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In our latest video, I give a curriculum review of Teaching Textbooks 3.0 and tell you how you can WIN a subscription to Teaching Textbooks 3.0- any level of your choice.
Whether you homeschool on the road for a week or make a lifestyle of educational travel, roadschool doesn’t have to break the bank! Watch our latest video for some great money saving ideas for your next homeschool field trip!
Approaching home education with purpose and meaning is a challenge. There are so many choices to be made: curriculum, time management, extra curricular activities, education methods, field trips, social activities and the list goes on and on…. One of the most important decisions that parents will make in their approach to homeschool/roadschool is how to govern their time.
Roadschool comes with its own unique set of predicaments. Chief among those difficulties: keeping school moving in a forward progression with an irregular schedule. When your home is constantly being torn down, relocated and set up again, how does anyone conduct a “normal” schedule?
Well, we’ve only been doing this roadschool thing for about 8 months. But, I have come to the realization that keeping a roadschool schedule is not that different than the homeschool schedule we have employed for the last few years (with a few necessary tweaks).
Before I create a schedule for our family, my first item of business is to identify our priorities. I do this by asking questions like:
Next, I consider family needs:
Then, I make a time grid, either on notebook paper or on a computer spreadsheet and begin filling in the priorities, followed by specific needs. Here’s how my/our schedule shaped up for this year:
| Kid’s Daily Schedule | ||||||
| 7AM | wake up- get dressed, make bed, clean up bunk house | |||||
| 7:30AM | breakfast/family devotions | |||||
| 8AM | family work out (hike/bike/circuit train/etc.) | |||||
| 10AM | go to school destination (library/Chick-fil-a), eat a snack | |||||
| 10:30AM | all kids do MATH, | |||||
| 11:30AM | All kids work on Monarch assignments | |||||
| 12:30PM | LUNCH | |||||
| 1PM | Continue Monarch Assignments | |||||
| 3PM | Mom meeting (H-Mon, S- Tues, G- Wed., I- Fri) | |||||
| 4PM | Make corrections in Monarch & Teaching Textbooks, Complete Projects | |||||
| 5PM | Leisure Screen Time (IF schoolwork is done & room is clean) | |||||
| 6PM | Dinner | |||||
| 6:30PM | Clean up/dishes | |||||
| 7PM | Showers (H- Mon & Fri, S- Tues & Sat., G- Mon & Fri, I- Tues & Sat) | |||||
| & pack school bags for next day | ||||||
| 8:30PM | Get dressed for bed & brush teeth | |||||
| 8:50PM | into bed | |||||
| 9PM | lights out Gideon and Izzy | |||||
| 9:30 PM | lights out Sarah | |||||
| 10PM | lights out Hannah | |||||
You may notice that I have allowed two and a half hours each school day for a family workout. This was my way of addressing our need to excercise AND allowing time to explore varying destinations as we travel. Yes, we still have time on the weekend to spend a day or two exploring as a family, but this gives us daily chunks of time to take a bike ride, go for a hike, etc. (If you would like to see a glimpse of our first year of roadschooling, click here to watch our video, “Dear Kids: an Open Letter About Our First Year of Full Time RVing”)
Some people will look at this and feel it is hyperscheduling the day. I have actually made much more detailed schedules in the past (when you are teaching 4 different kids, in 4 different grades, in multiple subjects, it can get complicated FAST)! But my kids have responded REALLY well to having structure. They know what is expected of them and when it is expected. A couple of them have even thanked me for making a schedule for them (and that’s a big deal coming from kids 14 and under)!
Whenever I create a new schedule, I try to hold us to it for a 2-3 weeks before we lax and deviate. It takes a while for everyone to adapt to a new way of doing things, so it can take some time to discern if the schedule is working for us, or if we are working for the schedule. Sometimes, I can tell right away that we need to make adjustments. But once in a while, it takes time to recognize a bad day versus a problem with the schedule.
Whether we choose to homeschool year round or subscribe to a traditional calendar school year (we have done both), our family typically does school 4 days a week and uses one day as a “catch up” day. Now that we are traveling full time, we are using that “catch-up” day as our travel day. Ideally, we only travel one day a week, since it is time consuming to tear down, travel and set up again. The kids will have to do homework on the weekend if they are unable to complete their assignments on the regular school days or our travel day.
