Focused Energy -- A Day in the Life of a Homeschooled 6th Grader

I love sharing with you about our homeschooling days because I think, for a majority of people, homeschooling is unique (perhaps even "strange") option to choose as a family -- particularly as the last century of history has been dominated by the traditional school model. I'm here to tell you that homeschooling has been and is alive and well throughout the U.S. and the world.
These pictures paint just a small picture of our typical homeschooling days with our little family, and in particular with an 11 year old, active, kinesthetic learner named Isaac.
Isaac is my most detailed child. He is a letter-of-the-law youngster who takes advise very seriously and is diligent and generally passionate about the things he chooses to undertake. Isaac decided about a year ago that he would like to read through the entire Bible word for word. And so he is nearing the end of this venture and each morning begins his day by spending 10-15 minutes reading his Bible after getting dressed and tidying his room.

As you learned with my post about Isabelle, we abide by the rule "You don't eat until the animals do" ... so each morning, rain or shine, sleet or snow, darkness or light -- the kids head out to care for our animals. Isaac has been in charge of the chickens for 2 years now. He cleans the coop (a disgusting job), feeds them daily, gathers eggs, fills the nesting boxes, disposes of dead chickens, and sells the eggs to faithful neighborhood customers when we have an abundance. He also cares partially for our three cats. Isaac is an animal lover and has always enjoyed his relationships with our pets.

I'm a firm believer in the value of chores. We like to call them "service opportunities" because they are opportunities to work as a team and benefit one another. Isaac daily empties the dishwasher, helps with dishes, puts out our vitamins and herbal supplements, and makes himself available to help in a myriad of ways. Breakfast is a meal where everyone shares in the effort.

Every spare moment he gets, Isaac takes advantage of the wrestling mat and mirror in our garage and goes out to practice his karate. There is a lot of memorization of the various moves for each belt level. He excels if he has plenty of opportunities to practice these until they are perfected.

Isaac practices his piano twice a day for about 20 minutes each time. His favorite thing to do is to improvise and many a time I need to remind him to "do what your teacher has asked of you!" He is quite musically gifted; however, you'd never know that if you asked him. Each of our children are required to play at least one instrument during their homeschool years. I've found that music education is a benefit to my children in the areas of math, visual spatial skills, small motor skills, and character development. Isaac has never wavered (and he has had opportunities to take private drum lessons) from his first love -- the piano. He is playing on a family heirloom baby grand piano which will someday be his when he has a home of his own.

The first academic subject of the day is math. Isaac excels in math and this year is taught by a daily cdRom lesson via Saxon Math. He loves the independence this gives and generally does fairly well on his own. I grade each lesson and either Josiah or I help him over trouble spots. He has been found playing imaginary games of football in his room when he was supposed to be doing math however! All of the children look forward to their daily treat of a few chocolate or butterscotch chips during their math hour and a half :) Mommy or Isabelle perform the "special delivery" with much fanfare each day.

If Isaac finishes his math within his designated time period, he is rewarded with being able to work through an educational game or computer cdRom. We alternate between "Typing Instructor", "Math Spiders" (a math drill game), or Geosafari. Here Isaac is quizzing himself on the U.S. state capitals.

Isaac spends an hour with me each day going through a variety of language arts curriculum. We work on handwriting, grammar, writing descriptive sentences and paragraphs, dictionary skills, italic writing, spelling, and vocabulary using Wordly Wise curriculum as well as a daily word he looks up and writes in a sentence which I put on our chalk board and get from a great book entitled "Words You Should Know". I've learned from the mistakes I have made with my oldest, not to ignore these basic fundamentals even though they may not be a child's favorite.

Isaac is looking up his "word for the day" in the dictionary and writing out its part of speech, definition, and using it in a sentence. Isaac is more of a math kid then he is a word kid so some of his language arts work is challenging. Although Isaac is doing just fine in these subjects, they are his least favorite to complete each day. In years past I have done both Spanish and Latin (somewhat extensively) with Isaac. This year, we are taking a break from those subjects because I realize that he will need to re-learn much of it from his 8th grade year on in order to be put on his high school transcript. Instead, he has a bit more time this year to focus on strengthening his areas of interest -- namely physical education and engineering skills. In addition, he's taking a Nutrition class in our homeschool co-op; and also enjoys spending time doing Garage Band and making i-stop motion movies using our host of computers during his spare time.

