New Year

This summer is coming to a close. We are back into our school routine next Monday, August 24th. The girls and I are very excited! This third year of homeschooling will be unlike any other that we've had before. For starters, Ms. Reese is ready to begin kindergarten so I will be teaching two! I'm going to use "Sing, Spell, Read, and Write" with her like I did with Hailey. I am hoping it will work for her as well as it did for Hailey. Another new thing, well, is our new family member! Paige was 14 months old when Hailey officially began kindergarten. Penny will be almost three months old so this is the first time we've homeschooled with a little baby in the household. I probably shouldn't be as worried about Penny as I am about Paige. Our resident three year old is "challenging"--you know, the nice way to describe a child that absolutely drives you crazy and wears you out!

Anyway, I'm still mentally tweaking our routine--and will most likely continue to do so until things "work"--but so far I've come up with a daily schedule which looks like this:

7:30: Mom up, everyone eating breakfast, Mom checking e-mail, starting on her chores while the girls watch a bit of morning PBS
8:30: TV off, girls begin their morning chores, Mom spends time with Paige helping her do her chores and reading a story or two to her.
9:30: we gather together for our morning devotional
9:45ish: we have a snack as we read our "Five in a Row" book and then do the associated activities until lunchtime
12:00 Lunch
12:30ish clean up from lunch
12:45: reading time--Hailey reads to us (later Reese will join in), Mom reads from a chapter book
After reading we will take a break and clean up if needed (or just have some "playtime) until...
2:30: get the little girls down for their naps
3:00: work with Hailey and Reese individually
4:30-5: start dinner prep (I'm planning on having each of the older 3 girls taking turns helping me with dinner each night)
6-6:30 (whenever Jason gets home): dinner time
Kids play until 7:30 when we clean up for the evening and do baths
8:30-9: hopefully all the little people are in bed by this time!

Now I am not the most experienced homeschooler but I know that these times are not exact at all--when you are working with little ones things do come up (4 kids+1 mom= plenty of opportunity for character training haha)! Plus I never want to be so tied to a schedule that we don't have time to watch a baby bird hopping on the lawn or read an extra chapter of a book that we are all enjoying. And we certainly want to enjoy our own little baby and all the of growing she's going to be doing :)