Our homeschooling and homesteading daily routine

We’re veteran homeschoolers, but relatively newbies to the homestead. Plus, we have two under two and they like to throw a wrench in every plan, they’re the cutest distractions ever. So coming up with a routine hasn’t been the easiest and we have had a lot of trial and error.

So what works for us? In summer we spend all day outside working on projects, bringing books and nature journals out, spending tons of time with the animals, getting dirty in the garden, exploring in our woods, and all kinds of dreamy things.

In winter we hibernate.

In the morning we wake up, brave the cold and take care of the animals. Make sure everyone has food, water, and some attention.

Then we have a nice warm breakfast, and make sure the tween gets ready for the day. We’ll have pancakes or eggs with bacon. Unless we’re busy, then we have a “fend for yourself” day, this is when we grab cereal or pop tarts. We’re definitely not perfect homesteaders.

Then we homeschool. Which is normally me wrestling the littles and making myself available to help the big kid. We use an online curriculum, Time4Learning for math so she can be pretty independent. Then I find a quiet enough moment, normally when the toddler is in bed and we work together on our Gather Round Curriculum.

When we have pockets of time we work on house chores. We’ll work on a load of laundry, filling up the dishwasher, vacuuming, and general tidying.

I scrounge together a lunch for myself, a tween, a toddler, and the baby who has just discovered the magic of solid foods. It’s a lot of orchestrating to get lunch on the table for these ladies, a lot of times I’m warming up several different kinds of leftovers, like today the littles will have some leftover pancakes.

After lunch we check on the animals again, make sure they all have fresh, not frozen water and gather chicken eggs before they freeze and break.

We fill in the rest of the day with playing and chores, reading and drawing. Our routine might change when the littles are older, but for now this works for us.

Of course there are days where almost none of this happens, or only some of it happens. Homeschooling is all about giving yourself some grace so those days are totally fine. Sometimes you learn more spending a day with the animals, working on a project, baking, or watching a movie.