I hope that my method for scheduling homeschool/roadschool can be helpful to your family! If it is, please like this post by clicking the “like” button below and sharing it with your friends. If you have any questions or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you! Please leave them in the comments below and I will answer them to the best of my ability.
Keep Doing Life Deliberately!
Trisha
One of the things that I love about teaching homeschool is that it provides ample opportunities to see God’s character through the things that we are learning as a family.
I didn’t always think this way. But a few years ago, Joe and I attended a homeschool conference and the keynote speaker, Voddie Baucham, really challenged parents: Everything that we learn in homeschool should point our kids to the greatness of the Lord. Learning is not primarily about acquiring knowledge for the sake of stuffing our heads full of facts. What we learn in homeschool should point us to worship our Creator and draw us into greater intimacy with Him.
We see God’s unlimited intelligence, creativity and splendor as we examine the physical world around us in science. We enjoy His beauty in the sounds of music and the colors and shapes of art. We see his faithfulness, purpose and plan throughout history. We see His humor, ingenuity, emotions, and compassion in the use of language. But what can we learn about God in math??
1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.”
I see this exemplified in every page of math that we cover in homeschool. Have you ever noticed that if you place a decimal one column too far to the right or left that your answer is wrong? Or that when you write out a math problem and don’t get the columns perfectly lined up, then your answer comes out wrong? My point is that math is about precision and order. You don’t haphazardly get “right” answers. Everything has to be done in a certain pattern or alignment- whether the steps followed, or the way the problems are written out. And where did math originate from? GOD. So this mathematical exercise that we take our kids through in homeschool everyday has the potential to teach them that God is a God of ORDER, not confusion or chaos. He is not trying to trick us or play us for fools. But just like math, He is an orderly God, a consistent God, a peaceful God.
In the same way, I believe that math can teach us about God’s attention to detail. The examples I cited about math above illustrate the order and detail needed when performing math. The Bible gives us multiple examples of God’s attention to detail. Here are a couple:
“Why, even the hairs of your head are numbered.” ~Luke 12:7
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” ~Matthew 10:29-31
Do you realize that we lose 100-125 hairs every day, on average? Yet at any given moment, God knows how many hairs are on each of the almost 7.5 billion people that live on earth!!! Not only is God an active mathematician, but His attention to detail is limitless. And God is not only aware of every little sparrow in existence, but he also knows their value (which changes from time and place)! And if He knows the value of two sparrows (because what person even cares about the value of two sparrows?!?!) AND cares to know the exact number of hairs on any one person’s head, He must really, really love His creation (US!!) to pay that much attention!!!
Other examples of God in math…
“Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” ~Psalm 32:2
“You have kept count of my tossing; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” ~Psalm 56:8
“He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” ~Psalm 147:4
I am most thankful for what God does NOT count or number. When we have placed our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have assurance that God will NOT count our sins against us because the punishment for our sins was paid for by the perfect sacrifice: His son, Jesus’, life on the cross. Three days later when Jesus rose from the grave, He defeated sin and death, taking away their power. His sacrifice in our place made it possible for us to be set free from the debt that we owed God and enabled us to be reconciled to the Father now and forever. Yes,
“Blessed is that man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” ~Romans 4:8
Oh, the joy of learning about God- even in math!!
What can you learn about God in math? I’d love to hear how YOU are Doing Life Deliberately in your learning! Please share what God is teaching you about Himself below. We’d love to hear from you!!
~Trisha
With each additional child, the time spent homeschooling every day increases exponentially for mom and/or dad. Homeschool begins with teaching kids at home, but that is not where homeschool ends. Not only do parents spend time teaching the kids, but they have to plan out their schoolwork and correct their finished schoolwork, just like a vocational teacher. If you are the minority homeschooling parent that has nothing else to do besides teach the kids (I don’t know anyone personally who is in this position), then spending the entire day planning, teaching and correcting is no problem. BUT, if you are like most people and have a house to keep, possibly a part time or full time job, and activities to run kids to, then like myself, you can probably benefit from some…
Time Saving Tips
There are dozens of ways to save time in homeschool. What are your best tips for saving time in homeschool?? We’d love to hear your best tips and tricks, so please, leave them in the comment section below.
