I've gotten a few emails over the last couple of months asking about my homeschooling, my approach and how we structure our day, so I decided to write a little post about it....Luca and I follow the k12.com curriculum, which we both like a lot. It's a pretty classical curriculum, and rigorous as well. Right now Luca is in the Kindergarten curriculum for Phonics, Science, History and Language Arts, and Grade 1 for Math. His favorite subject is definitely Math, followed closely by History and Science. A typical day for us:
7:00 am Luca and Julian wake up. Michael (very nice of him) gets up with them and makes us coffee, and I crawl out of bed around 7:45 or so. If it's a school day for Julian (he goes to preschool 3 days) then we hussle him out the door by 8:30 or so.
8:30-9:00 am: I check my email while Luca either looks through a book or watches SuperWhy.
9:00-11:30: Do our Math curriculum (using k12 material which includes a great math text called Progress in Mathematics), Phonics, and I read to him for Language Arts. I am not loving the k12.com LA curriculum; it focuses on fairy tales, which is fine, but the exercises and activities are just not Luca's speed, so we usually focus on another story. We read The Odyssey (a fantastic version by Mary Pope Osbourne) and created a whole "travels of Odysseus' board for the wall, and we're moving on to The Knights of the Round Table shortly. For Math, Luca is working on chain subtraction, related subtraction and addition facts, and subtracting from 12. For phonics, he's reading short books now, and we have a Word Board on the wall with words he gets stuck on. Most days, we'll also do some spelling and read from The Story of the World. We're making a wonderful notebook of his drawings, narrations and musings on what we read, and that's probably my favorite part of the day. We're up to Hieroglyphics and we're going to make our own secret language and write someone a letter in it :)
11:30-12:30 break and lunch, relax.
12:30 until 2: we play games together, or Luca does his Headsprout for the day (that's an online reading site). If it's sunny (not now, unfortunately, we'll be at the park from 12 on). At around 2:30, if Julian is at school, we head out to the East Village to pick him up. We then all go to the library on 2nd, or go to the park.
4:00 head to Luca's TKD class in Tribeca untili 5:30
5:30 head home for bath and dinner and reading.
Bed by 7:30 to 8.
Now, this varies of course. If Luca isn't interested in doing something on a given day, no worries. We'll just skip it and do it another day. And many days we have activities with other homeschoolers, whether it's soccer or classes uptown (he's starting a robotics class in a couple of weeks, and currently is taking a Cartooning class). And sometimes, we have to just take a day off because the home needs some attention (hello mountain of laundry!!) or I am burnt out. If Julian is home, Luca and him have a blast making pirate maps and playing in their room together for hours, and it gives me a much-needed break.
I still haven't mastered the "keep the house clean and my business running and the fridge stocked and the clothes folded" part of homeschooling. But that will come with time. Right??
