One of the things that we have talked over with our children is that since they don’t go to school they can’t have school holidays.  But we have found the patterns to our life, fall comfortably in line with the term breaks taken by schools so we do change our routine during this time.  We need a bit of a break from our studies, we need time to prepare for the next study block and we need time to catch up with friends who go to school, so we have a different routine to accommodate these things – this is life.

 

Our study breaks often go for an extra week (School’s take 2 weeks) because we get so busy that we truly need a break after our break! 

 

People ask us all the time – do you take school holidays?  Well, we do and we don’t.  The children are doing 1-1 ½  hours of planned study each day.  This is less than half of a regular study day.  During this time they focus on a particular subject they may want to catch up on, or a new project that they haven’t got to.  We try and have a particular focus for each of them.  This break Josh, Jess and Nomi are all working on an Apologetics Speech and their Reading List / Journal.  Daniel’s focus is his phonics lessons. 

 

The reason I keep this small amount of study/table time is that the children do better in their free time if they have had a disciplined start to their day.

 

Our Study Break routine goes something like this, unless of course we are doing something out of the house, then we just do what we can.

 

6.00-8.00am    Personal Responsibilities

8.00-10.00am  Family Devotions / Study (not everyone goes to 10 o’clock)

The rest of the morning is their own!

 

12.30pm          Lunch / Chores

1.30pm            Reading time (Room time)

2.30pm            Productive Time

4.30pm            Outside time

5.00pm            Responsibilities

6.00pm            Family Time / Dinner etc

 

Daniel doesn’t handle free time very wisely (still in training) so my plan is:

his choice of activity / my choice of activity / his choice / my choice etc throughout the free time blocks in the day. 

I haven’t put a time frame to this though he isn’t allowed to flip from post to pillar on a whim.  My hope is that giving him the opportunity to choose I will see where his interests lay at the moment and see what focusing ability he does have, without me possibly cutting it short by a plan.