A lot of homeschooling starts by talking about rhythm and routine, so I decided to take a step back and look at ours.  Monday is always a good day, because I try to take some time on Sunday evening to look at the week ahead and plan activities.  Here goes!

Bella sleeps in a toddler bed and can get out on her own.  There’s a stairgate preventing her from going downstairs, but my preference is for her to join me in my bed (my husband is long gone, having woken up at 5.45am).  This is the only part of the day that I sometimes feel guilty about, because she’s up and playing while I’m struggling to wake up.  I am not a morning person though, and finding a way to let myself to rest means that I’m a much better person and mother for the whole day, so I’ve largely made my peace with it.

Today, she found various jars of mine and practiced screwing the lids on and off, while I slowly got my act together.

We both got washed and dressed and then headed downstairs .  Bella chooses her own clothes, but I often have to influence decisions that aren’t weather-appropriate.  I haven’t quite figured out a way to have a subset of her wardrobe of only acceptable choices available to her.

Bella has cereal for breakfast and eats at her low table.  I present her with a bowl of dry cereal, an empty glass, and a jug of milk.  She gets to pour the milk where she wants.  Today, she poured milk in her cereal, picked out the cereal and then poured the milk from the bowl to her glass.  Obviously, milk went everywhere, but there was a damp cloth ready for her to wipe up with.

When she’s finished, she washes her hands using the “running water” in her water dispenser.  There’s a small piece of bar soap that she can use as well.

After breakfast, we water the plants.  I fill up the watering can, and then Bella walks it over to the birds of paradise plant and gets to work.  She loves watering.

She asked to go outside at that point, but I asked her if she would like to do some art… and she said yes!  We’re in the middle of birthday season, where it’s her and her 6 NCT friends’ second birthdays, and we’re making cards for them all.  Her art supplies are currently contained within one side of her Ikea Flisat table (how I love this table), and before I knew it, she’d gotten a pot out and filled it up with water.  It was time for watercolour painting!

After she finished painting the birthday card, she asked again to go outside and this time I cracked the back door open.  It was around 9am.

While she ran around, I put some verbiage on the card.  We had free play for an hour, at which point I started to get ready to head out.  We were going to try a new music class that was located around the corner, but unfortunately while it was convenient, that was the only good thing going for it.  I do really like having a class or activity/playdate on in the morning, it just helps get us out of the house and ensure we’re not pottering about aimlessly too much.  Our schedule for this week:

Monday – the awful “music” class
Tuesday – Bella’s birthday party!
Wednesday – Forest school
Thursday – free day, depending on the weather we may go to the sand park
Friday – I’m working; Bella will be looked after by my mother-in-law

When the class ended, we continued on out to the shops.  Every Monday, we buy food for the week.  I like to source our food as locally as possible, so we visited the local veg shop, the local butchers, and then had to go to the local Co-op because we lack a fishmongers.  Bella knows all of these shops well, and I hope that as she grows, she’ll join me in looking at the food available, learning about what’s in season, and choosing what we’ll purchase.

We eventually made it home at 12pm, and got lunch on, with Bella helping to make herself an omelette.  Then there was another hour of free play (see bubbles below!) followed by a nap.

Nap time is so important for me.  I get to recharge (today I watched on the latest episode of The Good Fight), I get to do personal admin (I had to book my car in for a service), and I get to do work of my own choosing (today it was this blog post).  I keep wondering when Bella will drop her nap, and how I’ll manage.  I know that I’ll need to instate “quiet time” of some sort, but I need to really think about how that’ll look.

After she wakes up, we’ll hopefully bake – I have my eye on using up an overripe banana to make a banana butterscotch pudding – and there’ll be more free play until daddy comes home.  We’ll continue to play, eat dinner as a family, play some more, and finally head up for the bedtime routine.  First a bath, then books, and then to sleep.