A Bilingual Homeschool Day in the Life (with a 1-, 4- and 7-yo)
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I’ve always loved Simple Homeschool’s January link up of day-in-the-life posts written by homeschool moms. Over the years, they’ve been a great source of curriculum ideas, scheduling hacks, and in-the-trenches encouragement for me. I just love getting a peek into other families’ daily routines!
This year, I’m joining in to share a day in the life of our bilingual homeschool. I teach my three boys in Spanish and English, while our family also learns Brazilian Portuguese as a third language. Things are a little crazy here, with a high needs toddler, a preschooler, and a first grader, but they are also very joyful, and I want to savor these sweet, chaotic days. As I worked on this, I was really tempted to share an ideal day with you, but decided that a real day would be much more useful.
Since we’re a bilingual household, I’ve tried to indicate what language we’re speaking when, but if I haven’t, you can assume that I’m speaking Spanish to my kids. This has been a big push for us this year, and with even just a month of more consistency, I’m seeing huge gains in my kids. My oldest son just started reading in Spanish on his own and my kids are now willing to speak to me in Spanish in public (this is huge!).
7:22 am / A Belated Wake-up
I wake up to find that I’m starting my day about an hour-and-half behind schedule, although, shockingly, my kids haven’t seemed to notice! Most days, I'm up between 6 and 6:30 to read my Bible and work out before my boys are up at 7:00, but my husband and I were up late last night and I guess I forgot to set an alarm. In a situation like this, my two older boys normally act as my surrogate alarm clocks, but they’re mysteriously quiet this morning. I head upstairs, grab coffee, and find them happily playing LEGO together, working on an elaborate scenario involving dinosaurs and a Mars Rover. I am very grateful that the baby is still asleep, so that I have a minute to gather my thoughts before the excitement of the day begins.
8:27 am / Breakfast and Morning Time (Part I)
The baby wakes up shortly after I come upstairs, and I nurse him while my oldest reads aloud to me. He’s been growing in leaps and bounds in his reading abilities lately. In fact, he just started reading in Spanish—without us having ever done a single reading lesson in that language. I’m really proud of him for his hard work over these past two years of doing All About Reading and grateful that those decoding skills are transferring (as research says they should!) to his second language.
Once the baby is done nursing, I make breakfast for everybody. Today it’s oatmeal to accommodate our multiple food allergies. While I get it ready, my older kids unload the dishwasher. We listen to the Latin Worship playlist on Amazon Music as we work in the kitchen, which helps remind me to speak Spanish to them, and helps orient our hearts and minds rightly for the day.
Once everyone is seated, we jump into the first part of our Morning Time activities, which include a lot of singing! Each weekday, we practice:
Our hymn of the month (I choose these from Happy Hymnody);
Our weekly memory verse (following the schedule in our Sonlight curriculum);
A Brazilian folk song to practice our Portuguese (pulled from Galinha Pintadinha); and
Calendar skills and telling time (traceable resources from Treehouse Schoolhouse).
Right now, everything except our Portuguese practice is done in English. I don’t love it, but I have yet to find Spanish-language resources that fit our needs for Scripture memory and calendar skills, so English it is.
This first part of our Morning Time takes between 10-15 minutes daily. That is truly the maximum that I can keep everyone (including the baby) together and focused, so the second half of our Morning Time has to wait until later.
8:57 am / Self-Care and Mommy’s Great Frustration
After Morning Time Part I, we either go for a family walk or I send the kids outside to play while I clean up breakfast and start my morning chores. Today, I need to do the latter, but we’re slowed down by the fact that it takes over 30 minutes for my older boys to clean their plates, get dressed with appropriate layers, and brush their teeth. At the end of those 30 minutes, I am one frustrated and cranky mom.
We have a talk and decide that from now on, they will get dressed for the day before they leave their bedrooms. I’d love to have breakfast in jammies and get our day started slowly, but I also hate chasing my kids around and nagging them, so together, we decide that this is the solution. (Report from the future: this works! It has made our mornings much smoother).
I get the baby dressed in his outdoor gear, quickly Google “how to get toddler to keep mittens on,” decide it’s futile, and send him outside with his brothers. As a high needs baby, he really benefits from the sensory stimulation and exploration opportunities that he gets outdoors, so I try to find as many chances to get him outside as possible.
9:30 am / Adventure Time
While the boys play, I get some indoor chores done. I watch the baby through the kitchen window as I work on washing dishes, sorting through clothes that another homeschooling family has passed on to us, and breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling. As I do this, I listen to the Washington Post’s Spanish-language podcast, El Washington Post. It’s a daily 20-minute recap of domestic and international news and my favorite non-panic inducing way of staying up-to-date. It’s well-rounded perspective keeps me from focusing too narrowly on American news (this was critical in election season!), and helps me to understand better what our Latin American friends and their families are going through. It also is a great reminder to pray for other countries, especially as much of South America is suffering immensely in this pandemic.
10:36 am / Bathtime and Morning Time (Part II)
I want to get through some more of our Sonlight read-alouds, so I plop the baby in the bath (his favorite activity) and curl up in the hallway outside the bathroom door with my two older boys and a reading pillow. This is not Instagram-worthy, but it is one of my best hacks for reading aloud with a toddler in the mix.
We dive into Capyboppy, which we’re reading in English, as well as a story in El libro de las virtudes para niños by William Bennett (a translation). At the beginning of each year, I go through the Sonlight schedule to substitute and add in Spanish-language books that complement what we’re reading, and this is what has come up this week. It’s a book that we bought during our last worldschooling trip to Mexico and the boys are still enjoying it!
