I often get asked what a week of home education looks like for us and it is really hard to  say because the weeks are often so different.  However I can understand that someone who is thinking about home education would like to hear what people get up to so I thought I would try to give an idea of what could be included in a week.  But please I want to STRESS this is a general idea, it changes a lot and as I always say what works for us will not work for every other home educating family.

Monday – Nothing scheduled so it varies between – stay at home and work on projects, do some work in the morning and go out in the afternoon or a whole day outing somewhere with friends.

Tuesday – The kids have a swimming lesson and then after that we stay and swim which takes up most of our morning.  In the Afternoon we normally do a bit of Maths, Reading and possibly whatever project/ activity the kids are currently working on.

Wednesday – We have a sports class in the morning and dance class in the late afternoon.  In between is Maths, often a comprehension or English activity, Reading and whatever the kids are working on.

Thursday – often tends to be our stay at home day as we get home late on Wednesdays and the kids end up going to bed late.  Maths, English, we will often do longer activities if we know we are going to be home for the whole day – like an art session that might require more than 1 stage to it.  Reading, if the weather is good out in the garden (in the warmer months the kids help us grow some fruit and veg).  Projects anything really.

Friday – If we feel like we have had a quiet week we will often go somewhere on Friday – could be into London, could be to a National Trust site (often with other home ed friends) or go back for another swimming session.  If we are going out we often first try to finish up any left over work from the week.  Alternatively if we have had a busy week with outings on Monday and Thursday then we often stay home and get some work done.  Currently the kids like listening to audio books and doing a bit of art on a Friday afternoon.

Weekends – yes I am including weekends because the kids learn a lot over the weekends as their dad is around and he is always chatting about articles he may have read or video clips he saw.  We like going out to National Trust sites over the weekend but we also like spending time working in our garden and just chilling at home so weekends vary a lot.  The kids do tend to read a lot over weekends and often work on their own projects – currently my son is creating an animal book which involves drawing animals and creating personalities for them.  My daughter normally has a history related project she is working on – timelines, family trees, writing stories about fictional people who lived in a certain time period.

Projects can vary from between Science, History, Geography, Animal based topics or even activities based on books we have been reading or documentaries we have watched.

Reading – We read a lot.  I like to always have a family reading book that we read together and I still listen to the kids reading.  My daughter actually asks to read some of her History books to me so I can help her with names and pronunciations of more historical terms.  Also both kids always have multiple books that they read to themselves which is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.  No matter what happens in our week we always read.

My kids and husband have a tradition of reading science books in the evenings together before they go to sleep – kind of like a non-fiction story time that evolved from when they were younger because fictional stories often resulted in nightmares and non-fiction fact based books were a safe alternative.

Maths – I also always like to make sure we have done some Maths each day but it is not always traditional Maths worksheets (although we do work through Maths workbooks).  Maths also includes – working with money, working with quantities in baking or measuring items, discussing a maths problem and how we could solve it, we use Maths in maps my daughter likes Maths dominoes or Maths loop cards  – it really can take lots of different forms.

Although we do have some scheduled weekly activities a lot of the outings are determined week by week and can be workshops, trips into London, trips to our local parks, meeting friends somewhere, oh and we have a wooded area with a stream near our house which we often visit – that side varies a LOT.

Like I said above this is a high-level general look at a week and it does change with different seasons but for those who keep asking I hope it answers some questions.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.