The Homeschool Afternoon

One of the things I appreciate most about homeschooling is the freedom. Homeschooling allows us to be free in so many ways, but from a purely practical point of view, we have freedom of choice in how we spend our time. We have always aimed to get the majority of our 'school' work done in the morning hours so that we are free to choose our favourite things to do in the afternoon. We usually eat lunch quite late (1-2pm), but the academic work has been finished for the most part.

Earlier this year, the kids and I sat down to brainstorm some ideas for how we could spend our afternoons. Sometimes we have outside-the-home-activities we need to go to, but we always relish the time that we are home and can just enjoy our time together. There are many of these activities we have done, some we will do at some point and some we will never get to.

Here is our list:

• Tea with poetry reading
• Hot chocolate
• Finger painting
• Visiting other branches of our library
• Painting
• Puzzles
• Crafts
• Read-alouds
• Topic study
• Colouring
• Going to the park
• Visiting a nearby river
• Swimming
• Watching Little House on the Prarie/Other old shows
• Family sport time (basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey, etc.)
• Serving (picking up garbage, delivering gifts to neighbours, etc.)
• Writing
• Gardening
• Selling stuff
• Sewing
• Card-making
• Scrapbooking
• Book-repair
• Book-making
• Cooking/baking
• Visiting the Village Sweet Shop
• Visiting Museums
• Having guests over
• Going for a hike
  
• Preparing a special snack (ie. ice cream sundaes)

We had loads of fun coming up with this list. Sharing it with you is also very motivating for me to be sure to make some time in the near future to pencil in some of these activities.