Hi there! My name is Julie and I’m a homeschooling mommy and breast cancer survivor. My husband, Creston, is a doctor.

Reese is 9 and he loves helping his dad just to be with him. He also loves basketball and swimming.

Ana is 12. She too loves to swim and has two sweet bunnies as pets.

Lucas is 16. He is quiet and handsome, and he’s a local high school swimming champion and water polo player.

Jesse is in college and aspires to be a doctor like his dad. He has broken many swimming records for his college this past season.

Finally, there’s Aaron, he will soon begin his last year of college and plans to continue into Law School once his LSAT’s are taken.

Our Morning:

I wake to the sound of the front door shutting. It’s only 4:45 am, but Jesse is already out the door and on his way to early swim practice. We love that he decided stay close by for college.

I get 45 minutes of more sleep before Lucas needs to be woken up. He’s slept through his alarm too many times for me to count on him to get up in time to get to his high school swimming practice. We are thankful for a homeschool-friendly school district that welcomes homeschooled athletes because my kids have a lot of energy and they love to swim!

By 7:30 am, Lucas is back home and our day has begun!

Breakfast is an on-your-own ordeal here. I am not a morning person, so in this house the exciting right of passage of a six-year-old is being taught how to make your own scrambled eggs.

Because of Mommy’s various cancer therapies, the homeschooling of Reese, Ana and Lucas is a combination of on-your-own here at home, meeting twice a week with a private tutor, and also meeting once per week with a local homeschooling co-op. Today is a math tutoring day, so we make sure all their Math U See homework is complete.

Our Afternoon:

In the afternoon, Lucas is on his own, preparing for his co-op classes. While academics is not really his thing, he doesn’t seem to mind reading his Notgrass World History lessons or reading a classic novel that coordinates with it.

Reese and Ana join me in the kitchen to listen to couple of audio lessons from the Mystery of History. We often find ourselves working on lessons in chunks of time throughout the week vs. daily working on each subject with the exception of math and reading which must be done almost every day.

At 2:45 pm, Lucas must be taken back to the high school for evening practice, and by 5:00 Taxi-Mom is driving Ana and Reese to swim practice and getting Lucas. Thankfully they all practice at the local high school which is just minutes away.

Our Evening:

During the winter swim season, we keep things simple. Dinner is ready for my swimmers when the arrive home from evening practice. Bags, towels, and personal items are either drying out or ready to go for the next day.

Tonight the littlest two work on a puzzle with me, while dad and Lucas catch a few minutes of a basketball game.

Bedtime naturally happens early when you rise early.

Just for Fun:

We love the flexibility of homeschooling. It allows us to passionately pursue whatever we want to do in that moment.

Swimming is our thing, but we also love to pour our time into a project or a pretend outfit that a “normal” schedule would never allow.

Endless doctor appointments for mom means that the kids are left on their own. That could mean some school work, but often it means lots of free time for pretend or free play, so I like to indulge them with critical thinking fun stuff from Timberdoodle like Laser Maze, Wedgits, Extreme Dot to Dot books and geography puzzles.

Hello there, I am Susan, wife of Bob and mother to 8 children. Well, a few children and a few adults now!

Our oldest, Kailey, is 26, lives in Texas helping a young family with 6 small children and runs a bakery. Our son, Shea (24), is married to Emmalene and they are expecting grandchild number one in August! Emma(20) is married to Philip and they are expecting grandchild number two in November! Mimi(19), Mary(17), Jed(16), Lael(14), and Claire(12) are still at home. I am schooling the youngest three. Mimi is starting EMT school this fall and Mary starts nursing school in January.

We live on 30 acres in very rural Missouri and have a small farm. All of our children grew up raising animals and working hard doing farm chores.

We have attended the same church in nearby Springfield, Missouri for 14 years. It gives us great joy that our children all follow the Lord faithfully, which was always our main goal of homeschooling and our focus.

My husband and I, along with much help from our children, run a small, Christian boarding school for troubled boys on our farm. The boys now do much of the farm work. We use homeschool materials with the students in our school. We are thankful to God for giving us the opportunity to work with these boys and to see transformations made in their lives.