Until next time, keep Doing Life Deliberately!!
~Trisha
*disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I will receive a small commission. This is one way you can help support our family. If you have any questions about what this means or how this works, let me know! I’d love to answer your questions. 🙂
One of the unexpected joys of homeschooling is watching our younger children learn from our older children. Sometimes, it’s on purpose. For example, I have had the older kids read to the younger kids (watch my latest YouTube video: How to Teach Kids to Read in Homeschool ). I have also had our oldest daughter teach grammar to our son. I found myself in a place where there just wasn’t enough of me to go around, so I leaned into Hannah to help teach Gideon. An added benefit was it was reviewing the basic parts of speech and diagramming sentences (she had been through the curriculum just a few years before). So while I was teaching one of her younger sisters, Hannah read the scripted grammar curriculum to her brother. Mind you, it’s not a perfect scenario. Siblings fight and so some days were a little hairy, but we got through it!
But I think what is most fun, is the many times where our two younger children have recited something that they had not been directly taught, but rather, have caught from watching and listening to their older siblings do school. Our youngest daughter is now seven years old and a third grader. Learning has come pretty easy for her because she has picked up so much from just hanging around while I taught school to the older kids: poems, grammar chants, times table songs, books of the Bible set to music, Bible memory verses, etc. Things that took the older kids weeks to learn, Izzy already knew when we came to it in the curriculum.
I see evidences learning by “catching” in my kids’ music lessons, as well. All four of our kids take piano lessons. My oldest has recently discovered that the music to the video games she loves is available in sheet music or through tutorials on YouTube. As her younger siblings have heard her practice and sing the songs, some of them have “caught” the fever, too. Finding music that they love has heightened their interest in playing the piano and tackling a level of difficulty that they would otherwise avoid. It has been really fun to watch!
One of the benefits of homeschool is not only that mom and dad get to spend more time with their children, but that siblings can interact more, as well. Homeschooling is a great way to give your kids more opportunities to positively interact with one another. Playing learning games together, teaching a younger sibling a school lesson, entertaining toddlers and babies while mom teaches… these are all ways to teach our oldest kids to consider the needs of others and act upon that in a self-sacrificial way, thereby learning and practicing kindness to those they spend the most time with.
How do you see your kids learning by “catching”? PLEASE, share in the comments below- we’d LOVE to hear from you!!
Keep Doing Life Deliberately,
Trisha
School is so different from when I was a kid- in large part to the boom in technology. I remember typing English lit papers on our dinosaur computer (even by standards then, it was a dinosaur) with the spindled printer paper. The computer lab at my small-town highschool was fairly new, and I didn’t have the foresight to see how important taking a computer class would be for my future. Fortunately, I was a kid and a quick learner. My college years grew my skills immensely- from using email to word processors to the internet. My young married years quickly acquainted me with social media, and now, here I am, writing a blog and posting videos to YouTube (click HERE for a tour of our homeschool room!).
Fast forward to 2018, and here I am, a parent, and my kids can work remotes, video games and Minecraft in circles around me. Trying to navigate their technology usage is not only a challenge, but a chore. And yet, in some ways it is a beautiful blessing. Here are three thoughts that I have regarding technology in the home/homeschool classroom:
Benefits
As our kids are getting older, we find ourselves teaching more difficult subjects, checking more assignments, and recording completed work. For this reason, I have come to appreciate the technological resources available to us more and more. We have taken advantage of CD-ROM teaching cd’s: a Spanish program to guide the kids through learning a foreign language, and even entire math curriculums for our oldest girls. We did this: one, because they were struggling at the upper levels with their former curriculum; two, because it was far more captivating and rewarding to use the computer program; and three, because it automatically graded their day’s work, saving mom and dad a ton of time! As a bonus, the kids look forward to using the computer interspersed between their other subjects. It’s a nice break from textbook learning.
