I’m Jamie of southern Nevada. There are 6 of us: Dad is a pastor, Mom is a photographer, Big Sis (12) is a sports enthusiast and aspiring nurse, and Little Bro (10) is an outdoorsy guy and aspiring Park Ranger. Spud, our cat, is 17 years old! And Rebel, our desert tortoise, is 4.

We are a creative crew, and always have a DIY project (or ten) going on… We just finished painting our kitchen cabinets, and are currently crafting grain sack-inspired scripture signs!

We also love adventure — camping, hiking, biking… you name it!

Our Morning:

On a typical day, we gather in the family room for Bible Study at 9:00 (currently Marty Machowski’s Long Story Short), following personal devotion times, giving some love to the pets and the plants, and eating breakfast.

Big Sis is the early riser around here. She is a sweet, self-motivated, rule-following girl. The biggest arguments we have with her is how early she can come out of her room and get started on the day. Most of us are greeting the morning around 7:00 a.m., but she’d prefer to be up and at ’em around 5:00 a.m. 

Breakfast is a DIY affair that looks a bit like continental breakfast at a hotel — cereal, yogurt, fruit, toast, juice, and tea.

We use Timberdoodle exclusively, and supplement the curriculum with a constant pile of library books and videos we’re exploring. 

Our Afternoon:

Lunch usually consists of leftovers; meatloaf and tacos are our favorites! On the rare occasion we’ve eaten all the leftovers, we turn to sandwiches.

We save the easier school work for the afternoon, which for us mostly includes spelling, writing, and reading. Our current read aloud is Mary Poppins. We’ve been giggling over her sass, which is so much more prominent in the book than in the movie.

When school is through around 3:00, we all do about 30 minutes of assigned chores according to a daily chore chart.

With record highs at 117 degrees around these parts right now, we spend as many afternoons in our backyard pool as possible.

And Mom is always puttering in her kennel garden (kennel turned kitchen garden). This week, we harvested tomatoes, bell peppers, basil, mint, carrots, and onions. And we planted zinnias and violas.

Our Evening:

For dinner, we tend toward comfort food, usually from the slow cooker — roasts, soups, etc. And then we add some vegetables to the table to try to make it healthier.

Bible Study, reading, bike rides, pool time, and garden work tend to be the highlights of each day.

Getting out of bed in the morning, and then crawling back into bed at night, tend to be the low points of each day.

At the end of the day, the kids usually have some quiet reading time as Dad and Mom do some computer work in the home office. Then, it’s prayers and tuck-ins.

Just for Fun:

We are involved with a couple amazing homeschool groups, so we do about one field trip every week. We do school year round, and just do it four days a week to accommodate all the hands-on-learning (a.k.a. field trips) we do.

Recent homeschool group outings have included a ropes course and a high dive pool. This week, we’re going to the Compassion Experience. As a pastor’s family we, of course, spend a lot of time at church, and we also have people over to eat and join others around their tables quite a bit.

The kids do sports year round, so depending on the season, it’s soccer, basketball, or softball/baseball.

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Hello, my name is Kimberly. I am a homeschool mom. I have nine kids (three live with Jesus). My son graduated college and is in graduate school. I have three daughters in college. I am homeschooling two daughters currently.

We live in Michigan and love to go to the beach.

We also have a five-month-old puppy that makes everyday more fun.

Our Morning:

We are on summer vacation right now so our day consists of swimming, playing and walking the dog.

On a normal school day we begin school at 9:30 am. This works well for us because well-rested kids and mom make for a more efficient school day.

Breakfast ranges from bagels to cereal.

We have a trail at the end of our road that leads to the park and library. We love to go for walks, especially to the library book store.

Curriculum I use is varied per child. I start with the curriculum kits prepared by Timberdoodle and tweak them according to what works best for each child. I also use Abeka, Hooked on Phonics, Sing Spell, Saxon and Pearson Learning to name a few.