Our Morning:

I am up at 6:30 to feed Jed who has football weights early this summer. Bob is up soon after to make breakfast for the boarding school students. He will be over there until about 8:30 when our son, Shea, arrives. Shea does much of the schooling for the boarding school students. He sort of acts as a homeschool Mom, facilitating the boys’ individual work.

Meanwhile, Claire is up to make breakfast for our family. The three girls at home rotate meals; this week Claire is breakfast.

We school year-round so that we can take time off when needed so we start right up at 9;00 with Mystery of History. I have just started this with Lael and Claire after having gone through the whole series with my older children. I am loving it once again! The three of us also do Word Roots together. Then individual work begins. We use Teaching Textbooks for math, Easy Grammar, and many other resources from Timberdoodle.

Our Afternoon:

Lael is in charge of lunch not only for the eight boarding school students today, but our family, as well. So we had to wait a bit. She likes to be creative so we ended up with sliced pineapple and cheese and crackers. Emma came for a visit today so we spent lunchtime visiting with Emma and discussing her pregnancy which has been quite difficult with severe morning sickness.

Lael had a Science test to finish after lunch so she worked on that while Claire pulled out some paints. Claire is very creative and will spend most of her free time painting, drawing or making something she found on Pinterest.

Jed arrived home from football and immediately went to work with the boys outside. The current project is making stepping stones between the buildings for the school.

All of our kids are athletic and participate in sports so most afternoons involve some kind of game or workout. Bob and I also work out a few times a week. Today was a workout day but we also had a surprise party to attend, so we worked out a bit early.

I gave the kids instructions on dinner and chores needed to be done while we were gone and Bob and I set off for the 45 minute drive to “town”.

Our Evening:

Because we were gone tonight our evening was not typical. A typical evening includes a meal together, reading, an evening walk, and just spending time together.

Just for Fun:

We are a sports family so most times of the year involve practices and games/tournaments. We live 45 minutes from anywhere so I do spend quite a bit of my life driving the kids to and from these events.

We are very involved in our church and try to help others when we can. The girls babysit for young families quite often. We have many small get-togethers with other church families.

We are also a reading family and you will find any one of us curled up somewhere with a book when we can get a moment.

Hi! I’m Lauren a homeschooling mom to two boys! We enjoy exploring outside and reading books. We have two dogs that love to cuddle with us!

Our Morning:

Our normal homeschool day starts with us waking up, eating breakfast, and getting our morning chores done. My kids make their beds, get dressed for the day, and brush their teeth.

Then we head to our homeschool room to start our day with our morning work and calendar time.

Once we are done with our morning work we get to work on our first subject of the day. Then we continue through subject after subject until lunch time.

Our Afternoon:

Lunch time is around 12:00 p.m.

After lunch time if my boys have any school work left we finish that up.

Then they have free time to play outside, play video games, or play with friends.

Our Evening:

Then dinner time is upon us and I have normally cooked up something delicious to eat. We eat at the table as a family and chat about our day.

Usually after dinner we go back outside to spend time as a family. We play ball or jump on the trampoline.

Then it is bed time for the boys. Once they are in bed I like to curl up on the couch and watch a series on TV or a movie. Then I head to bed myself.

Just for Fun:

We do piano lessons at home.

Hello! My name is Cindy and my favorite thing to do is spend time with family, read, and scrapbook.

My husband Jefferson works for the highway department, is the sweetest daddy, and he loves to build stuff out of wood when he has a spare moment.

Our oldest son Bryce, who just turned 17 just had his second foot reconstructive surgery due to CP but he doesn’t let anything slow him down. He loves anything to do with history, science, and Lego’s. He is also obsessed with anything Titanic!

Our youngest Blake is a very complex young man. He just recently turned 13. He has Joubert syndrome, mosaic Down syndrome, and Mitochondrial disorder. He doesn’t talk, walk, crawl, and is 100% dependent on someone for everything. But he can light up a room with just a smile and has the silliest little personality.

Our favorite thing to do as a family is watching a movie late in the evening. It is just relaxing and a time to unwind.

We have enjoyed homeschooling and look forward to another fun year!

Our Morning:

The best part about homeschooling our boys has been the flexibility when scheduling our day.

