Homeschooling Encouragement | Day in the Life | Mom of 10

bursting into the room where the welcome back to our life homeschooling where I share homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms if you're new here my name is Sherry I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we've been married for almost 25 years and I love encouraging other moms in the great work that you're doing in your homes [Music] this video is part of a collaboration with Hannah Olen we wanted to get together and share some homeschooling encouragement with other moms so you'll definitely want to head over and check out her Channel I'll link it below you can also find her on her blog justthe be.com where she has tons of resources for moms Hannah is a Christian homeschool mom of three and her channel is all about homemaking mother motherhood homeschooling she is in a little different season of life it's a season I remember really well she has three young children and so this looks very differently so those of you with younger children you will really enjoy heading over to Hannah's Channel and just coming alongside her and seeing what homeschooling looks like in this season of life I've been enjoying watching some of Hannah's videos recently and she's in a different season than I am but I know this is the kind of thing I would have loved when I was at this stage with our young children we had a couple of weeks where it was so bitterly cold here that it just took every ounce of energy to get outside with the kids but today it was in the ' 50s and my sister was supposed to come over tomorrow but she messaged me this morning and said hey what if we just did it today cuz it's supposed to be really nice and I jumped on it we did just a little bit of work in the morning and then around 10:30 she came over and we spent all morning until lunchtime outside the older kids were playing with the volleyball the little kids were just running around having the best time of it and I think when spring comes this is so important there are days when just being out in the beautiful weather changes the whole atmosphere of our home the fresh air the sunshine the exercise it breathes life back into us after The Long Winter so when we have days like this I don't hesitate to just drop things and go outside because I know it's good for the kids it's good for me we had lunch outside and this was just wonderful [Music] after lunch my sister went home she has little ones that need to go down and our little guy Ben was really exhausted so he went down easily and the rest of the kids all went to the living room this is when we do our read aloud they usually go there with a book and start reading until I can get there and then once I'm there we all settle down and get started we've been homeschooling for 15 years and we've kind of settled into a routine a pattern that just happens every day it's fourfold we start with morning time this is at breakfast and then afterward we do chores the third thing is independent work where they're all working on their individual checklists we break for lunch and going outside and then the last thing is our afternoon r time where I read to everyone I actually tried to switch this up at the beginning of this year those of you who've been following me for a while probably will remember this one of my New Year's goals was to start with chores and then do morning time um we tried this and I found it just doesn't work for us so we're not trying that anymore um we just like our slow mornings I like to relax to slowly get started and I guess I just just need a little bit of momentum before I get going to into our chores and my kids all wake up at different times um so it's hard to kind of all start together I have such a wide range of kids my younger kids come down really early the older kids come a little bit later so it works better for us to just start with morning time here I'm reading to them our Island Story the kids are doing Renaissance and Reformation in history so I wanted to read a little bit from this book because this has a lot of stories that are from that time period and then I'm also going through the Voyage of the Dawn Treader we finished that this week actually and we have two more books in The Chronicles of Narnia series she had no chance very as the been the [Music] hatred in furious rage see he cried bursting into the room where the King was see how these English men of yours have treated us they have set us they have set upon us as we rode peaceably through do count Eustace you see did not tell the whole story did [Music] he our 3-year-old had a hard time sitting still if you notice she started sitting beside me and then she was up and sitting over by Julia she was just up and down I don't mind if my kids color if they draw sometimes we have Lincoln Logs blocks Thomas the Train all different kinds of things as long as they're quiet enough that it's not distracting and everyone can hear the story the next day for us was a co-op day for my older kids so we have three older kids that go to a drop off Co-op once a week and then on a second day of the week our F our whole family goes to a co-op that's more of like a relational style Co-op so today my three older ones went to their High School Co-op where they get some of their classes for credits and this is our 17-year-old son our 16-year-old daughter and our 14-year-old daughter so I was up with them and I like to get up if I can and see them out the door in the morning in the past years sometimes I've had to drive them and drop them off but now our son has his license which has made this so much easier this year it's so nice he can just drive everyone there and back and it's one less thing that I have to do now in the mornings if I can get up before my little ones are up and can have some time to myself this is sacred time if you're a mom you know exactly what I mean those Quiet Moments in the morning are so precious if I get this time in the morning I'll make my breast breakfast make my coffee and then sit and read my Bible one of the habits that I've had for the past at least year is I will always write down something that I read in my morning reading and this really helps it to come back to me throughout the day with having lots of kids having this time in the morning is actually the exception not the