S/O So if you do school at night, what do your dc do during the day?

[mykdsmomy]

I didn't want to derail the other thread but this is something that has come up more and more lately.

My dc are 15, 11, 10 and 6. The oldest is completely independent. The 11 and 10 year old need moderate help and ds6 needs constant direction/supervision which is partly why we tend to get more school work done in the late afternoon early evening when DH is home.

 

So what do your children do during the day if they aren't doing "school work"? How do you keep it constructive so it's not a free for all?

Thanks!

[Wendy in ME]

8th: grader reads, goes to ps for science, chess club, mechanical advantage club, cross country or track, and electives (art, music, gym) He also chips away at some of his loose ends as well as his daily chore.

 

6th grader: He sleeps in, likes to cook a large, hot breakfast for himself and his younger brothers, cleans his mess in the kitchen, completes his daily chore, independent reading for an hour as well as any other required reading for the day, destroys the kitchen again with whatever he decides to try to cook for lunch, cleans that mess, then he gets started on his school work around 1pm. He does the things he can do on his own at this time because this is when I work with the younger boys until about 3pm.

 

At 3pm, I take break for myself. (I spend my morning doing whatever chores need to done) Oldest ds gets picked up from extracurricular activity at 3:30 and then I start dinner prep so we can eat early. After the dinner mess is cleaned, I make coffee and hang out in the school room with the older boys for their instructional time with me. I work 12 hr shifts, and I don't get home until 9pm on work nights. I am very slow to get moving in the morning. (Ignore the early time of this post. I had trouble sleeping last night.)

 

I forgot to add that the little boys spend their morning doing creative things. We have a no screen time rule during the week, so the occupy themselves with playdough, water paint, drawing, puzzles, math manipulatives, and browsing through books. I consider this time to take care of all the extras that they would be doing at a "real" school. Their academic time is streamlined into 2hrs in the afternoon.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Wendy in ME

[Mallory]

Wake up time here is 9:00, if you get up before that then you can play video games ;), other wise we do no screen time during the week (okay, sometimes I do put on a video for the littles).

 

Most of the day even during school hours some of my children are on free time. And while I guess it is a free for all, I also think that all of the free time one of the great things about homeschool. Instead of spending 10 hours a day on a bus or at school and then still having homework, we get school done efficiently so that they have plenty of time to play.

 

My kids spend lots of time outside. Some time is very construtive- working in the garden, fixing out buildings, clearing brush, taking care of our animals. Some of it is imaginative play or just play- often things from history, they have been very interested in survival skills lately, on the swingset, baseball, finding insects or frogs, etc. Especially this time of year being able to play in the afternoon and school when it is getting dark and colder is nice.

 

They also spend time inside playing board or card games or reading or making messes- wait I mean creating art. :tongue_smilie:

 

We also volunteer two mornings a week at a local food panty/pregnancy center. This gives us an afternoon to go to the library and grocery store without interfering with school. My old schedule meant that even though I was home all week i was still going to the store when everyone that worked all week was going (evenings or saturday), this way we can go when the store is slow.

 

Of course there are days that free play just doesn't work out. They are fighting or the weather is bad or whatever. In that case I might make them clean, or sit and read (either independantly or I'll read aloud), or do school. I might also play a board game with them, or lead a hike, or get out a specific art project.

[mykdsmomy]

Thank you both! I think our day sounds very similar to both of yours. We tend to get all the house business/etc done in the early part of the day and then by afternoon, I can sit down and actually focus on school. I have issues with starting school when the house is messy ....and while I stay up late at night, I don't want to spend it cleaning :D

[Guest]

My dd flipped her school hours last year (during 8th grade). She had mono, and needed a solid twelve hours sleep for nearly the entire year. She'd get up at around ten, but not be fully ready to go until later.

 

So last year and this, we moved her riding lessons and work hours at the stable to the late morning/early afternoon. She gets home anywhere between two and five, depending on the day; has tea time; and then gets to work. It works well for us because I get a lot of my own stuff done during the morning -- I'm more a morning person -- and dd is now fairly independent with math. In the evenings when she is settling in and I'm tired, we mostly read and discuss, or I do mindless things (on my part anyway) like playing board games in Spanish. We do science lab on the weekends.