After our language arts time, we do our Bible Quizzing together with Isabelle. This involves reading portions of our study book for the year (Exodus), answering questions, discussing details, and reciting memory verses. Thus far Isaac has memorized over 20 individual verses, the entire portion of Scripture surrounding and including the 10 commandments, and is currently working to memorize Exodus 33:13-23. He's taken on these larger portions of Bible memory by his own volition in order to earn the highest level trophy at our final Quiz Meet in March. He usually studies on his own before bedtime his 'big memory' portions about 10 minutes each night. We greatly admire his determination and ambition in this area!

I really couldn't include a post about Isaac's homeschool day without showing you his occasional "fits". Yes, those are tears in his eyes, behind that big smile. He is my passionate and emotional child and can be easily frustrated. This day was a Monday after our unusual Capstone week preceeding it, so it was hard to get back into the routine. It was helpful to have the camera handy because he was more motivated than usual to turn off the tears and get back to work with Mommy taking his picture :)

Isaac needs a LOT of physical activity in his day. He exercises at least an hour each day through his karate, running, football play, and now foosball (not to mention just usual running around kid-play). After our lunch with read-aloud time by Mom, we usually go for our 1 1/2 mile neighborhood walk/bike ride; however, the weather is so cold and windy we stay in and the kids play in the garage instead. Here he and Josiah are deep in a foosball game. This was the boys' Christmas gift and it has already paid for itself in hours of enjoyment!

After our second instrument practice, Isaac works on his Science while Isabelle and I are busy and Josiah is doing Biology. We are using the gradeschool Apologia books and are currently studying Astronomy (Isaac's favorite science topic). He reads the text, narrates via writing a sentence in his notebook about each section he has read about, writes out and looks up vocabulary words, illustrates main points (he is quite the artist!), and does experiments and projects pertaining to the chapter subject. I facilitate and check his work and will help him with any projects he is to accomplish, but Isaac has always preferred to work on his own and at his own pace. It took me a few years to get used to this and to ALLOW it to happen naturally; but, we have finally found a common place of understanding on this and it works well for us both.

Mid afternoon is the time when Isabelle has her alone quiet time and I am able to study history with the boys. I use a variety of curriculum in conjunction with each other including Story of the World, Biblioplan, and Sonlight Curriculum. I have yet to find a history curriculum which I am satisfied with -- so, I make up my own. Basically, we use the Story of the World text as our main guide and then daily factor in geography and extra reading (mostly living and real books that involve learning history through the eyes of a real or fictional character who is living it). We sometimes do projects big and/or small. We've made a huge replica of the Jamestown settlement which proudly hangs on our homeschool room wall. We've made clay tablets and written our names in Cuneiform. We've made salt-clay maps and several other projects. Best of all, we LOVE to take field trips which help bring history to life. Our hope is to attend a Civil War reenactment this spring. This is our final year in a 4 year history plan -- we're studying from the Civil War until past WWII. Next year, I'll start over and add more detail as we explore the Ancient Civilizations through Ancient History.

Ahhhh .... our academic work is done for the day. Isaac is our engineer and usually builds something for a portion of every day. He's reassembling his K'Nex roller coaster currently (this will be the third time since we got it for him 3 years ago). I just gave him the assignment of doing a replica of the Old Testament Tabernacle out of Legos however, so he should be busy with that for a few days :) As much as I can, I try to relate our academic subjects to hands on activities for Isaac. He learns much better if he is moving while learning. God was faithful to teach me this with him early on so I've never been bothered by the typical wiggles which would give him a label if her were in the government school systems. In most cases, I've found there is a simple diagnosis for this .... it's called "Boy".

Isaac is pretty faithful to include Isabelle in at least a portion of his playtime each day. Here they are outside in the snow having a ball running around. Homeschooling teaches so much in the realm of "getting along" with siblings. My children, although they have other friends, consider eachother their best friends. This is SUCH a blessing. I cannot express to you how much this is lost in today's society. It need not be. This takes purposeful daily effort and character training, but the result is well worth it.

A winter's late afternoon is spent together doing imaginary play with siblings while Mom exercises in the other room. They have such a ball -- even my 14 year old gets into the act. Isabelle consistently plays the "wounded dog" (she watched Lassie once and has never been the same since!). Aren't they hilarious??! And won't they be so embarrassed by this someday? :)

After dinner and dishes, we enjoy a rousing game of ping pong with Daddy. Have I communicated enough that this kid loves to PLAY?! He is competitive and yet compassionate in his play -- the perfect combination. I hope you enjoyed walking with Isaac through a typical homeschool day!