The Gotcher Family’s Homeschool “Day in the Life”

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This week I’m participating in Q&A Friday at Simple Homeschool, and this week’s topic is Your Homeschool “Day in the Life.” I had planned to write earlier this week but a little bout of illness went through the family, so I am literally writing about today. Funny thing is, I couldn’t have picked a better day: Although today didn’t exactly reflect a “typical” day in our homeschooling life, it did reflect many of the reasons we’ve come to LOVE our homeschooling life.

I’m the mother of three girls ages eleven, nine and four, and we’re halfway through our second year of homeschooling. Aside from homeschooling full time, I also run a part-time beauty consulting business and fledgling writing business (including writing and editing this blog with my sister and two sisters in law). My husband travels a lot for work, and those weeks are definitely my biggest challenge. But the trade-off is that he works from his home office upstairs the rest of the time. We enjoy eating lunch together, giving him mini-presentations of finished work throughout the day, and I occasionally pop-in on him for some adult conversation when I’m having “a moment” of my own. For that, I’m very grateful!

We’ve done a little bit of everything schedule-wise since we began homeschooling shortly after moving to Castle Rock, Colo., in 2010. Right now, I would say that we follow a daily “agenda” rather than a formal schedule, and days vary based on participation with our local homeschool group’s enrichment activities, my ladies bible study at church, field trips, and these days, sneaking away to ski when the freshly powdered slopes are beckoning. I realized that any day is just as good as the next to reflect a “day in the life” for us, because our homeschooling journey is very much a day-to-day adventure, with some weekly and daily routines sprinkled in.

So here’s a peek into our fabulous Friday.

Sometime early this morning… I woke to the glowing white light of a rising sun behind a thick Colorado snowstorm. We were due to have blizzard conditions today, and I couldn’t wait to peek through the sliver in the drapes beaming brightly to see how much snow had accumulated in our yard overnight. Not surprisingly, the answer was a lot!

I love a good snow day, but I’m not one to jump up and start shoveling at the crack of dawn. So I rolled over and blissfully returned to sleep for another hour or so. Snow days are usually sleep-in days in our family.

Sometime later this morning… I woke to the sounds of a neighbor’s snow blower buzzing and the scraping of the shovel as my husband cleared out our driveway. I knew he’d be hitting the shower soon, so I got up to take mine and rouse the girls out of their sound slumber. Snow days are also pajama days, so the girls bundled up in fluffy robes and came downstairs — frazzled morning hair and all — to eat before doing anything else.

Breakfast is a simple affair: Cereal, oatmeal, or a granola yogurt parfait, and coffee for mom and dad. We occasionally do pancake Fridays, but today it was a quick bowl of cereal so we could get on with our day — and the fun that was waiting outside in the pristine snow drifts.

For a brief moment, I contemplated calling a full-fledged snow day, which usually means movies and/or board game marathons by the fire and lots of snow play with the neighborhood kids. But since we’d already taken Monday off this week to ski, I told the girls we’d do one project and save the snow day fun for after lunch.

One “agenda” item that has become a regular part of our daily routine is family devotion time. This January, I started using Bruce Wilkinson’s “Family Walk” 52-Week Devotional. Each week is broken into five daily devotions based on a theme and Bible memory verse of the week. We gather around the couch, read the devotional story of the day, followed by a scripture reading (my 11-year-old Audrey and 9-year-old Claire take turns), discussion questions and prayer.

This week our topic has been “leisure” — who knew the Bible had something to say about leisure? It’s been really interesting, to say the least, and seemed especially fitting today because this was going to be a great opportunity to practice one of the principles we’ve learned: To embrace the gift of each day by simply enjoying the beauty of God’s creation.

After devotions… we start what I would call “table time” — simply because we gather around the large front room dining table (which also gets the best natural light) to do school work together. Right now we’re wrapping up a history unit on Ancient Mesopotamia using Heart of Wisdom’s Internet-linked Mesopotamia Unit Study. It’s taken us longer than I was planning, but I’m trying to go with the flow — something that I wanted to change from our experience last year — because my girls love history and want to savor it a bit with extra projects, movies, Internet research and reading.

While I work on unit studies with Audrey and Claire, my 4-year-old Elise (our little entertainer) usually hangs out and does whatever she is interested in. If there’s a coloring page or printout associated with the unit, I’ll give her the same sheet and let her do what she wants with it. Sometimes she hangs on every word of a group reading and neatly colors in the lines of the printout. Other times, she’ll bring down her dolls and role play with them under the table, or persistently ask if she can use my laptop to play with her Webkinz. Today, I gave in and let her play while I helped the other girls get started on their work.

My eldest two are creating lapbooks to showcase personally chosen highlights from the journey back in time to Ancient Mesopotamia. All of my girls love anything that involves scrapbook paper, stickers, coloring utensils and glue, so the decision to hold off on the snow day was immediately accepted. Even Elise wanted to get involved, helping the girls select coordinating paper patterns and choose templates for each feature in their lapbooks. They quickly dove into the cutting and pasting and crafting.

