Day in the life of an unschooled family: christmas break edition
6:44 me and Stella wake up, focus hour of work, Stella plays
7:50 shower, I fell asleep for a half hour nap, jamie wakes up
8:15 older kids wake up
9:15 order breakfast because we’re out of eggs, jamie leaves for badminton
9:50 lesson planning, some homeschool co-op admin and email answering while the kids read and eat breakfast. Order coffee for me. Make a note of the places to visit next week with the kids: the caodaism temple we visited yesterday, and the organic vegetable farm that aligns with the science lesson we just finished for Stella
9:55 outside time for the kids. There’s a volleyball court they frequent a couple of doors down from our house
10:44 coffee arrived, we finished a spelling assessment for this week’s list for 12 year old, grudgingly because we’re technically on Christmas holiday and taking a break from schoolwork. I sent jamie a message to order a pasta maker, a glass cutter, a fraction kit, and gold metallic paint for projects the kids plan to work on next week. It’s a random list of items, for our random unschooled children.
10:48 science lesson for 8yo (solids and gases, sensory play experimenting outside) lead by the oldest kid while I was knee deep in planning (we are so lucky!) and I write a quick guide to shopping for food in hoi an because I am getting the question daily as families start to arrive in hoi an for the worldschool community we’re hosting in January
10:58 it’s friday and that means finishing up the book the kids chose for the week and choosing a new one and adding it to the list
11:00 jamie hits the market on the way home from badminton for vegetables, fruit, sourdough and eggs, and to search to find the obscure ramen that violet had one time and has been searching for ever since.
11:44 i create an event for our homeschool co-op to go to a rice planting festival tomorrow - you can bet that im not going to miss the blindfolded duck catching
individual project time time for play, exploring, lego, independent learning
12:09 I continue to answer emails and focus work because I am knee deep in homeschool co op planning for next month and clean up the house from Christmas. I looked outside and the rain stopped, debated taking the kids to the beach right now in case it starts raining again later (it’s rainy season here in hoi an for a few more weeks so we prioritize getting outside every time it stops raining) but our house is wildly unorganized
12:13 stella brings me a link to order a wig for cats, and a retractable plastic knife and I order it blindly because I’m trying to focus and asking questions will lead to more questions
12:21 I send out invoices for campaigns coming up next month, find a cinematic video course for Olivia and her go pro and jamie returns home from badminton and shopping. I gently remind violet to use this time to learn something and not scroll short videos on social media
12:26 my kids interrupt my focus time to explain to me what disney knees are and I send them to the market to buy windex and a new volleyball. I notice that our passports are getting wildly warped in the drawer beside our bed, and order some silica gel packs to store them in a ziploc container so they don’t become damaged from the moisture here.
lunch, organizing and tidying because a post-christmas bomb has exploded in our house.
1:02 jamie takes down the christmas tree and I wonder where we’re going to store it. there’s a swiftie dance party being DJd by Stella during the take-down session. this somehow turned into a whole thing where everyone worked together so well, so we took it a step further and deep cleaned the house.
3:09 it’s not raining, and we’ve been inside for far too long. time to load up everyone on our motorbikes and head out to the beach so the kids can collect supplies for their latest entrepreneurial venture.
4:51 we cruise over to the used book store to exchange books that grandma left behind and score some new-to-us books for reading this week
5:40 dinner. there’s leftovers from christmas dinner yesterday. there’s green curry sauce, ramen and chicken for sandwiches. we used the leftover buttercream from Christmas Eve cookie decorating to frost a last-minute cake and found a really good yellow cake recipe whipping up some buttermilk with vinegar and milk because buttermilk is one thing that I haven’t seen here in Hoi An.
