School a bit differently today

Today I've been very busy with laundry, packing, more laundry, changing sheets, more packing...we are going away for a few days with some friends to the beach...hooray!

I planned on today being a very light school day simply because all I needed to accomplish, plus be ready for dinner and church tonight.

One of my friends does school in a very Charlotte Mason way - this school of thought was that children should be given formal lessons in very short increments and given plenty of time for creative play.  

So this morning we awoke, had breakfast, and I immediately sat down with one child at a time to do their math assignment.  Then the kids played for about an hour with their knights and castles.  I did some laundry.

We went outside and jumped on the trampoline and practiced all our math facts while we jumped and played.

I told the boys to come inside when they were ready to do some reading.  I did some more laundry.

In about 15 minutes they meandered in, and I sat down one on one and did their reading assignments.  Time for more play.

Then we had lunch and after lunch was finished they boys worked on their phonics books, Ethan did 2 more math pages and some oral spelling.

Throughout the day we've been reviewing some of the scriptures we have memorized this year.  Amazed at the recall they have.

Time for more play.  I now need to pack all my clean laundry and put it away...

We have to do history, and then we are done for the day.  It has been the most relaxed, un-stressful day.  The kids have had plenty of time to get all their wiggles out and I have had plenty of time to get my chores done.

I'm not saying we'll do it this way everyday...but what today has taught me is that, we don't HAVE to get school done by 12:00 everyday and cram everything in despite bad moods, both mine and theirs! :)  We can go run and play and jump...come back in feeling refreshed and get back to it!  I like that!