5:30am- My alarm scares me awake. I don’t want to be awake. I take off the arm/thumb braces I slept in last night and update my app with my overnight temperature. I also check some emails and fill out the RapidPass questionnaire for my blood donation before actually getting up at 6:15. I feed the cat, do some stretches, get dressed, drink tea, review my Bullet Journal planner, and pray.
7:45am- I turn on our morning playlist of hymns, psalms, and folksongs we’ve learned in school and wake up the little McGoozles. Stubby made banana bread yesterday so we have that for breakfast with some strawberries. Everybody gets a dose of elderberry tincture.
8:30am- Breakfast is done and we move onto our morning routines and chores. Everyone is supposed to make/fold up their bed, get dressed, brush their teeth, and read their Bible each morning. Stubby and Smiley alternate mornings doing the breakfast dishes and taking care of Slinky. Tuesday morning chores are cleaning the bathroom, taking out the trash, washing the towels & cat’s blanket, and disinfecting the door handles & light switches.
9:30am- We get through the most important chores and head out for a walk in the “dirt patch”. It’s a sparkly 16* F. After we come in we make hot chocolate and a smoothie (water, vanilla Greek yogurt, seaweed sheets, cinnamon, turmeric, vitamin C powder, spinach, banana, and frozen blueberries).
10:30am- While we drink our treats we start school at the table. We say our family mottos and pray for everyone according to what they say they need prayer for. Today we read from Mark 9 and sing our Psalm of the month- 139:7-16. Our song leads to a discussion about where exactly heaven is located and why, if it’s “in the sky”, we haven’t seen it with telescopes, etc. After we wrap that up, we do our geography and Spanish lessons. Then it’s read-aloud time on the couch. Squeaky picks out Aladdin from a book of 5-minute Stories, Smiley picks a book about Balto, Stubby chooses to continue reading The Story of Buildings (we read about the Taj Mahal), and we read the poem for the day from Sing a Song of Seasons. We do Stubby and Smiley’s “independent” schoolwork- I still help/teach them quite a bit but these are the subjects they do separately. Today Stubby has grammar, math, keyboarding, and copywork. Smiley has a reading lesson, math, copywork, science, and literature.
1:00pm- School is done for the day. I’ve started having a hard end time to our school day and it’s been so helpful and I think we actually get more done. I check my phone and see that I got a text letting me know that the blood drive I was scheduled to donate at today had to be canceled. The kids are happy to have a bit of extra free time this afternoon! We eat lunch and watch some videos- World Watch news, a couple of Deep Look episodes, and some footage from the Big Bear Eagle cam.
2:00pm- The kids go play with Legos and listen to a story on their CD/Bluetooth player. I take a 15 minute break to catch up on some email newsletters and then do some chores and make some plans for Curiosity Club. (Slinky is napping on the job- or maybe napping is the job?)
3:15pm- We load up and head to the library. Tuesdays are Curiosity Club days. We meet for about 2 hours afterschool on Tuesdays and alternate lesson weeks and field trip/activity weeks. This week is a field trip and I decided we would check out the small art gallery on the 3rd floor of our library. We wait in the childrens’ room at the library for everyone else to arrive and then head to the gallery. We do several activities to help learn about the elements of art and the power of observation. Then we head back down to the children’s room and briefly mention the Dewey decimal system. It’s a small crowd today and I didn’t plan a lot of activities so Curiosity Club is done a little early. (I intended to take some pictures but once we got started on the activities I forgot all about it.) We check out some of the books we found while browsing at the library and say good-bye to friends before driving home. We listen to our book, The Monster in the Hollows (Wingfeather Saga #3) by Andrew Peterson, on the way home. I cry. It’s a great book.
5:30pm- Squeaky fell asleep on the way home so I carry her in and lay her on the couch. We do a quick pick-up and get everyone’s rooms ready for sleeping. I put the final touches on the dinner I prepped yesterday and get it in the oven. While dinner cooks, I read my Bible and record some math problems for Smiley to do in the van in a couple of days when we’re road schooling on our way to skiing. The big kids play nicely together upstairs. I wake Squeaky up so she can eat and so she’ll fall asleep tonight
6:15pm- Dinner is ready and we are ready for it! We all share our favorite and least favorite part of the day, work on our verse box (Scripture memory), read the catechism question for the week, and sing a song.
7:00pm- We video call Mr. McGoozle who is away on a work trip. We take turns talking while also cleaning up from dinner and getting ready for bed.
8:00pm- We snuggle up on the couch and read before I tuck everyone into bed. Squeaky come down twice before finally staying in bed. After everyone is settled, I record a reading for the upcoming road schooling, journal & make plans for tomorrow, and then read a book about Abraham Lincoln.
11:00pm- It’s far later than I intended to go to bed but it was a good book!
