Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Just another 24 hours in the homeschooling life.

Mary Grace over at Books and Bairns has issued a challenge to all homeschoolers to chronicle 24 hours of their lives.  I gave it an attempt yesterday although it's not officially supposed to start until 11/22/2010 because I just felt like going ahead and doing it yesterday.  I must warn you though that at some point yesterday afternoon, my life kind of ventured into the bizarre and kind of gross.  Read at your own peril.  :-P
You have been warned!

7:50 am  I am sleeping in a chair in the living room with Freckles snuggled up with me, when I am awakened by my husband kissing me and telling me that he is going to a doctor's appointment, and that I should be sure and wake the kids before I go to work. 
8:15  I finally get out of world's most comfy chair and proceed to the kitchen, where I make coffee and load the dishwasher.  I have some time so I also load the crockpot with cowboy stew, put in a load of laundry, drink coffee and surf the internet for quite a while.
9:50   I wake up the kids.  Teens need their sleep and will sleep all day if not awakened.  I tell them to start school and I go to my mom's house to work.
10:30  I finally start work as mom and I have had a lot to talk about this morning and I had to reboot my computer. 
10:30 - 12:50  I type a lot of c-section reports, a lot of admission notes and a lot of echocardiograms.  While I am working, my husband comes home and supervises the kids homeschooling.  He gets the younger 2 kids started in the new Life of Fred books we ordered from Rainbow Resource last week.
12:50  I need only 20 more lines but I have to download and type whatever is next in the queue.  No choice. It could be very long and make me work another hour and a half.  I say a quick prayer that it will be short.  It is and I type it.  It's 29 lines.  Good.  I'm hungry for lunch.
1:05   I arrive home and eat some of the cowboy stew.  It doesn't taste as good to me as it usually does and I wonder if the new Listerine mouthwash I've been using for flouride and whitening has perhaps burned off my taste buds.  It sure does burn like it could do that.
1:15  I notice that Freckles is dragging her behind.  Uh oh.  My husband and I have a brief discussion over whose responsibility it is do squeeze the dog's hiney and evacuate her anal glands.  We quickly decide that it is the vet's job.  My husband said the vet said she would do this for 12 dollars.
2:00  Freckles and I are at the vet.  Despite only starting to have symptoms 45 minutes ago, she has an infection and needs antibiotics.  It is more than 12 dollars.
2:30  Back home, I check on the kid's progress.  Monday is math day.  One son is done with all of his chapters of Life of Fred pre-algebra and the other 2 are not done with their math.  (My husband assigns and supervises all of the math).  Even though it is math day, they also have other things, guitar and writing, among other things.   The kids and I do a quick house clean up and I start to plan for 4H tomorrow.
3:30  Once I figure out what we are going to do for 4H, I realize that I am going to need supplies for 4H and my daughter and I decide to go get them.   Before we go, we put the dog in a pair of shorts for reasons of hygeine because we do not own any doggie diapers. She actually looks kind of cute in a pair of my son's old shorts with basketballs on them but she is not happy.   
4:00.   My daughter and I are at Walmart getting paint sample cards to make a mosaic for 4H.  Then we go to Lowes and get some more.  Then we go to Kroger to try and find fresh cranberries for the snack part of 4H, but we can't find any so we are very disappointed and buy canned cranberries.  (We had already checked Walmart).  
6:15  We girls arrive home.  The boys are finished with their schoolwork.   My daughter still had school to finish.  For dinner we have cowboy stew.  I made cornbread to go with it.  I love cornbread.  The kids don't but that is their loss.  More for me.   The cornbread tastes wonderful but the cowboy stew still tastes not as good as usual.  I figure my taste buds must be alright after all and maybe I left something out.  The kids like it, although it is very spicy.  After dinner I load the dishwasher again and move the laundry to the dryer.
7:00  p.m.  Screen time begins at our house.  The boys plug into their computers.  My daughter watches TV in the living room while working on a sample mosaic for 4H.  I am watching the DVD we got from Netflix, The Mentalist season 1, disk 2 while cutting up paint sample cards.   I am really tired.  My daughter finishes her mosaic.  It's really good.  I worry that the other children may be intimidated.  I consider doing one myself so that they can see that anyone can do it but I am just too tired.  I don't feel good.  I've got some sort of bronchitis-y sounding cough and feel blah.  I watch more of The Mentalist and cut out some more things for 4H, look on the internet for some Mad Libs and some recipes that call for canned cranberries instead of fresh and piddle around with some other small projects and finally it is bedtime.
11:00 Bedtime.  I feel guilty that it is not earlier. We listen to Ranger's Apprentice, Seige of Macindaw for half an hour, then lights out.
5:00 a.m.  I wake up, put the dogs out, let them back in and fall asleep in the living room chair.  And that's where this story began.


Commentary:
This is done from memory and therefore leaves a bunch of things out.  
Freckles is better today. 
Yes, we keep horribly late hours.  We are incorrigible.
Our mattress hurts my back and I often have to move to the living room to sleep for at least part of the night, otherwise, I'll have a pretty severe backache.  
The kids do school from a checklist with supervision from both parents, but there is not much, if any time that we all spend sitting around the kitchen table doing school at the current time.  We may change that in January but for now, what we're doing is working reasonably well.
Would I say this is a typical day?  Probably not, but it is a true sample of one of our days.  Each one is different.

I look forward to reading about your days.

4 comments:

Junosmom said...

What kind of 4H? I am a leader for an art 4H. Can you describe your mosaic project?

Fatcat said...

I'm the leader for a homeschool 4H and we just choose a different subject each year. Right now we're doing home ec so we do a cooking project each meeting. This time I felt like throwing in a little art. Next month we're doing Christmas ornaments and cookies. For the mosaic, we did a simple leaf outline, and filled in the leaf with warm colors then outside it with cool colors. My advice for working with these paint chips - use a glue stick not liquid glue! We also made a cranberry salad that was very good.

Amy said...

I loved hearing about your day! I think I just might have to give that a try for my blog. But maybe I'll wait til next week.....this week definitely wouldn't be a 'normal' week since it's Thanksgiving break....college boy is home & the only school going on is Ashley studying for her SAT test coming up. But then again, our days are rarely what other folks would call 'normal' LOL....we jsut kinda go with the flow.

Kelli said...

WOW! I loved reading this! I would love for you to come link up at Homeschooling on the Cheap! It would be very helpful to someone who is thinking of homeschooling and wonder what a day is like

I'm new to your blog, off to look around! BTW that wolf spider post was creepy! haha

Have a great weekend!

Kelli
http://3boysandadog.com/deals/2012/homeschooling-on-the-cheap-05032012/

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