Accountability
If our kids are going to have access to the internet, they MUST have accountability. There are tons of ways to go about this, but some of my favorites are:
Boundaries
There are a lot of great reasons to limit the amount of time that kids are in front of screens: increasing physical activity, the addiction factor (the addiction factor of screen time has been compared to the addictiveness of some illegal drugs- you can Google it), the radiation concerns of people being in proximity to tablets, phones, lap tops, etc. for hours a day and the concern for a link to cancer and disease, the lack of social interaction with others sitting right next to them, and the list can go ON, and ON, and ON… Even at our kids’ annual checkup this week at the doctor, the information sheets sent home with them recommended no more than 1-2 hours a day of screen time. So, that being said, there is good reason for creating limits for the use of technology. Some ideas we have employed are:
So there you have it. We are learning and growing right with the kids. What benefits, boundaries and accountability tools have you used in your home with technology?PLEASE, comment below! Your thoughts and experiences are of value to us and can be a blessing to others.
Keep Doing Life Deliberately!
Trisha
Everyone has a different mental image of what homeschool is like. I’ve seen several amusing memes on Facebook and Pinterest. People who don’t homeschool often make assumptions about what it looks like- I definitely did. I was not homeschooled as a child- I attended public school for all of my education. My husband attended parochial school for all of his elementary and secondary education, so neither of us had any experience with homeschool prior to trying it ourselves. I envisioned a relaxed family reading books in their pajamas, with lots of freedom in their daily schedule to go and do as they pleased. My preconceived notions have proven both right and wrong in our own family.
If you are interested in homeschooling, but have never done it before, it can be difficult to picture what it actually looks like to homeschool. And even if you are an experienced homeschool family, it can still be fun to see what others are doing and gather ideas. You might find yourself wishing you could be a fly on the wall in someone else’s homeschool classroom. I sure felt that way before we got started. So today, I am inviting you to join our family for a typical homeschool day. Not all (or even most) homeschools look like ours. Each family’s homeschool takes on the personality of it’s teacher/principal/family: organized or spontaneous, orderly or messy, a room set aside for schooling or a kitchen table, a web-based program or a stack of library books, home-made curriculum or purchased lesson plans. How one runs their homeschool can look a thousand different ways- none of which is right or wrong- to meet the needs of their family. So… with that in mind, join us for a brief day in the life!
Day in the Life of our Homeschool
Post your questions and comments below- we look forward to hearing from you!
One of the things I found myself wondering early on in homeschooling, was how did other families schedule their time? So today, I am sharing with you how we schedule our time (no need to wonder anymore)! 😉
7:30- Family Bible time
8am- PE
8:45- Xtra math (Hannah and Sarah), math assignment (Gideon and Izzy)
9am- Everyone works on math assignment
9:30- Math assignment (Hannah and Sarah), Xtra Math (Gideon and Izzy)
10am- Science (Botany- Gideon and Izzy), General Science (Sarah), Biology (Hannah)
10:30- History, vocabulary and read aloud
11:30- Writing (Gideon and Sarah), Writing and Grammar with Mom (Izzy)
12pm- Lunch
Our afternoons consist of piano practice, Spanish on the computer, quiet reading, and finishing up any remaining school work and chores. We held pretty tightly to this schedule for the first few weeks of school. But it didn’t take long for Gideon to figure out that if he worked ahead, he could have more free time during the day. He is generally up around 6am and gets to work on his assignments around 6:30 or 7am most days. (What can I say? He’s an easy student!)
Our schedule always changes a bit from year to year as I evaluate what worked well the previous year, and what needs tweaking. But this seems to work well for us now. We start the day off by giving the first part of our day to the Lord. It seems to work well to have PE next because we burn a little energy and then we can focus on the harder subjects of the day: math and science. This worked a little more neatly at the beginning of the year when I held everyone to the schedule, but now it’s a lot more flex.
If you want to see what a day in the life of our homeschool looks like, view our YouTube video by clicking on this link: A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool
So how about you? If you are currently homeschooling, how do you schedule your time? I would love to hear what works well for you!!
Keep Doing Life Deliberately,
Trisha
Doing Life Deliberately 