A Day in the Life - Homeschooling with a Literature Based Curriculum?

I am homeschooling my DD (6).
But we are using a more traditional curriculum.
I am not entirely sure what you refer to as literature based. And it is irrelevant to what I am going to say.
Be open to all your options-your children are very young.
Your child's learning style may not match how you want to teach them.
My DD hates when we sit and read for very long.
Ok...I googled it.
Yeah. My child would hate that.
So, I'm not telling you not to do it.
Just be open to what works best for your child. :)

I just really love Memoria Press' Storytime Treasures and More Storytime Treasures for my first grader. It's just classic children's literature used in a comprehensive, but very easy format (they incorporate art and language lessons together beautifully).
I have 3 children. My oldest is 6 1/2 and very self-motivated and works well independently as is appropriate for her age. I also have 2 younger boys ages 22 months and 3 1/2 yrs old. So how does it work? Well, we start Math in the morning while little boys play together. Then move on to writing (she's starting cursive now) or something else that she can do independently. During nap time for the youngest in the early afternoon, I tackle Latin and Language/Literature so that I can focus my attention on her while my 3 1/2 yr old does preschool learning on www.starfall.com. We then finish the day with Science experiments or history lessons (we are learning the 50 states currently and fun facts about each ). She is finished by 3:00 each day and we play outside with neighbor kids her age from 4 pm till 5:30 pm. I have to be flexible especially on days when she has private speech lessons and when we take our weekly trip to the library.
Maybe that will help you a little. I choose my curriculum according to my child's learning style and interests which means I mix and match curriculums. There is a lot of "right" ways to homeschool your kids. Nurse Midwife Mom

I have 4 children and homeschool 2 of them (first and kindergarten). The other two children are ages 3 and 1. I have my older one read to all of us and then I let each child pick books for me to read. I also have them read on their own (obviously, the kindergartener is just learning so he makes up stories). We have also gotten books on CD to listen to as they play and do other activities. You can read forever how other people do it, but you will find your own groove. For example, you may find that the best reading time to do with your older child is while the other one is taking naps. That worked for us for awhile until I realized that the two older ones were really tired during nap time and didn't do as well with our school stuff. So, now we do it in the morning and everybody joins in. I have toys for the younger ones.

Have you looked at Moving Beyond the Page (MBtP)? We use it with my 8 year old. I'm fairly new to homeschooling and am still getting used to going back and forth (3rd grade and high school.) Your youngest is very small. I would have a special box of toys that he loves to pull down ONLY when you have something you need to concentrate on with your older child. I also love Story of the World. I regret not knowing about Writing with Ease earlier. Check it out!

Good luck!

We did sonlight for about half a grade, 1st grade. My son really loved it, it only took about 2 hours to get through everything. I bought the whole shebang and it cost around $400 which really is not that expensive. It is not about reading books the whole time though, I think that idea is a little skewed by their catalogue. There is math to do, and plenty of writing, spelling and science. So while literature "based" it is not only reading.
We then did BJU press for the other half of the year - I sold my sonlight, and got $250 for it! I liked both curriculum's, BJU is a little more organized, it is all set up ready for you to use, the sonlight binder that you get is empty when you get it - you have to separate about 2000 (not kidding) pieces of paper and put them in the binder in order. That irritated me, because for $400 they sould have done that. Also the binder that you have to follow is "bitty" What I mean is, you have to flip back and forth endlessly to find your lesson plans - BJU was much more organized.

If it stresses you out it stresses the children out. I don't care if it's the top base curriculum in the country. If you are relax anything from real books to curriculum can be learned. I have two. Have the same curriculum but teach each subject differently. We stick with real books for history and LA. The readers that come with the curriculum are boring. My son reads the Time magazine and the newspaper. My daughter the First Reader books from the library. I choose books too to read to the both of them. Yeah, I said the same thing sending them off to high school but my son is out performing public school kids. By the time he reaches high school I want him to take online college courses. Home Schooling gets more fun as you go along. Challenging but worth it when you see the results!:-)

You dont have to buy a literature "program" to revolve your schooling around literature.

Use the Library. It is a great resource . Sonlight is a great program, but VERY expensive. You can get a listing of the books that sonlight uses, and many are at the library or can be borrowed from other homeschoolers. Also , homeschool used curriculum fairs happen every summer and the prices are much less than buying new. Usedhomeschoolcurriculum.com, half.com, ebay, alabris.com, educationalaccents.com, etc..are other good resources.