As for chores, they are always a challenge. We don’t have a set chore schedule. Everyone helps out and we try and keep up.

Our Afternoon:

Lunch is our main meal, we usually make it together and this is our sit-down meal. Because of soccer, dance and piano lessons in the evenings it is rare we can sit and enjoy supper together.

We have set school hours from 9:30 -2:00 each weekday.

This past year my son was struggling health wise and was hospitalized so it made school interesting. We took school with us to doctor and lab visits. One benefit of homeschooling is you learn to work with distraction.

We finished our curriculum a couple of weeks later than planned. However, the lessons learned taking care of big brother were lessons you cannot get in a text book.

Our Evening:

Evenings are filled with soccer, dance, youth group and piano.

Supper is a challenge. Usually it’s a packed sandwich or leftovers. Making sure everyone is fed is a big challenge each day.

Just for Fun:

I sent pictures of our school room. My daughter just had a birthday so our slate is decorated for that. I love the chalkboards. They are handy and make math a lot more fun than working everything out on paper.

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pemberlys

Hello, this is Sarah B of Dyer, Indiana! My family consists of my husband, Bradly, my daughter, Adrianna-10, and myself.

We have 3 tiger striped tabby cats – Marie, Sadie, and Bismarck (aka Bizzy).

I work at home as a medical coder and love what I do. Brad is a stay-at-home dad who helps homeschool Adrianna.

We love cats, if you couldn’t tell by the number of them that are a part of our family.

We enjoy outdoor activities, but especially swimming in our pool. Adrianna is a really good basketball player, rarely missing a shot.

Our Morning:

Started my work day in my home office at 7:30 am after rolling out of bed at 7:00. It’s quite the walk to my office. 🙂 Adrianna was already up watching George Lopez.

I took a quick break around 10:00 am to check the pool levels to make sure I didn’t need to add chlorine or adjust the ph levels.

Even though it’s summer break, Brad spent some time working on the Math 4 with Adrianna doing some review since she struggles in that subject. The 2017-2018 school year we’ll be combining Abeka with Timberdoodle for homeschooling. Timberdoodle’s math curriculum works really well for Adrianna.

Our Afternoon:

For lunch I had half a ham and cheddar sandwich on a pretzel roll from a local grocery deli. It was delicious! Lightly salted popcorn went well with my sandwich. I finished it off with some chocolate pudding.

Adrianna and Brad are out swimming in the pool on this beautiful sunny first day of summer while I finish up my work for the day.

Our Evening:

The day will be complete with beefy enchiladas for dinner made by Brad and myself, a walk in the sunset, and Netflix.

The day has been a beautiful one with sun and 70s for the first day of summer.

Just for Fun:

Since we are newer to homeschooling, we haven’t incorporated organized sports or activities, but the half year that we have homeschooled we spent time outdoors with Adrianna walking, playing baseball and basketball, tennis, and swimming. On rainy days Adrianna plays the Wii Fit for physical activity.

Hi! My name is Melissa and I’m a homeschooling mom. My husband works for a large bank. We live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Our sons are Dominic, 5, and Allen, 2. They are very active boys and keep us quite busy.

We enjoy exploring our local area.

My older son loves space. I love blogging and reading. My younger son loves pretending to be lions and tigers. My husband is teaching himself to code.

Our Morning:

Today is a Wednesday. My older son wakes up at 7:15 and comes into our room. About this time my husband leaves for work. We snuggle and talk until 7:30 when my alarm goes off.

We had cereal for breakfast and then after cleaning up the table, we all get dressed. Since it is summer, we aren’t doing much homeschooling, but hopefully we will be playing some board games this afternoon.

Our Afternoon:

We are about to have fish sticks for lunch and then it will be quiet time for my older son and nap time for my younger son.

I will use the quiet time to catch up on my e-mails or blog or sometimes, to watch Netflix while eating a snack.

After quiet time, we will probably play a board game. 

