What do we do all day?

It’s February already and I’m only just now reflecting on the rhythm of our days as we begin to get back into the non-holiday routine and back into structured activities again. Friends and clients (and strangers) always ask us what we do all day as homeschoolers and how our days are spent together so in this blog post I thought that I’d share a bit of a ‘day in the life’ to answer that question.

Although we don’t go to school and are generally unschooling, I still find that we all thrive when we have a rhythm to our days, often guided by the seasons. 

Our homeschool group and our circus classes all are based on term dates so my plans are often based on 90 days (and also I love anything to do with taking a pen to any planners, organisers or journals). 

Throughout December and January holiday period we are often at home, with family and at the beach as we tend to avoid lines and crowds of people at the usual places we go to during the week like museum and zoos.

One thing I always consider as I think about our daily and weekly routine is how much the kids have changed in their interests, what we want to carry forward and what we need to leave behind or do less of. While this is always a process of conversation and working out what we all feel like on a given day I like to have activities up my sleeve as suggestions for them.

Our mornings generally start around 7am with independent reading and play together. This is when I have my peaceful (somewhat) tea, chat with hubby, shower and get breakfast ready. 

By 9-10 we are all usually ready to go outside or head out to wherever we are going for the day – unless of course we have planned to have a home day (in which case we all do whatever we want wherever we want around the house until 2pm when we do a huge tidy up together.

As I get into the groove of 2024 I feel intuitively that playgrounds and playcentres are no longer as exciting for Leroy (8) and Violet (6) as they used to be. They are also not as into crafting or colouring in so, I will be mostly enjoying these when I have my 1:1 time with little Dion (3). Reading consumes a lot of our morning so there will be more space made for the kids to stay at home and read.

Documentaries and history lessons are being enjoyed by all at the moment, as are verbal math challenges, so I will be making room for those in our days. We are reading Story of the World at the moment before bed and doing the little tests that go along with the chapters, Leroy especially loves this time. 

Our homeschool group meetup is on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Wednesdays the kids spend the day with their grandparents while I work. Thursday is our circus skills day – the kids learn a variety of circus skills  while I have my silks class on Thursday nights. Fridays are generally our excursion days so we have an Aquarium, Zoos victoria and Melbourne Museum membership. Saturdays are free and Sundays we spend with our extended family, grandparents and cousins.

Screen time is 2 hours per day (while I work in the evenings) and the kids are currently playing and watching Minecraft and Fortnite. Having boundaries around screen time has been amazing because we all know when it starts, when it ends and how much time we have. For Dion (3) his understanding isn’t as great as Leroy and Violet but the fact that we have a treat after screen time always gets him off without any fuss or tears. The lesson I’ve gained from being an unschooling mum is that unschooling does not equal no boundaries. You are still responsible for your child’s health and wellbeing and too much of anything on an ongoing basis is not good. Be careful not to identify with a label too strongly at the expense of anything else.

That’s roughly our routine for this month…Self care throughout our days is also so, so important  and I make sure that I always check-in with myself to ensure that I am energized and healthy and I shift things if I am not (possibly a story for the next blog post!)