By Emma, Ellie, Elizabeth, Ryan, Timmy, and Adam Donnay
Each day is unique and has its own purpose in a homeschooling farm family. We will do our best to capture what a typical day looks like for us.
In the morning, while our dad and mom (Kevin and Erin Donnay) are outside milking cows, we get dressed and make breakfast so that we are ready to start our day when they come inside. We give our 4-H animals fresh water and food in the morning to start their day.
We always begin our home-school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by morning prayers.
We try to do our school work in the morning while everybody is alert and interested. Our homeschooling style is structured and classical. We typically home-school Monday through Saturday, year-round. We do take days off here and there, but we are pretty consistent in our schooling. We study certain subjects on specific days so we know what to expect each day. Each one of us is working on the same subject but at different grade levels and abilities. However, for some subjects, we work together as a set of partners for learning. We focus on learning the Classics as they apply to all areas of knowledge.
After a morning of learning, we are hungry and ready for a lunch break.
Following our lunch, we have time in the afternoon to finish up any unfinished school work, work with 4-H projects or animals, help around the farm, or have some free time to do the things we enjoy. Emma has a weekly piano lesson in the afternoon. In our spare time, we often work with our eight rabbits and many chickens and chicks. We practice holding them so they are ready to be shown at the Meeker County Fair in August.
In the evening, we head out to the pasture to walk the cows home to the barn for milking time. Each one of us has a specific job to do in helping with milking time.
Emma is responsible for feeding chickens and collecting eggs. Then she will come to the barn to help with milking.
Ellie’s job is chasing the cows into the barn and then helping our dad in the barn by changing milkers.
Elizabeth holds the responsibility of chasing the cows out of the barn after they have been milked.
Ryan and Timmy are respon-sible for scraping cow manure out of the barn at the end of milking.
Adam helps everyone out with their jobs and loves bringing the cows home from the pasture.
We have 4-H meetings or sport practices for the boys in the evenings. We are also very active in our church in many ways so we find time to do those ministries throughout our week.
We enjoy having the flexibility in our homeschool and farm life. They are a good fit for our family.