Our Evening:

For dinner, I like to try a new recipe. Tonight I’m trying one from an old cookbook from the ’70s. The recipe is called Goup, which sounds disgusting but the ingredients are ground beef and cream of mushroom and noodles and seasonings, so not bad.

The high points were reading with my kids, but when my kids don’t listen it, it is definitely a low point.

We will finish our day with a bedtime routine which consists of bath, then books, then tucking them in. Right now daddy is reading them The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Just for Fun:

We have a wonderful co-op that we’re a part of. On co-op days, a lot less gets done, but that’s okay because co-op is such a wonderful learning experience.

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Life, Love, and Dirty Diapers

Hi! I’m Natalie, a homeschooling Mum of 2 monkeys! (Did you see Mum not Mom?! That’s because we are English but emigrated to New Brunswick, Canada 7 years ago!). My husband drives truck long haul so it’s mainly just the 3 of us. Our children are: Cody, a boy aged 12 (who is already taller than me!) and Freya, a daughter aged 10. We have 2 cats called Hunter (the crazy one!) and Prince (the mellow one!). Freya is arty and has about a million different projects on the go. Cody is all about wanting to join the army and avoiding language arts lessons.

Our Morning:

Monday morning! My alarm goes off at 7.30 which tells the cats to come say “Hi, breakfast please!” I like to lay and listen to the sound of children sleeping for a few minutes then the cats meow at me to move so it’s feed them and grab a shower!

Kettle goes on ready for coffee and my husband texts “you awake?” before ringing from wherever (Tennessee, Texas, Toronto, etc!). I talk and get dressed (thank you for speaker phone!) then head down for coffee and toast. I managed quiet time this morning which is a minor miracle!!!!

Freya normally appears first and heads straight to the freezer for a waffle.

Cody emerges an hour or so later. Lying in bed listening to audio books is preferable to starting math! He’s not one for much breakfast but when he starts eating at around 11.00 am it’s pretty much nonstop until bed.

We start school with our read-aloud (Enchanted Castle by E Nesbit) then do a devotion, listen to a Children’s Introduction to Poetry and a chapter from Our Island Story. We are quite eclectic but use lots of Timberdoodle products. Math is Teaching Textbooks, my son uses Jump In for his writing and my daughter some UK workbooks. Science is Answers in Genesis: God’s Design for Science and we are doing Our Universe at the moment.

Our Afternoon:

Lunchtime on Mondays Mum/Granny FaceTimes from England and we have a good chat/catch up. Sometimes she “sits” at the table while we eat! Today was breakfast wraps (yes, for lunch!).

Then it’s me reminding the children to practice their music before we have an hour of quiet time.

Doodle books, dot-to-dots and audio books are some of the things they use. This is my chance to check Facebook and fold laundry and remember I need to cook supper so should probably figure that out.

Our Evening:

Found leftover cooked chicken in the fridge so we had curry and rice tonight … an early supper because both children do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu on a Monday and you don’t need that on a full stomach!

It’s Freya’s turn to lay the table and clean the cat litter today and Cody washes up anything that doesn’t go in the dishwasher. Then it’s Gis on and off to BJJ. I just drop them outside and scoot home for some peace!

Amazing how much you can get done when you’re alone! I tidy and vacuum, do the ironing and sit and chat on the phone with my husband (who is usually in a different location by now). Time flies and it’s pick up the children, home, snack and getting ready for bed.

Time for a story in my room (reading the Rose Years) then some individual time, prayers, back scratches/massage and hugs and kisses.

They read or listen to books/music and lights out by 10:00 in the summer.

Just for Fun:

We have a homeschool group but things are quiet in the summer. Both children take music. Freya does piano/violin and Cody does piano/guitar. Girl Guides for Freya and Youth Group for Cody are the clubs of choice and we try to swim at least once a week.

We’re the Mann family of northern Iowa, and my name is Lisa. We’re a family of four plus a lazy coon hound.

