Half of the year is gone in our homeschooling trial. How is it going? What are our days like? How can you handle having the kids home all day? –questions I am asked all the time. Let’s take a peek at the homeschooling schedule on “school days*”

7am — up and breakfast (oatmeal from the thermowell, or toast with our cherry jam– still with the cherry jam!)

8am — logon! Schoolwork starts!

8:30 — check on kids to see how things have started. Usually I find them together in one or the other’s room, laptops out, notebooks handy and cats draped across their laps.

9:30 — First quiz report — 80, 90, or 100%

10am — BREAK! Go outside — jump on the tramp, collect eggs from chickens, bring the horses a treat, tear around the yard with the dogs, jump on the tramp some more — come in all pink-cheeked and windblown and tell me all about how you jumped with a chicken on the tramp. (I am sure the chicken didn’t think this was quite so much fun — although now there is chicken poop mysteriously on the tramp at odd times. I think they go up there on their own now)  Wash and put eggs away.

10:30 — Collect cats, laptops, notebooks and pens. Move to sunroom. Start in on schoolwork again.

11:30 — Next quiz starts! Bean usually closes her eyes and asks Lula to “submit” the quiz for her when she is done to see her grade. 90% again!

12:00 — Ask mom what is for lunch — mmmmm homemade potato bread just out of the oven? Egg salad made from our fresh layed eggs? Topped with sprouts from the mason jar in the kitchen. Wash it down with a glass of whole milk topped with cream straight from the cow. (we’ve been getting our milk from a kind of “milk coop” lately). Bean’s favorite thing after lunch is to pick some leaves from the mint plant I have in the sunroom and chew on that.

12:30 — Go outside. Jump on tramp with various animals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of the horses on there. Head up the driveway to get the mail! Wow letters from our penpals! Cool! Must take a break from schoolwork and write them back.

1:30 — finish up schoolwork. Make a point of telling mom that she should not defrost meat on the counter  because the science chapter is all “eewwww germs!” and you should see the stuff that can grow in the bathroom “ewwwww!” there were pictures of all these germs!!!!

2:30 — school day over! Go outside and tear around like wild animals. Take pictures with your camera for your blog. Write in your blog, posting with pictures.

5:00– DAD COMES HOME!!!!!!!!  Usually daddy has some kind of project going on — so there is much hammering and nailing and sawing and measuring, and gluing and wearing of safety glasses (which, in and of itself, is a big thrill)

6:00 or so: mom goes running so Bean meets up for the last mile of the run for “track practice”

7:00 — dinner!

8:00 — do dishes

8:30  — watch a movie or Netflix instant download: lately we are on a “mythbusters” kick — but last night I coerced them into watching “Gone with the Wind” because they are studying the Civil War in social studies. (and because mom can recite every word from that movie — but that’s beside the point)

10:00 — BED! No homework! No exhausted, overwhelmed kids! No getting lunches ready and clothing layed out for tomorrow! No drama! No “this happened in school today and I didn’t feel like talking to you about it until I am tired and cranky and exhausted and it is bed time”

10:30 — Lights out! (most of the time they fall asleep reading and I sneak up and turn out the lights. Lula is on a Nancy Drew kick lately and I just happen to have every single Nancy Drew book in the matching yellow covers from when I was 11. Bean wants me to get Dracula so she can read that. I gave her some Edgar Allen Poe to tie her over. You say these are twins???

* non-school days are filled with piano, pottery, dance, sewing class — all sorts of extra-curricular stuff.