Once we’re done reading, the big boys go off to play and I putter around doing some more chores while Gus follows me around begging to be picked up. He “helps” me prep lunch by playing in our kitchen sink while I chop veggies (and very carefully rest the knives out of his reach).
12:15 pm / Lunch
My husband joins us for lunch—with the change in the administration, he’s newly working from home—and we all listen to a few episodes of a new podcast, Cuentos increíbles. We love these Latin-flavored adaptations of classic fairytales, but when we’re not listening to them, we often enjoy another one of our favorite Spanish-language podcasts for kids.
After lunch, I put the baby down for his nap, make pour-overs for my husband and I, and sneak a dark chocolate square (don’t tell my kids!). This is my daily, secret pre-seatwork ritual.
1:00 pm / Seatwork
My first grader does about 60 minutes of seatwork a day in order to complete his lessons in reading, math (RightStart) and handwriting. We do modified Pomodoros to help him stay focused—15 minutes “on,” then 5 minutes “off.”
My super chill preschooler really isn’t interested in academic work—and at 4 years old, I’m not going to push it—so he sits quietly playing with kinetic sand, painting with watercolors, or taking a luxurious bath while his big brother gets his work done. His relaxed personality is a blessing to us, and I am so grateful for it!
2:00 pm / Kids’ Quiet Time and Mommy Gets a Minute
Once seatwork is done for the day, the big boys have between 1-2 hours of quiet time where they listen to audiobooks and play in their rooms. Having children’s audiobooks available in Spanish has been wonderful for us! My kids have learned so much vocabulary and grown so much in their speaking confidence that I am happy to designate a sizable portion of our homeschooling budget to Spanish audiobooks. Right now, my 7-year-old is listening to Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkabán and the 4-year-old is listening to an anthology of Mexican Christmas stories and songs.
Gus is not a reliable napper, so I take the fact that he is still asleep as a sign of divine mercy (truly!) and manage to get a workout done while he’s still asleep. I mean, I could do it while he’s awake, but since he seems to be terrified of push-ups, it’s better this way.
Once he wakes up around 3 PM, we play blocks, read a few board books in Spanish, and then work “together” on (even more) chores. I fold laundry, he unfolds it. I prep dinner, he takes pots out of cabinets.
I think that the endless chores will stop one day. Am I right, moms of older kids? Please tell me it gets easier.
No, really. Please.
4:00 pm / Portuguese Lesson on iTalki
Quiet Time for the older boys is done, so I set up my oldest to do his weekly Portuguese lesson on iTalki with his tutor, Miss Helen. She’s been tutoring him for about one year and we love her! I’ve written more about our experience using iTalki to homeschool foreign languages, so I won’t go too far into it here, but I highly recommend it.
While he does his lesson, I work on some habit training with my second born, teaching him to clean up his room. First, we clean up the LEGOs covering the floor so that the baby doesn’t eat any, and then we work on putting away clothes and picture books. Gus feels so important when he has little jobs to do, so we encourage him to “help” by collecting books to put away.
4:30 pm / Snack, Poetry, and Portuguese Time
We need to leave the house to run some errands, so I put a quick snack in front of my kids and read a little poetry to them while we eat. I choose randomly from this Spanish-language anthology, which is one of the best I’ve found. I love the idea of Poetry Teatime, but have absolutely no energy to bake or use fancy (breakable!) china, so Poetry Snacktime works for us.
Once we’re done, I load all three of them in the car and make a deal: instead of our daily Portuguese conversation practice, I’ll let them listen to a Portuguese-language audiobook in the car before they get to watch an episode of Galinha Pintadinha Mini, a Brazilian show for preschoolers. We’re been shooting for 15 minutes of Portuguese practice every weekday as part of the Homeschool Language Challenge. Normally, we practice our TalkBox.Mom phrases for a few minutes and then, they get to watch this short show on YouTube. But an audiobook is good for a change. We listen to the book (Clifford o gigante cão vermelho) three times and I ask them comprehension questions as we’re driving to ensure that they are following along.
6:00 pm / Dinner and Bedtime
We walk back in the door fifteen minutes before we usually eat, so I finish throwing together the meal that I had prepped earlier—a roasted chicken with veggies—while the big kids watch their show in Portuguese. After we eat, my husband reads Scripture with them and handles bedtime for the two big kids, while I nurse the baby to sleep. Everyone is in bed (blessedly!) by 8:00 PM.
8:00 pm / Wind Down and What I Didn’t Do
Once the kids are in bed, I am usually too exhausted to do much besides read or finish mindless chores. Since I’m still tired from my late night, I head to bed immediately once my evening chores are done. I read some of my Bible reading plan, pray, and then wind down with a few pages of an old favorite, Isabel Allende’s Paula, before falling asleep.
Now, just in case you’re reading through this and feeling like your day doesn’t measure up in any way, I also wanted to include a list of things that I didn’t do today. Here it is:
I did not get a shower for myself.
I did not even change out of the clothes that I slept in. Oh well!
I did not fold the laundry that I washed in the morning.
I did not take my kids to any extracurricular activities (we don’t do any!).
I didn’t go outside at any point (this is actually rare for me).
I didn’t spend quality time with my husband.
I didn’t do any deep cleaning.
I didn’t take any pictures of this day. Oops!
Those things happen on other days, but they didn’t today. Instead, we were productive in other ways!
Thanks for reading along with my day—I hope that you enjoyed it, and maybe even found some resources that your family can use. Leave me a comment to let me know what your daily routines look like—I’d love to hear them!
