Homeschool Day in the Life | Mom of 10

Hey everyone, it's Sheri from OurLifeHomeschooling.com. I wanted to take you along today with me for a little day in the life to just give you a little perspective of what our homeschool looks like on a day-to-day basis. Of course, I'm not going to be able to show you everything, but I just want to give you a snapshot of what a normal day looks like for us. If you're new here, my name is Sheri. I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids. I'm married to my high school sweetheart, Nelson. We've been married for 23 years. I'd really love it if you could just take a minute and like and subscribe. We have 10 kids, and one of our oldest son is graduated. We homeschooled him all the way through. We have this year a 10th grader, 9th grader, 7th, 5th, 3rd, 1st, and kindergartner. And then we have a 2-year-old and a little 7-month-old. My mornings start these days with the baby waking up. And if I have the chance, I sleep in if I can. But since he's still getting up sometimes in the night, I will sleep in until he's awake. This morning, he woke up at around 7, so that was kind of nice. I got a little time to sleep in a little bit later. When I don't have babies, I like to get up before the kids are up and just enjoy a little bit of time by myself in the mornings. It's really nice, just that peace to be alone in the quiet. And this is the time when I try to read my Bible and just spend a little bit of time in God's Word, refueling my soul. If you're a mom, you know how hard it can be to get that time alone to read your Bible. And what I've always done is whenever I get my very first free moment, that's when I'll spend time reading my Bible. And so even though I have babies or I'm pregnant or I always have little children that need me, whenever I get that first free moment alone, I will try to spend it going to God's Word first before I go to social media or any other thing that I might do for relaxation because I know that the Word is what I really need. As more and more kids are waking up, I'm probably at this point going to start getting breakfast ready for all my littles. And I just want to say ahead of time that the way that our homeschool looks now looks really nothing like it looked when my kids were all little. When they were all really small, I was very hands-on. I was doing a lot of work. There was so much foundational work that needed to happen, just teaching them everything, teaching them how to read, how to write. It just seemed like everything was so fundamental. They didn't have any of the basics, and that was just a lot more work. My job now, I'm more of a facilitator and helping the older kids as they're going through their day. And then I'm always working with the one who is learning to read and write and learning the basics. As far as our school day goes, we have basically four parts to it. We have morning time, and then afterwards we all do chores. Then they get their checklists out, and they do their independent work. In between there, we have lunch and usually go outside. But then the last part is me reading aloud to them. After our little kids have had breakfast, usually about that time, the big kids are coming down. I do ask them to be down by 830 and be ready for morning time at 830. So they should have their breakfast beforehand, and then we sit down and do morning time together. For many years, we've done morning time. I used to make up notebooks and just kind of add in pages of things we were working on, and it was just kind of this conglomeration of a notebook. For the very first time this year, I've created a simple morning time notebook where everything we're learning for the whole year is in one place. All the poems, all the memory verses, everything that we're going to be reading for morning time is in there. And I cannot tell you what a huge difference it has been to just have everything in one spot. I feel like just the visual reminder has even been really good for the kids. If you're an Ambleside Online user, this is perfect. It kind of matches up very closely with what they're suggesting for the year, and we've really enjoyed it. So the simple morning time notebook, if you're interested, you can look on the blog and you can get one for yourself. We created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was over the face of the sky. Oh, I am the star of fire. What's a fire? Then she's the fire. Creation's been gone. Just the earth is over the ocean, and she's over the sea. Dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth to create an equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind. Okay, so today is Tuesday. Oh, Ty's not here. Okay, Luke, school room. Jenna, dishes. Friendly. Entryway powder room. Upstairs bath, Afton. After morning time, we get started on our chores. I've done a video on how we keep our house clean for a large family. I'll link that to this, and you can take a look at that if you'd like. At this time, each of the kids is assigned to just a different area of the house that they're supposed to do for that day. We also have each child is assigned one day of the week that they're in charge of the kitchen, and if they're a younger kid, I help them, and if they're an older kid, they're kind of responsible for doing the dishes and keeping the kitchen clean, and I'm more of their assistant. And we also have a different person each day that is taking care of some of the farm chores. Once chores are done, the kids are expected to get out their checklists and just get started on what I have for them. So I make up these checklists at the beginning of the school year, and we just go through it together. We talk about what I have assigned for them and then also some of the things that they want to do. This is also a time when I get to sit with my little ones and read to them or just spend a little bit of time with them. And the kids know that this is a time when they're working on their checklist but that I am their facilitator. So whenever they come to something new, something they don't understand, they're supposed to bring it to me. But a lot of the things, once they're reading and writing, they're able to do on their own, and they're able to just progress with a little bit of help. Now my little kids during this time will often just be sitting beside one of their older siblings trying to copy what they're doing or watching what they're doing. Or often they'll be