As always, I continue to strive to keep our days balanced, to develop a predictable routine. So a few days in the life of a homeschooling family...

Wake around 8:30. First I serve the girls breakfast and then get myself dressed. I do a few chores while the girls eat. We leave the house by 9:15 to go for our walk. We go a total of about 4 miles today. We are back by 10:30. After our walk we head over to the pool. We play in the water for a few hours. At one we head home to get lunch for the girls and put Nova down for a nap. I read Jade a few stories and then we have "quiet time." I read The Mists of Avalon while Jade plays. I let her watch Bear in the Big Blue House after a bit. At 3:00 Nova wakes up and the girls play with their Duplos for a while. I start dinner at 4:30 while Jade plays on the computer. The evening seems long, but somehow it is suddenly 7:30. We have bathtime and read stories. Normally the girls would be sent off to bed, but tonight Daddy takes them for a drive to Frys- he needs a new keyboard for the computer again. I soak in the tub while they are gone. When they return home, the girls are drowsy and we all go to bed.

Again we go for our walk at 9 and are gone for about an hour. Rather than go swimming though, I shower and get ready for our TriCities AP playgroup. I make lunch and we head out to the Park at 11. Tuesday is one of my favorite days because it gives me a chance to sit and talk with outher moms while our kids play. We stay at the park until almost 4:30. Finally we head home. I'm blanking on dinner tonight. They girls have lunch meat rolls and fresh veggies. Finally I give up and drive us to Wendy's to get myself a burger. I know, not so healthy. :P Oh well, I was well within my POINTS for it. Nova is asleep when we get home. I lay down with Jade and we fall asleep soon after.

Blissfully, we have no plans for today. I got up to take us for a walk before 9. It's cool out this morning, but not too bad. Unfortunately, half a mile down the trail, I realize two of our wheels on my jogging stroller are flat. I make Jade get out and walk home. After a while, Nova wants to get out and walk too. So it takes over an hour to walk under a mile. Ah, well. Jade did practice writing her letters in the sand, which was neat. At home I fix lunch and tidy the kitchen while the girls play in their room. I get out a cornmeal texture tray so Jade can practice her letters some more if she wants. We do art for a while. Eat lunch at 12:30. Try to get Nova down for a nap and have quiet time (somewhat unsuccessfully!) She sleeps maybe half an hour. Our produce delivery arrives around 1 and Jade helps me unload and put away the groceries, counting the potatoes as she hands them to me. After she and Nova want bananas. Jade gets a whole one and I split the other with Nova. Jade wants to watch Charlotte Web 2 so I let her do that for a while. At 3:30 we get our swimsuits and head to the pool for a while. At 5:30 Jade helps me make dinner. Then free play for a while, bedtime stories, and finally, bed.

Again there's not a whole lot going on. A walk in the morning. Some table work when we got home. Math manipulatives, most likely. Lunch around noon and then quiet time. I may take the girls to the library, I often do on Thursdays. Then we head to the playground on the way home. If it's hot we'll swim in the pool, followed by dinner, stories and bedtime.

Friday is busier. I addition to a morning walk and our other activites, we have Park Day with the Tri-City Homeschoolers (TCH). We'll probably go early so Jade can play in the wading pool at this months park.

In retrospect, it seems clear to me I need to continue to develop our evening routines and afternoon activities. At this point, Jade is only four and though she's Kindergarten age, formal academics aren't a high priority. So just the routine is what I'm focused on. It's harder to develop than I would have expected!

I've decided to tryu and incorporate a walk in our morning routine, so we began with that today. I got up around 8:30, fixed breakfast for the kids, did some laundry and dishes, and got dressed. We took the double jogging stroller and headed to the Alameda Creek trail. On our walk, we stopped a few times to notice things on the trail- a reptile that was almost invisible, it was so close to the color of the gravel, a duck down in the water creating ripples around itself, etc. Jade commented "Look, it's a little waterfall! There's bubbles!" She'd noticed the foam just past the rocks in the creek.

We came home after a 1.75 mile walk (Jade walked about half a mile and then got back in the stroller.) Next we went swimming at the pool. We noticed a little black bug floating in the water and helped it out. The girls and I spent almost half an hour watching it. We counted it's legs, noticed it's antenea, and talked about how it can use it's feet as "claws."

After a while Jade got cold so we headed over to the hot tub where we talked about ripples again. I know I have a book that talks about water and water activities around here somewhere, I'll have to look for it later. For now, we're going back to the pool to enjoy the warm weather and good temperament.

I'm feeling incredibly saddened upon reading some of my online acquaintances' weblogs this weekend. Schooling choices seem to be a hot topic of discuss this week, and it sucks that people seem to feel hurt by others black and white attitude.

There is no across-the-board ideal schooling choice. There will be pros and cons no matter what a person decides. Each family has to decide what works best for them, and how to work through the problems they are bound to encounter.

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I haven't posted on homeschooling this week, so I think I'll just touch on some of the things we've been keeping busy doing...

We've been going swimming just about every day, sometimes twice a day. I've discovered that Nova naps much better if we swim in the morning. So we've been swimming most mornings around 9 or 9:30, putting Nova down for a nap between 11:15 and 12:30. After Nova is asleep, Jade and I read stories and fix lunch. We'll do some quiet activites together, or Jade will play independently. Her favorite activity this week seems to be playing with her wooden dollhouse. Tuesday and Friday were "social" days- Tuesday we had out Tri-City/ East Bay Attachment Parenting playgroup and Friday our TCH Park Day.

We visited the library as a family yesterday. We returned our old books and picked out a bunch of new ones (even some for me!) Jade was very disappointed to realize that we had returned Molly's Moe. I'm going to try and get her a copy for her very own since she loved it so much. She had me read it to her every night the past week or so. I may try to go back and check it out for her again.

Today Jade is at the park with her Daddy flying a remote control airplane. I'm thinking of getting some books on planes for her from the library next weekend.

Jade dicated two stories she made up today. The first goes something like this:

Benny Bones was hopping through the woods, grabbing feathers and ducks, eating the feathers and ducks. But then he saw a bird. He ate that bird up! And soon he saw another duck. He ate that duck up. He saw a bird feather and ate that feather up. And then he saw another feather and a bird and he ate them up. And then he had a tummy ache.

The End.

Wow! I wonder what kind of being this Benny Bones is to be eating not only birds and ducks (which are apparently not the same), but feathers too!

Here's the second story:

Benny Bones was hopping through the woods looking for food. He found chicken. He found another bird too. He ate that bird up. He ate the chicken up. And then he saw nothing else. He couldn't find anything else to eat. Then he saw something else. It looked like a duck, but it was not a duck. It was a squirrel. He didn't like to eat squirrels. So he found the squirrel and the squirrel followed him because he was going to be Benny Bones's pet.

The End.

Another thing we got in our shipment of supplies: paper! I bought a roll of paper for the easel and 100 sheets of big fingerpaint paper. Jade is totally loving it. We've done more art the past week then we had the past 2 months. Jade seems so much happier, and I'm coping with everyday stresses a bit better. That's even with the fact that I'm currently in a more difficult emotional phase. Yay!