Our oldest is an early bird. So when he wakes up usually around 7:00. He gets dressed and drinks a glass of chocolate milk every single morning and then the school work begins. We usually do a certain amount in each subject Monday through Thursday. We don’t do school work on Fridays if we can help it. So I divide each subject up by the amount of days in our school year. That way I know how many pages need to be done each day so we can complete the course by the end of the school year. He is usually finished for the day by lunch time or not long after.

Our youngest is a night owl. So he sleeps in a little later. All of his school days are therapy based. We work a lot on fine motor, gross motor, and speech, but in a play setting. That way he is learning new things, but in a fun way.

One of our favorite spelling programs is the Sequential Spelling. Bryce has a speech problem and doesn’t always sound his words out correctly. Which in the end made spelling a struggle for him. But once we started this program he has made leaps and bounds in this area and his reading has made a huge improvement because of it.

We also love the Christian Kids Science books. I am hoping to do the Christian based History this year.

Chores are usually done a little throughout the day. I think most days our boys teach us more than I ever teach them in a day.

Our Afternoon:

We are in the process of building a special needs bathroom. So as soon as my husband comes in from his job we ate supper and he went to work on that. This has been our routine for a couple of months now. So we are hoping it gets finished soon. That way we can start enjoying a little more free time in the afternoon.

Bryce enjoyed building some Legos this evening and eating ice cream.

Blake enjoyed sitting on the couch with me while I looked through some magazines. He loves music, so we watched Snow White during that time. He loves when the dwarves are acting silly.

Our Evening:

Our suppers always consist of three totally different meals. Our kids are super picky.

My husband and I ate lemon pepper chicken, macaroni and cheese, and homemade biscuits. Bryce ate one of his favorites, which is pancakes with syrup. Blake can only eat very puréed foods because he doesn’t chew anything. He ate cinnamon oatmeal and strawberry yogurt.

It has rained here for weeks now. So we have had to stay in the house a lot.

Around 9:00 we start getting ready for bedtime. Pajamas are put on, bedtime medicine is given, boys are tucked into bed.

And you may remember me saying Blake was a night owl. That is why I am still awake. But he has finally gone to sleep. Which means I will soon be following.

Just for Fun:

We love to go camping. It allows us to be able to get out of our comfort zone a little bit, but still maintain some of our daily routines which helps the boys.

The boys also play for a special baseball team during the summer called Diamond Dreams. I am not sure who enjoys it more, them or us.

Hi! We are the Donlin family. There are 4 of us.

Dad works as a general printing/production manager. He is a huge baseball fan.

Mom is a stay-at-home mom, Boy Scout leader, home school teacher, PTA volunteer, and taxi driver for sports.

Our oldest, Emma, is 13 and a competitive gymnast and TNT athlete. She volunteers at the kitten nursery at the animal shelter and loves all pets. She is homeschooled and hopes to be a veterinarian.

Our son is 11 and attends traditional school. He is an amazing baseball and soccer player. He has won MVP in the world series for baseball and several championships. He is working on his Tenderfoot for Boy Scouts and enjoys backpacking.

We have a dog, Max, who is 14 and a cat muffin who is 1. Oh, and we have a fish.

Our Morning:

On a typical day dad leaves for work at 6:30.

Brother is up by 7:00 watching YouTube videos on his phone or getting ready for school.

Mom and Sis get up at 8:00 to get dressed, fed, and off the gymnastics facility to begin 7 hours of training.

During the school year we start school work from 8:00 – 12:00 till gym time. We use a variety of homeschool programs to cater to all her needs, strengths and weaknesses.

Our Afternoon:

In the afternoon we are waiting to pick up Emma from gym or Connor to get home from school during the school year.

Our Evening:

In the evening I am taking Connor to Boy Scouts or soccer or baseball till 8:00 or 9:00 and then picking Emma up from the gym at 8:00.

I prepare dinner and then we eat dinner at 8:30-9:30.

Just for Fun:

For Emma, being a competitive gymnast is a huge commitment. Right now she is at the gym 35 hours a week which doesn’t give time for much else.

