Homeschool – A Day in the Life: Friday

With all of the crazy news coming out of Boston this morning, I’d considered postponing this post. But then I decided that I wanted to reinforce an idea of a “normal” day while my thoughts are turned east and I’m glued to the radio, hoping for a quiet, relatively safe conclusion to all of this.

************

The fifth and final installment in my “A Day in the Life” days-of-the-week series. Friday’s the most unpredictable of our days. Once a month, we also have a potluck dinner at our church, for which I have to find time to cook between homeschool and our afternoon activities. I prefer not to think about that, though, until I absolutely have to.

Friday we do our typical homeschool in the morning—Math, Grammar, Writing, Spelling, Flute, Latin—then in the afternoon, we go out. We alternate Girl Scouts and a Massachusetts Audubon homeschool class.

The Mass Audubon program we attend is technically for all ages, but my 3.5-year-old usually spends the two hours playing with the toys and puzzles in the classroom or walking around outside with me while his sister does a reenactment of a bear poaching, or learns how to build a fire or a wilderness shelter, or how to find a groundhog burrow. When the big kids go hiking, my son and I tag along, usually hanging out behind the rest of the group talking with the kindly homeschooling parents and grandparents who are willing to hang back with us.

Our Girl Scout troop is made up of homeschooled girls ranging in age from five to eleven. Our meetings are two hours long. We break out into individual levels (Daisy, Brownie, Junior) for one hour, reconvene for snack, and do a whole-group activity for the other hour.

Sometimes our group sessions are workshop-y (Nia, First Aid, a parent-led session about Greece), but most times they involve crafts. Recently it was SWAPS. I don’t recall having SWAPS when I was a scout, but they’re apparently some little crafty thing the girls make to swap with other girls. Some commemorate a specific event or theme, but all of them involve pins. You need a pin so you can display your swap on your person.

Although I refuse to join Pinterest because I just don’t need something else to occupy my time and because I worry that it might be one stereotype too many for my comfort as a stay-at-home blogging mom (I mean, I just bought sweatpants. That’s enough, I think), that doesn’t stop me from using cute craft ideas that my co-leader forwards to me from Pinterest.

This week was felt-and-cotton-ball s’mores and a little rainbow loop with a heart charm.

On the way home, we stop at the car wash, if the weather looks like the wash job won’t be ruined before we get home. When we get home, the kids and I clear all of the detritus that’s accumulated over the week from the car (and vacuum it, if I have the energy—you can guess how often my car gets vacuumed). Then we go inside and I make dinner (usually homemade pizza because if it’s Friday, it’s homemade pizza).