For us Fridays are totally free unless you count grocery shopping as educational. Ds isn’t helping us with cost comparisons and such yet, so it’s not math for him. If anything it’s character/habit formation, but that’s all.
LindseyD- Like nerakr, our Fridays are totally free also. We get up and go to the grocery store. (Which for us is an all morning thing. I have to go to our farmer for grass fed beef every two weeks, the health food store in our area and then the regular grocery store.) Then sometimes we hit the library. My husband works nights so he gets up at noon on Fridays to hang out with us. We eat lunch together as a family and then we all go to the chirpractor and run the rest of our errands together.
While our Fridays are not free or off, we do have a lighter day … well, sort of. We go to our weekly Bible study class (a Community Bible study group with homeschool classes for children) from 10:30-12:30. We have to be out of the house by 10 to get there on time, so we do our history read-alouds and other group time (prayer and Bible and either artist, music, map drill, etc.). This is from 9:30 theoretically.
When we get home, all I ask of our children is for a Quiet Hour while I put the baby down for her nap. This might include an art project, drawing, nature observation, reading or playing games. Sometimes we might watch a netflix educational show if the weather is not good for being outdoors.
I do have a math assignment for the older three as well as a writing or grammar assignment, but they are light in nature and should not take them more than half an hour total if they apply themselves. I expect these done before 9 when we sit down for group. At 9:30 when group is over, they are off to brush their teeth (for those who have failed to do this already), gather their Bibles and study guides, make their lunch for when we get home (12:45 so nice if we already have them made), and/or finish up the above-mentioned math/grammar/writing.
For the littles, I try to have them do their daily calendar work, handwriting and maybe play a math-related game if we have time before we go. If not, I try to get them on this in the afternoon before Daddy comes home.
And then on weekends we are going camping, this is all out the window except our Bible study class, because we are packing our clothes in the camper and preparing food for that night’s meal (Friday) and putting other food in the camper.
@LindeyD, oh no LOL! I wish! Well, sort of .. it can be a lot of work. We try to go about once a month and spend a few long weekends each year as well. We just go mostly to nearby state parks, but we love it b/c Daddy is there (he works about 12 hours a day) and it is just a great time to explore, be and enjoy each other’s company w/out interruption (we always go electronic-free; well cell phones but only for emergency and they often don’t have great coverage).