With that said, I read a lot ot my kids. I pull together various resources.
My kids are 2 yrs and 3.5 yrs apart. They are now 14.5, 11, and 9. Here is what I did/do:

History: All kids went through the same level of "Story of the World". There are 4 levels/periods of time. When you get done with period 4, you repeat period one, going into more detail with the older kids by pulling supporting books from the library. My oldest, who has been through story of the world, is now using "Streams of Cilivilzation" history curriculum. At the high school level, they can self direct, not much the mom needs to do except make sure they are staying on track, getting them to the library, looking over book reports and writing papers, etc.

Science: all my kids did the same science book at the same time...Apologia. As with our History curriculum, there is a LOT of reading outloud to them. In 8th/9th grade my eldest went into high school apologia books.

Math: each child is in his own math book, and each are at different levels.

Grammar: we use Rod and Staff English, an excellent program. Each child is on a different level.

Spelling- each child was on a different list from "spell to write and read".

Children help eachother by drilling with various flash cards on all subjects.

Classic literature is read outloud to all kids by me. Younger kids are also read to by older kids (books of their choice) . All kids get to pick out books that are at their level from the library, and read to themselves. as you can see, we have a lot of books going in our home at all times. We love to read.

The older your kids get, the easier this all becomes. By grade 4, my children were doing alot of book work themselves, checking their work against the teacher's manual, correcting it, and after i looked at, (and them doing corrections needed) filing their work in their own binders.

We don't use it as a 'primary', but we use it for certain subjects. Primarilly history and science.

History takes all shapes. Percy Jackson books meant that my then 8 (and now 9) year old can list off all 13 primary greek gods, and about 30 various lesser gods and monsters, and dozens of myths (as a myth would come up in the PJ books, we'd read the myth our of 'Classic myths to read aloud'. Black Ships Before Troy (the Illiad retold) and the movie Troy (edited a bit by yours truly) have made a HUGE (literally epic) poem come to life... and are burned into his brain (so much so that a year later, he got into a debate with a friend of mine studying classics in the University about Paris & Hector & Achillies). We also had the eyeWonder/ eyeWitness books, lots of myth books... with ancient Rome we started latin (minimus http://www.minimus-etc.co.uk/ )

Science is using Noeo http://www.noeoscience.com/catalog.html which is an absolutely WONDERFUL blend of living books & experiments & scientific method.

Shakespeare is mostly via Children's Theatre (my son really loves monologues from HenryV, never been one of my favorites, but he loves and adores it).

Day in the life? Most of our days are spent moving.

Maybe 1-2 hours a day are spent with books or movies (fiction or nonfiction/documentary). The rest is consumed with active things and videogames. All told... we only do 3-4 hours of school a day TOPS. ((Disincluding the constant discussions)). We spend our days doing aikido, gymnastics, snowboarding, swimming, drama classes/camps, playing games, cooking, playdates, all kinds of things.

My son was an EARLY reader (3), but reading has never been his favorite thing (not since age 4... he's been at essentially the same reading level for 5 years. Granted, that's still 'above grade level' for 4th GRADE (where we're at right now), but it's just not his schtick. STORIES are one of his favorite things, but reading is rather low on the list of things he'd like to do. We need a LOT of activity in our house. We use reading time as a break. Physical, mental, physical mental. In fact... that's our "school" motto: Mens sana in copore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body.

Everyone sets up their lives/schooling differently (as I'm sure you're sick of hearing by now).

Sure... there is a lot of figuring out and adjusting... but basically, you just START.

We love, love, love, love 'living books' (and translate that as well to MOVIES). We get a lot of grief from some people as to our choices. (But Percy Jackson is FANTASY!!! Gladiator is NOT historically accurate), blah blah blah. Well proof and pudding. My son doesn't think Roman togas were cheap towels wrapped around idiots, and has "seen" the colosseum (not just a dry documentary or photos of the ruins) and roaring crowds (with a multimillion dollar budget) and understands the 'excitement' that was in those crowds. He (like I said, knows the greek pantheon inside out and backwards). He's seen the prowess used with ancient weapons. He understands that those things (for example) are fictional, and that it's impossible to be 100% accurate with fiction. We're not going for 100% accuracy. We're going for lighting the fire, instead of filling the pail. Sure, we can point out things that were wrong, but that can be done in a way that ALSO makes things exciting / doesn't detract.

We read. A LOT. We DO. A LOT.

Quite a bit I read out loud (as I said, reading isn't his favorite thing). Quite a bit, he reads himself... or he reads out loud to the dog (because, dogs can't read, you know), or to me, or to his grandparents. As an active kid, he often acts out a LOT of what he or I am reading.