Assalaamu Alaikum

Well.  My days are always different. It's hard to say what a typical day around my house is like.

But generally it goes like this:
We get up late..about 8 or 8 :30. I make breakfast....(Husband is at work by 6 am so he is not in the picture here) usually it's french toast , oatmeal, cream of wheat(YEAH iknow no one asked  what do we EAT but for me that is interesting stuff LOL)poached eggs on toast, cottage cheese with fruit in it,quesadillas,pancakes(if i am feeling up to that),noodles,leftover pizza or maybe toast with marmalade and tea.
Then make up beds, change into what my kids call" Morning clothes" which means anything that is not pajamas hehehh..then it's me running offf to check email while kids are eating! then I sneak back in..and then call the kids into our schoolroom(which used to be the family room as its slowly taking over the house now). We sit down together, me, my 8 yr boy, 6 yr girl and 3 yr girl, at a nice wooden table  by a big window. I like to keep the curtains open to let in the morning light and also have a small lamp too at the table for additional light. The first thing we do when we first sit down is recite a few short suras . My 3 yr old LOVES doing this with her older brother and sister! Then we read one story from that  book called MUSLIM FAMILY READER.The children always beg me to read more and more but i keep it at one per day..and we are nearly done with the book so my intention is inshallah to find another nice islamic book and read one chapter or story out of that every day when we finish this.

Then we work on arabic...(MY most difficult thing as no one in my family knows arabic AT ALL). The children FINALLLLY know the alphabet..I am basically at this point just following up on and emphasising what they are learning in the islamic sunday school they attend. When they are a bit more   practiced then FINALLY we can begin to get into a book that UmSULAYMAN sent us about two years ago~~~~~~

Next comes writing. They each have a writing book whiich is just that lined manuscript paper for  practicing  printing. At first I used to have them think up ANY WORD they wanted to learn to write and spell..and wwrite a whole page of that word. THen I had them later do whole sentences for practice..THey got to make up any sentence they liked. For my son, sentences tended to be things like" Anti aircraft fire is coming this way" or "I LOVE RED ALERT" or "Yousuf is  my best friend in the whole world". 

My daughter always wrote things like" I LOVE BEING A PRINCESS"  or" I love my doll" or " I love ice cream"
Now I have started looking closely at words they have trouble with in reading and having them spell and write these instead of the sentences. After writing is over..I sometimes give a little s pelling quiz on the words they just wrote.

Then they have a break and I get one too. I usually run make some tea or listen to phone messages or think about what to cook for dinner and start a few kitchen chores. Then when we are ready to start agaiin, we usually do reading. Since we are using an independant study program from our school district, we get the books which the public schools use. Some are really outstanding(to my total shock! I didnt expect that at all, believe me) and..then again others I am not too fond of.  For reading, we have been given sooooo many lovely books. I love the readers and all the extra literature we have been given to use. THe readers are the Houghton Mifflin Literary  Readers series,.  which are beautifully illustrated and so far I have seen nothing objectionable in any of them. 
We do lots of fun stories and little craft projects or other related activities connected to the stories.

We also  have phonics workbooks that after we do reading,,kids each do two pages a day in. Well we just FINISHED those workbooks..So I will have to find more stuff in that area for them to do now.
After reading and phonics..usually it's lunch time or way past it! Hheheh
Sometimes if i can think up a relatively non messy lunch we eat at the same table but other times we eat at the sofreh on the floor or I send them out to  eat in the back yard. They eat,,and then go play for a good half hour or more. I usually take that time to  sit down with a  novel and forget the world..or get going on dinner preparations once again. (The hardest thing about homeschooling for me is getting the rest of housework done, around it, I think)

Then when I coax everyone back inside..we do either science, or social studies. Science, we were using the SILVER BURDETT SCIENCE series. These are textbooks with accompanying  workbooks which contain nice experiments and fun activities. The kids really love everything we did . They already finished this year's science book too. We usually finish al the text boooks way before the school year ends . I will start using BACKYARD SCIENTIST books again , which I usually do when kids finish the textbooks before we get new ones again.

If we are doing social studies on that day, we are using HOUGHTON AND MIFFLIN SOCIAL STUDIES series. This is the only book I don't like. I know two other HSing moms who used it and thought it was great. I can't really describe why I despise these books so much. I think..they are a bit insulting to the kids personalities or intelligence. They are smarmy, trite, cutesie, and annoying. But I have not found that kids feel this way. They seem to like them , so ...I'm not complaining much. But I would not have chosen this series myself.

After this , we always do  Math. 
I really really love the math books, which are HOLT RHINEHART AND WINSTON MATHEMATICS UNLIMITED. The children love these too. They are very very colorfully illustrated and logically sequenced math workbooks with tear out pages. They are perfectly WONDERFUL! 
By this time I am sooooo tired of lessons and kids are too so usually we stop after math. And I have to finish making dinner, and of course, GO CHECK THE EMAIL AGAIN:)))))))))

At night time I try to read to them and we get lots of great books at the library for that. I keep a special shelf among our tons and tons of books, for the library books so as not to get them mixed up with the others and get EVEN MORE LIBRARY FINES FOR LOST BOOKS! Ohhhhh dear
I like to read stories to them from secular books but always include islamic literature for kids too.

There is much more but this is typically the rough sketch of  a "typical " homeschooling  day at my house. If there is something special like...a neat show on tv, or a friend coming to visit, or anything like that, we make adjustments.

We have school every day except Friday, and Sunday. Friday my son goes with his dad to the masjid and on Sundays they go to Sunday school. 

All three of my children are fascinated by cooking(Which is not surpriseing since I love cooking so much I am sure my attitude has influenced them somewhat) and I am more and more assigning them little jobs which they beg for daily!

My school day sounds vvery very structured but it is not. It is rather loosely put together, and sometimes a week goes by and maybe all we do is math..or just reading.....Then we have times when we sit every day and work so hard..but it's usually fun. 

I used the idea my sister UmSafiyah told me..about using M&M's . She used it for rewarding learning multiplication tables. In my case, I use them this way:each time a child completes one   page(front and back ) of math or a certain group of literature worksheets, they get ONE M&M> It sounds like bribery but actually they will still gladly do the work with out the candies. But it's a lot of fun for us all this way, and we all look forward to them! Everyone makes BIG PLANS about what color they will chose next time~

Well I am falling asleep here..and I left out a lot of stuff but will stop now and hope this came out somewhat coherently..
Your sister
Nargis