The oldest boy is Oliver and he will be 4 in November. His younger brother is Miles and he just turned 2 last week.

I stay at home with my boys every day and we have the best times together! I bake and cook most everything from scratch, and they love to watch, help, and even clean up.

My husband, Kyle works for an auto parts store as the new general manager.

Our coon hound’s name is Buster and he is the boys’ best friend. He also loves food.

We love spending time together by going to the park, pool, Dairy Queen, our own backyard, or relaxing together by watching a movie and eating popcorn.

Our Morning:

This morning, as with most mornings, Kyle woke first and was off to work before anyone else even got out of bed.

My boys slept until 8:00 am and came in to my room and Oliver said, “Wake up, Mom!” It’s been so nice since they’ve both started sleeping in since we moved in April. It’s been stressful for them, but they’re getting more comfortable every day.

After my morning coffee and all our vitamins, we began gathering ingredients for waffles. The boys took turns stirring, cracking eggs, and pushing the timer button after each waffle finished. They love eating waffles!

School for us is all day and every day. We have a plethora of story books, picture books, and coloring books, as well as several age appropriate games. Oliver adores playing games on our tablet; right now Super Mario Run is his favorite. I try to use every moment I can for teaching them new things in hopes of helping them to love learning without stress.

After some coloring and songs, we folded some laundry together, and Miles helped me unload and load the dishwasher while Oliver watched Super Why.

They picked up their toys, and then they watched a Preschool Prep phonics video whole I took a shower. By the time I was done, Miles was sleeping on the couch.

Our Afternoon:

Our lunch is almost always leftover from the night before. Today’s menu was chicken and broccoli casserole, peaches, and yogurt. Miles will have his lunch when he wakes up.

Oliver just rests or quietly plays the tablet when his brother is sleeping, and I can get some reading done.

When Miles woke up, he ate, and then all three of is went outside to play. They love to run, jump, slide, swing, and drive their diggers around the yard. But the newest favorite thing is playing baseball. Oliver is getting pretty good at hitting the ball if I pitch it to him, and he’s only 3!

Sometimes we stay outside until Daddy comes home, but today we had to come in because of the rain.

Boys were hungry for a snack so we made some button sugar cookies, and they helped decorate.

They did some playing with their hot wheels and dinosaurs and I started supper.

Our Evening:

It started with chicken teriyaki. A nice soy sauce, some brown sugar, ginger, garlic, oil, spicy Sriracha, and corn starch. Kyle and I love Asian food; the boys, not so much. I always make plain noodles for them when I cook Chinese because I know they won’t eat anything if I don’t! Their noodles have a butter and parmigiano sauce with salt and pepper. They devour them every time, and tonight was no different.

Kyle got home just in time for supper. This is my favorite time of day. We’re all eating together and talking, watching the boys and their silly antics, and making plans for the rest of the night and the weekend. It’s a noisy time, but peaceful at the same time.

After dinner, Kyle and I drove the boys and Buster to the park for some more family time, and then Dairy Queen for some desert.

Once home, we got pajamas on the kids, brushed teeth, came out to the living room, shut lights off, and wound down for bed time.

Just for Fun:

Our only scheduled activity each week is church. Since we moved in April, it took a while to find a church we felt comfortable at, but we’ve been twice now and the boys seem to enjoy the children’s church and play time.

Hello! We are the Owens family of Arizona. I’m Julie. There are four people in our family. My husband, me, our son (almost 5 and doing Timberdoodle’s kindergarten curriculum), and our daughter (who is almost 1 year old).

My husband is self-employed and I have the pleasure of staying home with our kids. 

We were going to wait till August to start school, but my son was too excited to wait. We have already done one month of school and he is loving it!

Our Morning:

My son is always the first to wake up. Instead of waking the rest of us up, he likes to color in The Big Book of Things to Find and Color (available in the kindergarten curriculum of Timberdoodle). If he is hungry he will get a yogurt out for himself. We just recently taught him how to make a few things too, like bagels. He loves being able to be more independent!

