Our day, part 1

I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I'm going to write a few posts that detail what our daily life is like here in the home that we also call a school.

This will probably include more details than most people will care to read. But then again, there might be a few people out there who would love to know what our day is really like.

I will admit, it's not always pretty. And that is exactly why you aren't going to see any photos of me! We try to start our school day by 8 a.m. Often, we actually begin closer to 7:30. I have found that if I take the time to take a shower and get ready to go out in public, it delays our day too much. So, I'm usually either wearing my sweats from an early morning walk, my PJs or some other mismatched outfit I found lying on the floor until I have a chance to take a shower later in the morning. Just keeping it real.

As soon as at least two out of three of the students have swallowed the last bite of breakfast, we begin the morning with our Geography Songs. We have a CD with a song for every region of the world. We add one new song a week, so right now we sing about nine songs every morning.

This is a great way to help us all wake up as we finish our breakfast. (We always do geography at the breakfast table, but I forgot to take the photo until later.) I also clean up the kitchen while we are singing the songs.

The kids each have a workbook with a map of each continent or region covered in the song. They practice pointing to the various countries as the song plays.

We also do the geography songs first because Baby Jayda loves them. She smiles, claps and bobs her head to the music. We want to include her in our singing before she is ready for her morning nap.

Next is our Bible reading time. We read from The Child's Story Bible, which we really enjoy. The older boys are ready to move on to reading directly from the Bible, but I decided I wanted to finish the Bible storybook that we have first. It does a great job of giving background information and putting each Bible story into context.

After that, we read a book called Window on the World. This is a book we all look forward to reading. Each day, we read about a different country in the world. The book tells about the country's history, religion, culture and challenges faced by the people in that area. It also gives specific suggestions for how to pray for the people living in that region.

I love this book because it has given my children such a great worldview. We look up each area either on our globe or our world map, and it corresponds to the new geography song we are learning that week.

Up next, history and science...

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