A Day in the Life Series - Mom

My morning starts early. I wake up a few hours before the kids get up so I can have my bible and prayer time. 

If the morning is cold, I will light the fire in our wood burning stove, otherwise I just sit down on the sofa for my morning Bible time. 

I have a Bible app on my phone and I am doing the Bible in a year plan, along with various other plans (most only last 5-7 days which is why I do others) for personal growth in areas I need to work on. I sit and cuddle up on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, and in the warmth of the wood stove going while listening and reading along to the Bible passages. 

After about 30 minutes to an hour of Bible and prayer time I finish it off with a prayer from the book 40 Scripture Based Prayers to Pray Over Your Children. By Kaylene Yoder. 

After spending the first part of my morning with God I take time to enjoy breakfast before the kids get up, and start to prepare breakfast for the kids if I am baking something. 

This morning I am making apple crisp for breakfast so I start peeling and slicing apples and making the topping for the crisp and start it cooking.

Once it is cooking I head outside to watch the sunrise. It is so beautiful in the country with no other lights or smog or air pollution to dimmish it's beauty. Sometimes, there is a blanket of fog early in the morning or you watch as the dew starts to heat up in the morning sun and you watch as it rises up appearing like little trails of clouds. So much beauty in the morning.   

Sometimes one of the kids will wake up early and come out and have a cuddle with me while I am sitting outside. 

Once all the kids are up I continue working on breakfast and supervising their morning chores. All the kids do their morning chores before breakfast that way as soon as they are done eating we can get started with schoolwork. 

Apple crisp, hashbrowns, and scrambled eggs for breakfast. All of the kids went back for seconds on the apple crisp and finished it off. While the kids are eating breakfast, I read the Duck Commander Devotionals to the kids as well as the Story Bible which goes along with our school curriculum. 

After the kids finish breakfast I brush 4 of the kids teeth then spend the next several hours working with the kids with their schoolwork. 

I review all our memory work and recitation with the kids then we start on math, then spelling and handwriting.  At this time we will have music from our composer of the month playing softly in the background, loud enough for the kids to hear but not loud enough to be a distraction. 

 After we are finished with math, spelling and handwriting, the kids have a snack and a break time for about 30 minutes - 1 hour so they can run around and play. If anyone finishes before the rest of the kids they are allowed to get a puzzle or book out or work on a single player educational game such as matching animal prints to the animal or another game like mental blox which has the kids make the pieces match the cards.  Then they can all go out and have their snack and break at the same time. 

When they come back inside from playing  from their break time, we start with our circle time where we go over our Memory Board work . This includes our Spanish, skip counting, civics, geography, hymns, reviewing our poem, artist, and composer of the month, in addition to reviewing  memory work we are learning. This month they are learning about the 5 Great Lakes and where they are located on a map of the USA, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as what makes animals an omnivore, herbivore, or carnivore. Our artist of the month is Evard Munch who painted The Scream. Our hymn this month is Standing in the Need of Prayer. Each month we focus on one composer and one artist. This month we are listening to works by Beethoven and learning about him. During math class we will listen to the music by the composer of the month. For Spanish this month we are working on learning family members in Spanish. We will be reviewing counting 1-20, as well as colors in Spanish that we have already learned. So far the kids have learned to count by 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and we will continue to review these during math. Many years ago they learned how to count by 5s, but we will be reviewing that and all they have learned so far again this month. 

From there we move onto our history reading. This month we are learning about Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson. After I read the children will go work in their book that goes along with the story called Step by Step Sentences. This book reviews everything from nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, main ideas, details, and much more.  The kids have easy biography books for them to read but we also do a chapter book for each person we are learning about that I will read to the kids. 

 They are all at different spots in their school books. I allow them to work at their pace. Sometimes they want to do extra to get ahead and sometimes they just what they need to for that day. 

While the kids are working on their schoolwork that they can do independently such as copy work I start preparing lunch. Today we are having chicken, potatoes, and veggies for lunch. 

After they are finished with their Step by Step Sentences books  and handwriting or copywork the kids get another break time and lunch. This is a time that they will be reading their reading books to me. The kids run around and play for about an hour which gives them plenty of time to play and for me to listen to all of them read a chapter in their books.

 

 After lunch I read our science books or our Storytime Treasury books. This month we are learning about the constellations, horses, mammals, and animal kingdoms.  This month we will also be reading the stories The Story of Ping, and Keep the Lights Burning Abbie which is part of our Simply Classical Storytime Treasures collection. Each one of these stories has a book that the kids work on answering questions for greater story comprehension. The Simply Classical Storytime Treasures books have a workbook that covers all the stories we are reading where they review what they have learned and also learn to write better sentences.  

It is a lot of reading on my part, but with the program we are using, we only cover a few pages or chapters per day in the Bible, Biographies, and Storytime Treasures books, which certainly helps with the amount of things we are reading. Some books, like our science book stories are read completely in one setting, but will often be reread more than once throughout the week. This is to help kids with special needs really grasp the story as the repetition helps them learn and comprehend what they have heard. 

We finish the day off with another review of our poems, hymns, and bible verses.  If any work did not get completed those children continue working, with more one on one help while the rest of the children are finished for the day.

While most of the work we are doing is through Simply Classical, I am adding my own things each month with bible verses and poems and hymns. (Simply Classical does have bible verses they learn however they are shorter passages and after using Abeka we discovered our kids are able to memorize longer verses so I have decided to pick verses and poems for our kids to learn rather than having our kids learn the bible verses through Simply Classical). 

 

Once school is done for the day the kids will often go play outside or go on walks down to the creek. Sometimes they like to take a snack down to the creek and have a picnic. 

While the kids are out playing I take the time to wash up the dishes, and it is time to start thinking about preparing dinner. 

Right now there is not much to do after school work but we are looking forward to when we have a garden going and chickens and can tend to those things during the day with the children which will be happening in the next couple weeks. 

Dinner time is a time for gathering around the table and talking about our day. It gives all of us the chance to tell what their favorite part of the day was, what their least favorite was, struggles they have, what everyone learned that day, and what we are looking forward to. 

On Wednesday nights I attend a women's Bible study at a dear friend's house and the kids have Bible study at church, so it is crockpot night. I will start something cooking early in the morning so we can eat before we have to leave. Once again after dinner I brush the teeth of four of our children. 

Every other Thursday night I attend a group with other moms with children with special needs. I take our older girls with me, and my husband keeps the younger three with him and they have a special movie night while they wait to pick us back up. 

Sundays is a day of rest. We have church in the morning and then afterwards we come home and have a special time just with the family. Weather permitting we go on a walk through the trails on our land. If the weather is too bad, we will stay inside and spend time playing games like Uno or Guess in 10. 

In the evenings the kids have free time and I will clean up after dinner and get things ready for the kids to go to bed. often work on lesson planning. My husband will often run to the store in the evening after he is off work (I can not drive at night due to night blindness), and he will take one or two of the kids with him. Since we do not have indoor plumbing he will go to into to town a few nights per week to do the laundry and take some of the kids with him. This gives me a time to spend more one on one time with the kids who did not go, to straighten things up around the house, or just have some quiet time to myself. 

When it is bedtime, we say prayers as a family making sure to pray for all our family and friends, say what we are thankful for, and praise God. After hugs and kisses the kids head up to bed. 

Once all the kids are in bed for the night, my husband and I will sit together and sometimes watch a movie, talk about our day, or just relax before we head to bed.

After a couple of hours we head to bed as well.