I am Kelly of Midlothian, Virginia. I have a MSEd, and left the public school classroom when my now-11-year-old was born. I also have a 6-year-old who is medically disabled. I am homeschooling him because he is unable to leave the house as he is challenged by a rare, life threatening autoimmune disease.

This upcoming school year, I have decided to homeschool my 6th grader. We are so excited about this adventure.

My husband is a local business owner. We give our all to enjoy each moment with our boys.

We also have two little girls… Yorkies that is- and they are the best classmates possible!

Our Morning:

My 11-year-old is age-appropriately independent. He starts his morning with breakfast, and his iPad.

My 6-year-old is 100% elemental fed through a gastrojejunostomy tube- and gets all of his formula in 20 of 24 hours each cycle. He requires a flushing of his feeding tube, and bathroom assistance. We take him to our spare room- awesome classroom.

We do a morning meeting; including calendar, weather, and thought for the day. We do a lot of singing! My 6-year-old has no oral intake- but we do a water break for him, and small snack for my 11-year-old. We work as a team to move along in our day with encouragement and perseverance.

Our Afternoon:

We work on limited physical and occupation therapy for our 6-year-old.

Our 11-year-old is part of Boy Scouts and enjoys playing short stop in baseball. We have great interest in coding and all things video games! We are never “bored.” 

Our Evening:

Our evening is spent with Daddy and our entire family unit- enjoying time together and focusing on the big picture of our family dynamic. We have lows… and we have highs…

We are about to support our 6-year-old as he has his 35th surgery to date. Our lives are extremely challenging- but at the end of the day– we are there for one another… And we got this!!!

Just for Fun:

My 11-year-old is all boy… loves running, swimming, baseball, and just climbing anything!

My 6-year-old enjoys talking… a lot… haha. He is physically limited and is in his wheelchair most of the time… but he is quite the gamer- and enjoys coding and learning as much as he can about science and social studies.

Hi, fellow homeschoolers! I am Amanda Y. of Seattle, Washington. I am a homeschool and work-at-home mom of two. Ketcher is a 3-year-old preschooler and Kenzie is a 4-year-old kindergartener. Dad is a dentist who just went back to school for two years to study root canals. When Dad went back to school on June 19th we started our new school year too.

In the past month we moved from Colorado to Washington and the kids learned all about moving and the United States. Squeezing time for work into my busy schedule is not easy, but someone has to pay the bills!

Our Morning:

Our day starts at 7:00 am when the clock turns green. While I make the breakfast, the kids make their beds for the day. After breakfast everyone helps to wash and dry the dishes.

At 8:00 am we get dressed, start the clothes washer, and walk/feed the dog. While we walk we collect items for our seasonal shelf and talk about the weather and time of year. The kids have 20 minutes of free time until we start school at 9:00 am. This gives Mom a chance to handle any urgent work emails.

Kenzie can’t wait to start “school time” everyday. She sits at the dining room table waiting eagerly for her first lesson. She has only worked from the Timberdoodle curriculum kits with a few supplemental reading lesson books. Today she really wanted to do her Math Reasoning workbook. She accomplished 20 pages (which is much higher than her usual 6-10 pages). Then we did lesson #36 from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We practiced writing lowercase “c” and “g” and did 5 pages from Building Thinking Skills. We still incorporate Farmland Math animals every day to teach various concepts from the math and Building Thinking Skills workbooks. Today we covered above, below, behind, and beside.

Ketcher is just starting his preschool curriculum. I am letting him dictate his school schedule since he just turned 3. While I work with his sister on Kindergarten workbooks he usually plays with his trucks. Since moving he has been playing “moving day”: Loading all of his sister’s doll furniture into his semi-truck and driving it away. I know he is listening to her lessons because when we covered the months of the year yesterday he remembered what she couldn’t. Today he joined us for Farmland Math and we did some counting with animals. His favorite part of the morning is the 10:00 am snack.

Our Afternoon:

At noon we made some sandwich kabobs for lunch. Everyone put their own skewers together and helped clean the kitchen after lunch.