norm I was so often pregnant breastfeeding up all night with a baby so these moments were never a guarantee for me instead I tried to make it my goal that whenever I got the first little bit of time to myself I spent it refueling myself in God's [Music] word these early morning moments with my little ones either getting them out of bed or sitting in the rocking chair snuggling for a few minutes this is priceless to me there is no amount of money you could pay me to miss these [Music] moments good morning we're off to another day of homeschooling this morning I got my older kids off out the door they have co-op today so I just have my little ones here this morning and or I guess I shouldn't say my little ones I should say my younger crew and so we're getting started it took us a little bit later to get started today and that's not because I didn't get up early enough I was up pretty early this morning actually but we just I've noticed that we've kind of fallen behind on personal hygiene and on getting the house clean so we just made that a priority this morning and it took us longer I had to go around and just check a little bit more closely make sure everyone's tours are done we have our home divided into zones so just going through and taking that extra time making sure everyone has done it to satisfaction it takes more time but then everything is clean the kids are dressed their teeth are brushed and we went around and made sure everyone's area is clean and it's just nice to start with a fresh start and I find that when we do this we actually get more done in a school day because everything just seems more peaceful so totally worth it we finished morning time we finished our chores and this is the time in the day when the kids that are independent get their checklists out and get started on their work and I stopped to sit down with Holland and Benjamin I'm doing a puzzle with him and Holland was just asking me over and over to color with her so I sat down and was coloring with them just spending a little bit of time with them doing something they like sometimes is just enough to get them going and imagining and have ideas of things they want to do so then when my older kids need me with help on some of their work I'm able to stop the mommy fish a daddy fish yeah wait oh yeah ddy B truck right here that [Music] one Julia and James are working on math and copy work William is reading the Bears of Hemlock Mountain which is an early Reader [Music] book William is learning money so the day before this one we got out all of my change quarters nickel dimes pennies and went over each one practice making different amounts of change he goes with us grocery shopping and just a lot of the life skills we do around here this was not something that was hard for him to pick up he picked up on it really quickly Mr Brown had $30 he bought the watch how did he have left 20 - 13 is not okay it's not 17 [Music] what wait oh yeah right how much I thought um I was doing a 30 I like that okay is seven yes seven I write the he had yeah you really do need to you need to write the dollar sign first the dollar sign comes first and then the seven yeah no and when I write a dollar sign i wrate s first and then I put the light hey then no don't touch the flowers give Mommy the flowers sh give him some mommy thank you I had no idea that Ben was playing with these flowers this could very easily have ended in these flowers being spilled water all over the table that has happened so many times sometimes I think there are probably lots of things that happen that I am not aware of when I'm working oneon-one with one child who knows what might be happening happening across the table that I'm I'm completely oblivious to but that's the way it is with kids 55 no from 55 up to 60 is 5 cents you 70 with the with the 55 no you're not adding you have 55 cents how much more do you need to get up to 70 cents 15 yes 15 so she wants to buy the pen she needs how much more 15 15 so write 15 cents good we had to take a break in our morning to go to the dentist four of my kids had appointments for cleanings this morning so it was really nice that I could get them all in at the same time our dentist is great about that but then we came home and we were kind of in a rush for lunch so I quickly threw these together I probably could have picked something that was a little faster to make salad is not the fastest but eating healthy is something that's really important to me I really want our kids to be getting the nutrients um to be eating lots of vegetables and fruit throughout the day so this is something that I do prioritize in our home even though it takes a little bit extra time I had kids on the counter and I'm sure some of you probably would never let your kids on the counter but when you're in a rush to get something done when you're pressed for time and kids are hungry sometimes you just let some of these things go [Music] we had a nice lunch put my little ones down for nap time and now it's our quiet afternoon read aloud time and while some of the kids are sitting quietly reading books I am reading to aften I'm reading the book Leonardo da Vinci by Emily Han this is one thing I try to work on throughout the year I take one book that I am reading to each of my kids individually and it usually will take me about the whole year to get through that book with that child but I just fit it in here and there whenever I can this is separate from everything else that we're doing I just like having this one-on-one time with my kids Leonardo da Vinci was such an amazing person everyone thinks of him as an artist and he was he was a great painter but he also was someone who just loved learning he was interested in Geometry he was an engineer he came up with all these ideas for machines and weapons long I mean like 100 years before they actually were patented and used um but the interesting thing is that at the end of his life he mourned that he had not done more with his time so I like reading this book to my kids because I want them to be lifelong Learners and I also want them to realize that life is short and let's not waste it thanks for joining me this week remember to go and check out Hannah Olsen's YouTube channel I think you'll love it thanks for watching I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms