Before homeschooling, my daughter attended a Waldorf charter school. So, we followed the Waldorf curriculum for the first few months of homeschooling, but for History alone. For other subjects, we tested out many ‘mini’ curricula, courses, and books, and now, almost two years later, we know what we love and what works best for our family.
We are neither curriculum purists nor unschoolers; we fall right in the middle and have a fairly flexible homeschool schedule and approach. We often put the schedule aside and delve deeper into a child’s question or interest. We aim to learn joyfully and maintain a sense of AWE with our learnings and explorations. Come see what we do and what we love!
Our Schedule
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Breakfast
Read a poem.
Read a picture book or two.
Do math.
Watch a science video, follow up with an experiment or study. There is usually a lot of discussion that follows, so this block goes on for a while!
Lunch
Work on independent projects or play!
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Breakfast
Poetry time
Music lesson for one kid, the other does math.
Read picture books related to the country we are learning about.
Do an art project/writing/language learning related to the country we are learning about.
Lunch
Kid one does math. Handwriting for kid two.
Free play!
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Breakfast
Poetry
Music lesson for kid two. Math for kid one.
Read picture books!
Watch a science video with my 1st grader from our other favorite science source while my 7th grader does Biology.
Lunch
Math for kid two. Kid one works on some projects.
Play!
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Breakfast
Poetry
Picture books by the fireplace!
Enchanted learning (more about this under resources)
Lunch
Math
Play!
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It’s a free day for kids! They choose to tinker or play, their choice. Kid two bakes cookies for certain on Fridays while kid one paints!
Of course, this schedule does not entirely represent all we do daily. I firmly believe that learning is perpetual and cannot be confined to schedules or times.
For example, our 1st grader makes tea for us on many afternoons, and we all spend a lot of time gardening in the evening when the weather’s nice. We also go on spontaneous adventures at times, especially during Spring when there is so much to do outside. Poetry is interspersed in many activities. It’s charming to see the kids composing haikus and other poems in their heads while they are out and about. Our daughter is working on a story (or several stories!). We play board games many evenings a week, and that’s a fabulous way to exercise our strategy and attentiveness muscles. The kids also help us with cooking, cleaning, decorating, etc. The times when they set up the table for dinner make us feel like we are dining in a 7-star restaurant! They make it so magical. And there have been times when we have mulled over some science questions(kid-initiated) well past bedtime!
That’s the beauty of homeschooling. We learn all the time, and we do so with beauty, joy, and peace.