From 1:00 to 3:00 is quiet time. I work while the kids play in their rooms. Since moving to Seattle the kids are now in one bedroom so quiet time now means one kid takes some toys into our room while the other gets to play in their bedroom. Sometimes they nap, sometimes they just play. Today they napped which gave me a chance to quietly tackle a large workload.

At 3:00 pm I woke them up and we had a small snack, a chocolate chip cookie and some milk. If it’s nice out we head to the playground for 60-90 mins, but today it’s rainy so we did arts and crafts. The kids painted with water color for a while and did some do-a-dot worksheets.

Our Evening:

Dinner time starts around 4:00 to 4:30 pm. We make sure the kitchen is clean and then all of us get to work preparing dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs were on the menu tonight. The kids love to make it a make-your-own-dinner-tray meal. The divided trays hold each item: cheese, sauce, meatball, and noodles. They can put as much or as little on their pasta as they want.

Bath is after dinner, followed by books, and bed by 7:00 pm. I work for as long as needed and then repeat it all over again tomorrow.

Since we finally got settled here, after a month of moving and travel, our days have been really nice. The kids love being on a schedule and knowing what’s coming next. We always have a few meltdowns, being 3 and 4 can be so tough…

Just for Fun:

The kids both ice skate and Kenzie plays hockey. She wants to be the first woman hockey player in the NHL. The lessons are usually at night or on the weekend and it is something that Dad gets to participate in so it frees me up to do some additional work or plan for tomorrows homeschool lesson.

Find Us on Instagram:

www.instagram.com/ayoung102/

Hi! My name is Jessica and I’m a homeschooling mom to my 8-year-old daughter. I’m also a mom, teacher and therapist to my very special 2-year-old. In my spare time, when I have any, I like to read, draw and crochet.

My husband is a musician and he loves to cook, lucky us!

Claire, my daughter, is a bug and reptile fanatic. She adores being out in nature and is always bringing home creatures.

Claire’s little brother Chase is a very happy, lovable guy. He currently loves trains and his shape sorter as well as trying to kiss the family cats. They usually let him, by the way.

Our Morning:

Typically our day starts off with me waking up with my son around 7:00 am. He loves oatmeal for breakfast. (I love coffee.)

Then we may work on some physical or occupational therapy.

Around 8:30 Claire wakes up and will come downstairs. After a breakfast of pancakes (her favorite), we get dressed and ready to start the morning. She also checks her chore board to complete any items that may be listed.

The best school day is Tuesday, that is poetry tea time. So out comes the teapot and the china cups and some yummy snacks. We set the table and have our tea while reading. I will read a poem out loud, then Claire reads one.

Afterwards, I’ll read from whatever books we are reading aloud together while Claire draws or plays with Thinking Putty.

Then we move on to copy work and our Language Smarts workbook.

Time for a quick break to get the wiggles out and jumping on the basement sofa is ideal!

Our Afternoon:

It is close to lunchtime about now. Claire and I usually have sandwiches with fruit or chips. Chase works on his oral motor at lunch with cheese, graham cracker or soft fruits and veggies. Claire usually finishes quicker so she may complete anything left on the chore board. She likes to finish her chores quickly because then it leaves time to make slime. Trust me, she’s an expert at slime making!

Afternoons for us consist of Singapore math and science. Hands-on experiments are the best. They work best in the afternoon when toddlers are napping!

Finally, a cuddle on the couch while Claire reads to me. An activity that also works best when toddlers are napping!

Our typical day ends around the same time the neighborhood kids get off the bus. So outside play until evening with friends rounds up the afternoon.

Our Evening:

Since my husband works odd hours, he is able to make dinner for us most of the time. Tonight it is chicken and veggies on the grill with baked potatoes, yum! At dinner we talk about the best and worst parts of our day.

After dinner, Claire likes to have some screen time as I get her brother ready for bed.

Snack, shower and reading in bed until you fall asleep for the rest of us.

Just for Fun:

Our homeschool activities are usually scheduled mid-day. We go to a lot of fun places to relax and socialize with other homeschoolers. We may bring a picnic lunch. On those days, we may only complete reading and math. Occasionally we sign up for a homeschool class to learn about something fun. For example we recently learned all about bees, got to see a working beehive (from afar) and made bee habitats. We even got to sample some honey.