Rythmn to my days

We're in the middle of our second week back to school and our days are starting to have a flow.

The girls get up and watch tv while Wander does his morning routine. Wander leaves for work and I get up. I do my morning routine as the girls do their morning routine. I throw a load of laundry in the washing machine.

We have a set start time for school. If the girls don't finish their breakfasts by the start time, they don't get breakfast. (Given that they've usually been awake for over two hour, they get little sympathy for choosing to play instead of eat.) If I don't finish my breakfast or anything else by the set time, I suffer the same consequence.

We start with our morning meeting. Glitter looks up the date on the calendar. I tell the girls the plan for the day. We draw sticks to see who will lead the rest of morning meeting. The leader gets to lead prayers, memory work, and movement.

After morning meeting, Sparkle starts her independent school work, and I work on teaching Glitter to read. When I'm done with Glitter, I swap out the laundry and head over to Sparkle.

The next few hours are spent doing school with Sparkle. She has a list of subjects for the day and gets to choose which she wants to do next. Most subjects are teacher-intensive, but occasionally there is something she can do by herself for a few minutes. I slip away to take care of some household task, like laundry or dishes or sweeping or one of the multitude of things that always seem to need my attention.

Eventually Sparkle finishes school, and it's lunch time. It's been taking Sparkle a while to get all of school done, and as a result, we've been having very late lunches. I try to keep lunches simple: leftover and sandwiches are the most common fare.

After lunch, our days are more varied, depending on whether or not we have out-of-the-house activities.

If we don't need to go anywhere after lunch, we have an area cleaning. We pick a room, I give the kids dusting cloths, and I get the vacuum cleaner. I set the time for fifteen minutes and the three of us clean until the timer goes off. Well, I clean; Sparkle dusts random things that often don't really need dusting; and Glitter rolls around on the floor. After the timer beeps, I release both girls to their "own time," which usually involves making mayhem and strewing toys all over the house. I catch up on more household stuff, which often involves finishing laundry.

If we do need to go somewhere after lunch, we skip the area cleaning, pack our bags and go. The girls have their own book bags, snack bags, and water bottles, so they can be responsible for their own stuff when we got out.

We're usually back home (or still home) when Wander calls to say that he's coming home from work. His phone call is the trigger for the girls to stop playing, clean up, and have quiet reading time. For Sparkle, quiet reading time usually means that she has to do her assigned reading because she hasn't done it yet. For Glitter, quiet reading time usually means that she wanders around the living room, sometimes with a book in hand, announcing that she's already read the whole book and is done.

Finally Wander comes home, and quiet reading time is over. The girls return to their play, with a trail of toys in their wake.

I'm still trying to see how to fit in a few more activities into our days. It's like putting together a mosaic. I know what I want the final picture to be. I know that I want to use certain tiles. However, I can't quite figure out how to fit all the pieces together, or even if it is possible to fit all the pieces.