school, but just rich literature that would be enjoyable to read together.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. What about you? How does your day usually go?
JUNE: We right now have all elementary. So we are first through sixth grade right now. So it’s an age-
MAGGIE: I love that season.
JUNE: Oh, man.
MAGGIE: It is like the sweet, spot.
JUNE: When my baby was born, I was like, “If I’m not having fun at that point,” I’m just-
MAGGIE: It is. It’s the sweet spot.
JUNE: A grouchy person.
MAGGIE: Not that it gets bad after that. I’m just saying it’s, I don’t know [crosstalk 00:07:09]. There’s just a little special sweet time.
JUNE: Yeah. That’s the age I used to teach art to.
MAGGIE: Yes.
JUNE: It’s just delightful in every different way. It’s different for me now because I don’t have a baby that I wake up to who is awake before I get up. So now my day starts with my own time, exercising, reading my own Bible stuff, which sometimes it’s just listening to it. So I usually have an hour in the morning where I get myself ready. I also am a mom that a typical day, I try to shower. I was surprised, COVID happened this spring and my friends who were like, “I’ve got to Six days without showering,” [crosstalk 00:00:07:52]. Here’s my philosophy, I think my poor kids. I remember my cute teachers growing up. I remember a teacher I’d coveted to have, Miss Davis, second grade because she was so cute and I didn’t get her. I had this sad-looking teacher. So I always try to remember that my kids have to look at me a lot of the day. So I get ready.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. Brush your hair.
JUNE: A lot of mornings I get ready. I put on some lip gloss, perhaps. Okay. We have breakfast and Bible together. We’re all at the table in the mornings. And that happens every day. And it’s taken a lot of years to get what that looks like. You know, it didn’t just happen.
CHRISTINA: And it changes at all different stages.
JUNE: And it changes. And it used to change a ton. Every time we had a baby, it was like dropping a bomb at that time. So we have that time, and they would do chores. So there’s an hour where it’s breakfast, Bible, chores. And then we have what you guys are talking about happening after lunch. Sometimes, in different seasons, I move it around. But that centering time of your day. Different philosophies of homeschool will call that something else. But it kind of is that thing that goes through every day. So we do fun stuff. Like my kids love jokes, so sometimes I read them two knock-knock jokes to get that time started. Sometimes, I’ll have a poem that I’m wanting them to memorize. And I just read it maybe for four weeks, I read the same poem. And then by the end, they’re saying it with me. We learned folk songs, we learned… So we’ll do five minutes of that, and then I do my read aloud. And then we have a block of the day where we’re doing the math, those things, and I have found that it works better for our family to have that scheduled to where each kid knows where they’re supposed to be. If they’re supposed to be reading aloud to somebody. I wish that was just always set in stone, but that time is always being tweaked. We do lunch together. We usually have a book on tape, a biography at that time. I’ve realized that I need to eat in the middle of the day. That I can’t just go all day. I really have to have a time where I sit down. I have something to drink. I have something nutritious. So we have another round of cleanup and then a little more school. But our extracurriculars happen in the afternoons. I have a lot of friends that do tutorials, lots of things in the morning, throughout the week. And the great thing about homeschooling is you try it for a while, and you find what works best for you. We like being at home in the mornings and that’s a rich time. The kids’ minds are open.
CHRISTINA: Right.
JUNE: And then piano, those kinds of things happen-
CHRISTINA: In the afternoon.
JUNE: Yeah, yeah. In the afternoon. And that’s typical for us.
CHRISTINA: It’s so interesting though, how it can change. For me, it’s changed.
MAGGIE: Oh, for sure.
CHRISTINA: Every year has looked very different.
MAGGIE: Yes.
JUNE: Yes.
CHRISTINA: And each child is so different that they need something different. Like I was saying, the difference between my early riser and my late riser and a lot of times is the teenagers. A lot of studies say that teenagers work better later in the day.
MAGGIE: It’s true.
CHRISTINA: And so that’s something great about homeschooling that you can let your teenagers sleep late.
JUNE: Adapt to that.
CHRISTINA: If that works better. As long as they can get their stuff done.
JUNE: They work better at night. I’ve got one who really does work better in the evening. And I’ve had to just shift my thoughts with that. We were actually talking the other day about when Emily, my youngest, was a baby. She dropped her afternoon nap and kept her morning nap, which was such an amazing thing for me as a homeschooler at that point because I had really early on, I mean my older two are really close together.