doing puzzles or will be getting out crayons and coloring books. Or I have just a whole drawer of things in the kitchen that are just for their age, perfectly suited for them. So we'll pull those out as needed. Sometimes they're just kind of following us around and watching what we're doing. Another thing that I am trying to get in during this time when the kids are doing their independent work is to sit down and work with whichever child is learning to read and write and just getting started on math. So this year that's William, and he's learning to read. Every day I sit down and do just a little bit of reading with him, and he's learning how to write his numbers, and then soon he'll move into his math book. So this is a time that I get this done with him, and this takes us about maybe 15 minutes, give or take. While Will is beside me, you can see I have Julia right there also, and she's working on some math, so I'm kind of helping her, assisting her, as well as listening to him read. There's a lot of things that are happening behind the scenes that you're really not going to see here. My 2-year-old wasn't feeling well, so she was up a couple times last night. She was coming down with a cold, and our little one, Benjamin, is still up once a night, needs me to nurse him. You don't see some of the fighting or the quarrels that kids just normally have. You don't see the interruptions or any of the issues that I have to just stop and handle and take care of. These are all normal parts, so you may not see them, but I assure you they're happening. I know they happen in your homeschool. They happen just in normal life. So those are parts that are not captured here, but they are here. And I think one thing that really helps me keep going is just to know that what I'm doing has a lifelong impact on my kids. I believe it's so influential. I also know that I'm doing work that's eternal. This is kingdom work. These are eternal souls, and the opportunity to influence them, I know that even those little moments are so important. I can see this especially now that we have a child that's graduated. It gives you just a lot bigger perspective on what's really important. And so all these little things, the hard parts of our day that may not be captured here, they're there, and they're a really important part of what we do. I think how we handle them, how we respond to them, makes all the difference. Are you up? Hi. Say hi. Sometime mid-morning, usually around 11 o'clock, Benjamin wakes up from his morning nap, and this is a great time to get the little ones outside. I really like the kids to be outside, especially I feel like it's important for the young kids that they get outside every day, get some fresh air, and spend some time just running around. And we like to go for walks in the neighborhood. I really like for my older kids to be outside as well, so as soon as they're done with their checklist, I'm probably telling them, get outside. Come on, guys. When you're finished, go right outside and play. Going back to some of the things that you don't see in this video, there's a lot of things that are happening during the day that are things you just can't capture on a video, like the deep conversation I had with my daughter when we were going over her algebra lesson, or my son getting to spend a lot of the morning planning out what he wants to do for his 16th birthday party, my daughter baking a birthday cake for her sister, things like this. My parents were overseas for a little bit, and they came home this week, and we were able to put a little package of food together for them, just some bread and milk and peanut butter and jelly, stuff that they would have when they came home after jet lag that they would just have something in the house. And being able to do these things alongside with my kids and having the time for some of these conversations is so priceless. I love that we have this time in our day to do some of these things with our kids. After we've been outside for a while, we come in and it's time to start lunch. Usually we keep it pretty simple. Today it's leftovers. We had spaghetti last night. So we'll just heat some of that up. But usually it's just sandwiches. I often like to make a salad for myself if I have the time. And we enjoy lunch together. I usually get lunch for the younger kids, and then the olders just put their lunches together, whatever they want for the day. After lunch, it's time for our little ones to go down for naptime. Benjamin goes down, and then our 2-year-old Holland also goes down for nap. While I'm putting the little ones down for naptime, everyone else is cleaning up, and that kitchen person is making sure that the kitchen is completely clean. But everyone helps put away some of the things they've gotten out. And, of course, it doesn't happen as quickly as this. There's a lot of space in there. Eventually we all make our way into the living room, and we get ready for read-aloud time. And this is the last thing that we do during the day. Often the kids will sit there and read a little bit until I'm there. All right, so you guys remember what we were reading about last? We were reading about the colonists, and what else? We were reading about the Indians. No. We talked about Daniel Boone. Remember all that? Life on the Frontier. What was the name of the road that he… Oh, the Cumberland Gap. Cumberland Gap. Okay, so now we're going to move on to some of the revivals in New England. This is the time that I usually read science or history to them, and I always read a fun chapter book. Today we're reading A Story of America and also The Mystery of the Periodic Table. And the fun chapter book that we've been in is All of a Kind Family. If I could pick one thing that's been the least amount of work and has produced the greatest amount of results in my kids, it's been reading to them. And not only has it been fruitful, it's something that we just really enjoy. It's just built a bond between us. Reading together with them is probably my most cherished memory in all our years of homeschooling. So this pretty much wraps up the school part of our day. Thanks for coming along. I really hope this has encouraged you or inspired you. Let me know how things are going in your homeschool. If there's any questions you have that I might be able to help you with, I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks for joining me today. Have a great week with your kids.