We just celebrated Audrey’s birthday this month, and one of her gifts from us (money well spent!) was a new desk for her bedroom. The new desk has become invaluable for the times when sibling rivalry arises during table time. Both Audrey and Claire are competitive and sometimes critical of each other — a habit that I’m praying for wisdom to break — but today proved no different than any given day. As soon as they began to argue over who was using which template and why they couldn’t just share, I packed up Audrey’s paper and sent her to her beautiful new desk to “spread out” her stuff and work privately.

She was happy, Claire was happy, peace was restored, and quickly, much progress was made on the lapbooks.

Before I knew it, the lunch hour had come and gone… again! It’s not uncommon for us to completely miss a typical noon-time lunch because the girls are so engrossed with their work. Today, they were being particularly meticulous with the lapbooks, so I finally called a “time out” for lunch.

One thing I’ve tried to do to make lunch time more simple is cook extra at dinnertime so we can warm up leftovers. My husband has never been a big fan of leftovers, but I love the concept — especially when it means we can have a filling, well-rounded meal the next day in just a few warm-up minutes. So whenever possible, we make a double batch and enjoy the leftovers at lunch.

We warmed up last night’s chili, but it turned out there wasn’t quite enough to fill everyone’s tummy. For those moments, I resort to a quick fix like Annie’s Mac & Cheese or — I’ll admit it — Ramen noodles. What can I say, the girls love it and it takes just three minutes to cook! Today, it was Ramen to the rescue.

After lunch… the girls surprisingly asked to resume working on their lapbooks — even after one of the neighborhood girls came to the door requesting their participation in the snow-cave building taking place on our corner. This is one of those moments when I know that I love homeschooling: The girls genuinely love to learn! To see them put off snow play because they are captivated by their school work is priceless.

On a “typical” day, we usually shift into individual work after lunch. I spend time with each of the girls working on math, language arts, and other grade-specific work, while they individually complete reading, writing or math assignments. I also do more hands-on work with my preschooler Elise, which includes reading and math lessons, games and projects. I’m currently using “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” and Math-U-See’s Primer — when she’s willing — along with letter/number coloring books, cutting projects, card games, etc.

About an hour later… the girls were done with the “first half” of lapbook-making and ready to call it a day. I was so glad, because I personally couldn’t wait to get outside and start having some snow day fun myself. So we bundled up and took a short hike around the corner to pick up another homeschooling friend.

Along the way, we spotted an unexpected gift: We were being watched by two cautious does standing in the greenbelt beyond our cul-de-sac, peeking around a fence. We paused to savor this quiet moment meant just for us, watching God’s graceful creatures watching us, then proceeded back home to join in the construction of snow caves and sled runs.

For me, being in the presence of the pure white, sparkling snow crystals, the blanket of quiet over serene streets, watching chunky flakes drift slowly, then quickly, then slowly again, over and over, is like heaven on earth. I am still not sure how this California girl turned into a Rocky Mountain snow lover, but I am really grateful to not only love it, but live in it!

Another reason why I love homeschooling: The freedom to shape our schedule around the things we love, the things that bring us joy and family togetherness. Whether it’s enjoying a productive snow day on our own terms, escaping to the mountains on a traffic-free weekday to hit the slopes or take a hike, spending more time on the subjects that capture my girls’ imaginations, or starting every day with God’s word, we homeschoolers have the freedom to make those choices for our families.

Yes, it’s a lot of work — I get that comment a lot from both my working mom and stay-at-home mom friends. And truth be told, I agree with them: It’s work! I’m not doing much else right now when it comes to my businesses, and I’m no Martha Stewart around the house. However, I am one of those people who would rather do one thing well than many things mediocre. That one thing for me right now is homeschooling.

I believe God has called me to make homeschooling my mission, and I’m willing to do the work — and make the necessary sacrifices — for the privilege of having days like today. It’s a responsibility like no other, but His blessings are new every morning. Days like today may not be typical, but they are full of blessings. Great is thy faithfulness, oh Lord!

This post is part of a reader feedback link-up at Simple Homeschool’s “Day in the Life” series. See “Q&A Friday: YOUR Homeschool Day in the Life” for insight from other homeschooling moms across the country on this topic! We are also linked up with The Homeschool Chick’s Homeschool Mother’s Journal and “Day in the Life” Thursdays on So You Call Yourself a Homeschooler?

         

6 thoughts on “The Gotcher Family’s Homeschool “Day in the Life”

    1. Does your friend homeschool? If so I might know her, we have our own homeschoolers group in Castle Rock. We’ve been getting more snow here than the mountains lately, and it’s been fun for sure!

    1. Same here, it’s so interesting and fun to peek into the days of other homeschooling families. Thanks for “hopping” by and we’ll check out your blog as well!

    1. Thanks Laura! I love the Hip Homeschool Mom Blog Hop — it’s such a great way to connect with the growing community of amazing homeschooling moms out there, find new blogs to follow, and be personally enriched by hearing the experiences of others in our shoes. Hope you’ll follow us too!

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