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Well, it's gonna take some tweaking, but here's how it went:

At 9:00am, I gathered the three older children together and we did Bible/Story/Music part of LHTH together. Then all the children went to the table to do the craft from LHTH (even my dd 7 loved this).

While they did the craft, I cleared away LHTH and got ready to do LHFHG with ds 5.

DD7 then took dd4 to do some phonics work while I took ds5 to do LLHFHG. Good call, Carrie, about only doing the right hand side from this with him--he's definitely not developmentally ready for all of LHFHG.

DD7 and DD4 did some more painting from the day's earlier craft to keep busy while I worked with DS5.

After we finished this, I took ds5 to therapy and returned home to do BLHFHG with dd7. We did Geography, reading, Bible, and the math illustration together. She then took the spelling words, Math, and her ETC book to do on her own--she enjoys doing independent work.

I think we're going to do a different phonics program with DD4, but we'll see.

My oldest dd is loving it! We've only done one day but she's used all sorts of programs before and I asked her if she prefers this to last year's and she said yes. I asked her why and she said because there's "more" to it. We did CLE last year and tried to use SL with it, but SL was a bit overkill and we ended up just doing CLE math, reading, and LA, worktext style for the remaining 8 months of the school year.

She was glad I let her do some independent work though because while she enjoys being read to, she also enjoys being able to do things on her own.

I have to run to pick up my son from therapy, but I'm guessing we'll be done by 2:00pm. So the whole day took about 5 hours to complete.

Does this sound OK? Any ideas on how I can streamline it a bit more? It just happened that the girls were happy to continue painting, but I'm going to need some other things to keep them occupied when I break the kids up to do some one-on-one.

We are using LHTH and Beyond. We usually start with LHTH, but if there is a fun painting activity (which I know the older children will want to do too), I save that for later. Same thing with art activities in Beyond. For example, today in the science box we read about animals, and dd wanted to draw a picture of a koala bear. I told her she could do that later. That way I didn't have to wait to start our next subject.

I know you said that the painting helped occupy the children so that you could work with them individually, but if you find that fun activities like that are actually a distraction, then you could save them for last, so that everyone can spend as much time as they want on them.

I am generally able to keep my 2.5-year-old occupied during schooltime by giving him a small dry-erase board and several markers. He also has some stacking pegs he likes. My 4.5-year-old is happy to draw, draw, draw! He will do a page or two from the R&S ABC workbooks, but for the most part he is happy to do his own thing.

Today I tried to follow a real schedule for our school, but I found that we finished much quicker than I anticipated, because when one of the children finished something early, I had them start the next subject instead of waiting. I give them instruction when they need it, but there is enough independent work that I can bounce around in between them. So, I'm thinking of having a schedule that shows blocks of time for school (with meals/snacks included), but not try to break it down so specifically.

I'd say that's a pretty great day! Especially with having to run to and from therapy (a trip I understand well, having done it all year with my ds for his helmet appointments). So, good job! Here is a link to the scheduling thread that may be helpful as you consider how you want your day to go:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

I'd just read it and jot down any tips you find helpful, then maybe rough out a general schedule of how you'd like your day to go - that really helped me.

Here are some neat threads with ideas to keep the little ones happily occupied:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3814&p=28310
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3178&p=23737

It always takes us about a month to get in a great routine, and then we're off and running. I'd just jot down a schedule and note what's working and what's not, moving around the order of things a bit until you get a rhythm you enjoy. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Well today we got everything done in 2 hours, but I did some serious combining and tweaking. We didn't do the phonics in LHTH, but just focused on the phonics program we're using indepedently (HOP).

So, we started off with LHTH Bible, music, and math, while dd7 did her BLYFHG Singapore Math. Then dd7 took dd4 to do HOP while I did LHFHG math, reading, L.A., and the other item with ds5. Afterwards, I sent ds5 and dd4 to the playroom and did the remainder of BLHFHG with dd7.

They're loving it! We had to be somewhere this afternoon, so I didn't mind tweaking some.

After I clean out my homeschool closet, I'll have more activities to occupy the little ones.