JUNE: And so there was a lot of just very hands-on early, early nuts and bolts. Like we’re teaching you to read, we’re working through that math lesson. And so when she was asleep, I had to just hit it really hard. And it was so… I can remember being so paranoid about waking her up, that we would go back, and I had created a little corner in my bedroom where we would do our homeschool so that it wouldn’t interfere. And now look back on that, and I think, “Oh my gosh,” But what my point is, you just do what you have to do in that season. And it won’t all necessarily be that. It won’t always be that.
CHRISTINA: As another mom who loves napping children, I have loved that about homeschooling, that I’m not driving around to four or five different schools for different children, and my baby’s not always in the car seat. The baby can take a nap, and we can relax on the couch and enjoy a good, long story and not feel like we have to rush everywhere.
MAGGIE: And just kind of thinking about those early days too, with the scheduling because I don’t know who will watch this and what stage they’re at, but rest time was a savior for me.
JUNE: Oh, yes. Yes, yes. That is a part-
CHRISTINA: You need to give yourself a break.
MAGGIE: And do you need to give yourself a break. So our after lunch, sometimes that would shift what after lunch looked like, but there was always a block of at least an hour, really more like an hour and a half, that everyone went to their own space. You’re not playing together for rest time. Sometimes the baby would be napping, and I would let them go to different rooms because my kids shared rooms. And so to give them that space you had to, and it was really funny because they’d have different things they would play with in each room. So that kind of gave them something new to look forward to.
JUNE: And I can remember during certain seasons where I was schooling older kids, but the little ones needed nap. We did rest because I was so tired if I had been up in the night with people. And one of my kids took a nap very easily. I put the other people in the right place, and then I’d lay down with him and we would fall asleep nose to nose that whole year. [crosstalk 00:13:43].
CHRISTINA: Oh, that’s so sweet.
JUNE: That’s really sweet. I hadn’t thought about that in a while.
MAGGIE: I know. It’s really fun to think about.
JUNE: As we talk about this, it made me think about how as you have typical days in your home, we have conflict at our house. And I don’t… I know, I’ve never told you that before.
CHRISTINA: We never have any problems.
MAGGIE: I’ve never heard about that. What do you mean?
JUNE: And you know, it’s between the kids, sometimes it’s my bad attitude.
MAGGIE: Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
JUNE: Yeah, Shocking.
MAGGIE: Shocking.
JUNE: We have a rhythm of dealing with those things during our day. So the kids are used to me going to a room and spending some time talking with somebody. Those things are expected parts of our day because that’s a part of our education. Learning how to love, how to forgive, how to… All these things we’re learning in school, learning in Bible, they must be applied that day. And I don’t have the schedule of who’s going to be the one having a bad day or a bad attitude.
CHRISTINA: And you just need to be ready for those things to come up and not feel like its something that’s interfering with your schedule, just expect it and be ready for that. And that’s just part of it. Yeah. And it’s…
JUNE: It’s a wonderful investment. Yes. And then over the years, you start seeing…
CHRISTINA: The fruit of that.
JUNE: You do.
MAGGIE: I’m sure that we have this ready to talk about it and maybe another little subject matter, but that just made me think of, part of homeschooling and making this decision. We’re speaking from a Christian perspective here. And so I think it’s important to bring up that aspect of sanctification and that the Lord is going to be working on you and your own heart. And I have a lot of moms who say I could never homeschool because I’m not patient enough to do it. And I think to myself almost every time. Well, I’m not either. The Lord is with you. He knows your weak spots. He knows what he’s going to ask you to learn by being in relationship constantly with your children and overseeing their education. And he’s working on me as much as he’s working on them. And I think that’s a sweet thing. Just that positioning of the heart, like you’re saying, expect it. The conflict is going to happen, and you have the opportunity to apply what you’re taking in, in terms of [crosstalk 00:16:15].
JUNE: Yeah. Some of those are the biggest lessons.
MAGGIE: Really. Life lessons. Absolutely.
JUNE: You didn’t plan for them but…
MAGGIE: Right, right.
JUNE: Typical day. Anything else you want to add?
CHRISTINA: I think that’s great. It’s just flexibility, I would say is the overarching theme of my day, usually.
JUNE: Yeah. And when you’re flexible, you can stretch. Yeah. That’s good. Then there’s not a typical day.
CHRISTINA: Exactly.
JUNE: And there’s not a typical day.
CHRISTINA: That’s the thing.
MAGGIE: Even when you have a good schedule.
JUNE: Yeah.