A Day in Our Chaotic Life

This week's Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop is Day-in-the-Life Week.

No two days in our life are the same, but here's a glimpse of what our Sunday was like this week.  Several years ago, when my husband's job changed, and he often works Sundays, but theoretically has a day off some other time during the week, so at that point, we opted to consider Sunday the same as a "week day" and then, if Daddy was home some other day and we wanted to do other things, we could.

One other bit of information before we get started, our neighbor, E joins us for school 4 days a week, including Sunday, and his little brother, J, comes over for outside time and snack. So, with those disclaimers, here's a "tour" of our day . . .

We get up, get dressed, do a few morning chores, and eat breakfast. Breakfast is generally kind of "fend for yourself", there's toast, yogurt, usually kefir popsicles, anyone can cook themselves and egg . . . in this case, we had some ripe bananas so Ashlyn's making her favorite breakfast, banana pancakes (mash a ripe banana, mix in 2 eggs, and fry like pancakes).

By the time breakfast is over, and (hopefully) cleaned up, it's usually pretty close to 9:00, which is when E comes over for school.  Once E gets here, we head upstairs to our school room for the first part of our school day. (once in a great while, we actually get breakfast done, and the kitchen cleaned up and have extra time before E gets here, in that case, the girls either play outside, or I sneak in some extra read-aloud time with the big girls).

We being school with circle time.  Little Bit and E join me in a circle, of sorts, in one corner of the school room. The big girls sit off to the sides working on independent school work, but close enough to join us if we do anything that they deem "interesting".

I have our Circle Time poems and schedule in Evernote on my iPad. Circle time starts with a poem, and lighting a candle. Then Little Bit and E do their calendar notebooks, and we add a bead to our bead calendar.
We began the bead calendar (for Little Bit), in January. Each month we decide on a color bead for that month, and then add one bead each day (or, enough to catch up when we miss days).  After the bead calendar is another poem, then We Choose Virtues. Another poem, and the kids choose a book from our book basket. Then another poem, and prayer, ends our circle time.

After Circle time with Little Bit and E, comes Bible for the big girls and E (since E's between Little Bit and the big girls in age, he bounces between the 2 age groups depending on what we're doing.  We are using Bible Road Trip for the big kid Bible curriculum. Little Bit is welcome to join us, or play quietly in the room, or in her bedroom, or if Daddy's home, sometimes she'll go down and hang out with him.

Normally, after Bible, the kids all head outside for outside time while I hang the laundry, and prep for snack if I'm providing it (some days, E's mom brings snack over). On Sunday, before we went outside, I wanted the kids to make nature collection bags, since we were going on a nature walk during outside time. So we did "art" before we went outside. Each of the kids chose a rectangle of felt, and a color of embroidery floss, then I showed them how to fold the felt in half, and stitch up the sides to make a pocket. Once they did that, I stitched ribbon (of their choice) onto the bags for shoulder straps.

When they finished their bags, they headed outside to play, and I texted E's mom to let her know the kids were heading outside and she could bring J over. The kids rode bikes and played on the swingset (those red legs way up in the air are Little Bit, swinging on the ladder-thingy) while I hung laundry.

Once the laundry was all hung, it was time for our nature walk.  Sunday was the first day of our "autumn" preschool unit, so I had cleared off the nature table and told the kids they could find things on our nature walk to decorate the nature table for fall. I did mention that we'd only leave some things on the table for a little while and then make room for more things, which I'm glad I mentioned, because otherwise, by the end of this unit, we'd need a 6-foot-long table to hold all their treasures LOL.

After exploring the yard, we headed down the road to a nearby bridge. The kids collected sticks, acorns, rocks, and alot more fallen leaves than I expected to find this early in the season.  They had a BLAST!

Of course, when we got to the bridge, some of the "treasures" were re-purposed, and thrown into the creek to see how well they'd splash LOL.

As we headed back home, the kids detoured into E & J's yard to look for treasures there while I went on home to set up snacktime.

Since we never have a "back-to-school" per se (we school year-round), I decided starting a new preschool unit at the end of August was as close to "back to school" as we'd get, so for a fun treat, I served apples and worms.  Also on Sunday, our We Choose Virtues lesson was about "Kettle Gretel" who serves hot chocolate to her friends in her grandmother's special tea kettle, so I included mint tea in my special tea pot for snacktime as well.

After snack time, we had history read aloud, and by then it was lunchtime (on "ideal" days, we have time for math after history, but that didn't happen this time. For math, one of the big girls works with E on Life of Fred - Apples, while the other big girl does her own Life of Fred, and I do something with manipulatives or worksheets with Little Bit, and J if he's here. I had no intention to "do math" with Little Bit or J, but when everyone else has "math time" they insist that they need it too. I'm currently working to pull together what I need to introduce Waldorf math gnomes, so then I can do that with the little ones during math time, unless E wants to join us too. If he does, we'll probably do the math gnomes during circle time.). 

After lunch the girls had free time. Ashlyn had recently gotten a paint by number kit, so she settled down at the table to work on that.

Lexie practiced her violin, then I would guess that she read a book while Ashlyn practiced piano.

At 5:00, it's chore time. Everyone helped tidy up, and then Ashlyn headed outside to get the laundry off the line while Lexie swept the main floor, and I washed the dishes that hadn't fit in the dish drainer after lunch. 

After they finished those chores, it was time for Zone chores. Each day we have a different "Zone" where we do extra cleaning. On this day, they got to do their current favorite, "outside chores", they have taken over making sure the flower beds are weed free, and they take their job seriously.  You know they're doing a great job when even Daddy noticed and commented on how great the flower beds looked!

Little Bit wanted to "help" but after a little while the big girls ran out of jobs for her to do, so she came back inside.  When I cleaned out their toy closet last week, I found a princess dress-up dress that she'd forgotten she had, so she decided this afternoon would be a good time to try it on.  She had to go outside to show her sisters, and after they finished weeding, they joined in with her play. Finding a convenient stump to be her "thrown".  I believe they told me that Lexie was her "lady in waiting" and Ashlyn was her guard.

They played until I called them in for supper. After supper, they do a few final evening chores and get ready for bed and then we do a Bible lesson with the big girls, I'm working on transitioning Little Bit into have a Bible story at this time too, just figuring out the logistics. After that, Little Bit watches a TV show while I read a chapter book to the big girls, then all 3 girls head to bed.

And that's what one day looked like in our chaotic life.