Shortly after, my daughter wakes up for the day. I get her changed and feed her breakfast.

My son is usually begging to do school before 8:00 in the morning. We start after I have breakfast.

My husband wakes up, has breakfast and goes off to work.

I try to start out with the reading lesson each day, but sometimes I have to put my daughter down for a nap, so I give my son things that he doesn’t need my help with.

Our school day lasts anywhere from one hour to two. I have a schedule planned out each week, but sometimes my son likes to do more than I have written down (which is why I always write it in pencil).

Our Afternoon:

After school we get lunch ready and take it to where my husband is working. We love to have this time with him!

After lunch, we go back home and clean up if we need to. My son loves doing his chores and is extremely helpful. I know I am very blessed in this respect!

His little sister usually comes through and helps make things messy again for him!

Our Evening:

A lot of the time my son will help me with dinner, but he usually plays with his little sister while I cook dinner.

My husband gets home from work when we are all done making dinner.

After dinner, the kids get ready for bed, and if we have time, we get to play a family game before bedtime.

Then it’s off to bed! That is our day in a nutshell.

Just for Fun:

We love to play outside. We have a swing set and a trampoline in the back yard that my kids love to play with. We get to have friends over sometimes too.

In the fall we will be in a homeschool group that meets every week. They do a service project every month. They have park dates, pool dates, and do lots of fun things! I am looking forward to that.

My son will also be doing soccer in the fall.

Hello All! I am Britni, homeschooling mama to Philomena who is 2-going-on-12. I am a doula in training in my spare time and my husband Greg is an internal auditor. We love being outside exploring which is great for our dog Watson. Our family is also anxiously awaiting the arrival of our newest little one mid summer. We live in St. Louis, Missouri.

Our Morning:

Dad is always up early and out the door first.

Some time after I ever-so-slowly get myself out of bed and to the kitchen for some coffee (most important) and first breakfast. More often than not I eat by myself as Philomena begins to wake up.

After Philomena gets up and takes a potty break we make her breakfast and juice and she eats while I eat second breakfast.

We clean up the kitchen and get the days laundry started, Philomena always has to check to make sure I put detergent in the washing machine.

Then we get cleaned up for the day. If there are any big chores that need to be done we either do them together or she plays and periodically checks in on me to make sure I’m doing all right.

We then start our preschool program, which is currently modified for practice before we really begin in the fall after baby arrives. Philomena loves to learn and practice her fine motor movements. Critical thinking skills are always stressful for her so we do that first so we can move on to things that she likes, like tracing and math. We keep it lighthearted and fun and that always takes us right into lunch time!

Our Afternoon:

We always allow Philomena to design her own lunch (with guidance of course). Philomena and I eat lunch together sometimes with a phone call from Dada, sometimes we chat, and sometimes we watch a nature show together.

Philomena always naps in the afternoon and I work on my doula business and take some time to myself to read a book that’s not labeled “for 2+” or “beginner reader,” usually with a cup of tea or a soda, depending on what the day has called for.

Dada typically walks in the door right as Philomena wakes up.

Our Evening:

Evenings are always family oriented. My husband and Philomena typically go for a walk while I start dinner. Yesterday they went to the library to switch out our book stash.

While they were gone I started the chicken pot pie we were going to have for dinner. I typically take the time while I’m making dinner to reflect on my day and what I can do better the next day. Usually I reflect upon how I can be more patient with her and respond more sincerely to her many, many questions.

We eat together as a family and begin Philomena’s night time routine shortly after dinner.

Philomena and I read books together then she goes down for bed and my husband and I clean up and relax together.

Just for Fun:

We are involved in a local moms group that puts on various events in our area. So depending on which ones we decide to go to, our daily and weekly routine may shift around a little bit. I try to pick things that won’t drastically cut into our routine too much or else it becomes too stressful on everyone.