Five years into home educating

And I think we have found a rhythm that works for us

We have a daily routine

The children like to have their timetable to see what they are doing

And what is coming next

William especially likes to have a plan

And I admit that I do too

So I thought that I would share the structure of our days

As they currently stand with no classes and groups to go to

Our Daily Rhythm

We aim to have breakfast at 8.00am

And we start our learning by 9.00am

Unless it is particularly sunny or magically frosty

Then we head outside before we start our work

But mostly we begin our learning activities at 9.00am

We start the day with maths

William works independently in the classroom area of our open plan living space

He uses My Maths and is working through the Higher Level KS3 curriculum

A mixture of maths from Years 7, 8 and 9

(I am going to write a separate post about the children’s work and who does what and why)

Esther and Bea work with me for maths

They are working from Year 2 and Year 3 objectives so I make sure they are doing a similar activity

At their own level

This week for example they are both working on addition and subtraction

Last week they were both doing place value activities

Edie bumbles around a bit in the morning

If she does join us at the table she loves to do tracing, drawing and colouring

She has also recently started enjoying sticker books

After maths we roll straight into reading comprehension

Again the children are all working at different levels

Bea is working at Year 2, Esther works between Year 3 and Year 5

William’s work comes from Year 5 – Year 9 depending on what we are doing

I always link our reading and English work to our weekly topic

So last week everyone was doing reading comprehension tasks linked to the Arctic or Antarctic

This week Esther and William are doing WWII and The Holocaust

While Bea is doing Significant Women From History

After reading we do a shorter session before we break for lunch

This might be music, handwriting or drawing

Handwriting we do while listening to music and again everything is linked to our topic

Colouring and drawing the children usually do while I read aloud to them

At 12.00 we break for lunch

The children split into the little two and the big two

They like to watch television while they eat

Which I am happy with as it gives me a chance to set up for the afternoon

And do jobs around the house as well as eating my own lunch

Esther and William like to watch Operation Ouch with their lunch or Deadly 60

Bea and Edie tend to watch a mix of things including Go Jetters, Octonauts and Maddie’s Do You Know?

We do not have live television in our house so they use BBC iPlayer

After lunch the children have a play and I have a hot cup of coffee

In the afternoon I like to do an hour with Esther and William on their topic

Bea and Edie mostly play in the afternoon though Bea can join in with some of the topic work

I set up play things for Bea and Edie that are linked to our learning

But if it is dry I am happy for them to just play in the garden

Some of our best learning happens through their independent play

Especially when all four children are playing together

This week Esther and William are joining in a Holocaust Memorial writing project

With Tom Palmer and The Literary Trust

Last week they learned about using map grid references and about explorers

Here are some examples of our timetable

This is the plan for this week

And this is the beginnings of my planning for next week

I plan for seven days a week

But we do not always fit it all in

I start with these plans and then move things around as the week goes on

Also the activities do not always fill their whole allotted time

Any spare time the children can read or play or craft

The girls especially like to junk model whenever they have some spare time

So this is the rhythm that is working for us at the moment

It leaves lots of time for play and reading

It incorporates our daily walk

That I cannot now imagine life without

It has been nice to settle into our routine

I will be quite sad when the craziness of groups and classes begin again

But at the same time I cannot wait to have that normality for us all

If you have any questions about our home ed days

Do please get in touch

I am also planning to share some Day In The Life posts here and on Instagram

To show how paper plans transfer to real life

I hope that you will join us for those

I am also going to share where the children are with their work in English and Maths

How I plan for Edie and preschool at home

And how I choose and plan the topics that we work on

Is there anything else that you would like to see or read?

Thank you for reading x x x x x x