We didn’t do much school work on Monday or Tuesday because I was running a bundle sale over at Intentional Bundles and was monitoring my email more than normal.
On Friday the big kids went to a homeschool gym time with some friends and while they were gone our social worker called us to say she would be reuniting our foster boys with their birth family and would be picking them up in a few hours to do so.
For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:
The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4 The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1 The Preschooler – he’s 3 The Toddler – he’s 2
(The preschooler and toddler came to us in the fall via foster care.)
Here’s a recap of our week:
+ my fourth grader is participating in a reading challenge I created for myself, this month we are each reading (at least) one book that is also a movie, I told her I wanted her to read Bridge to Terabithia but not to get mad at me when the book makes her cry.
+ speaking of reading, the first grader started reading Penny and Her Marble to me. It was one of the first books that made my daughter realize she could read so I thought it would be fun for him to read to me. So far he’s not enjoying it, for some reason he thinks he can’t read when he actually can. I’ve requested some other books from the library for him to try soon that may be more up his alley.
+ I’m constantly trying to work on my son’s fine motor skills and we use drawing for practice a lot. One of our favorites are Art for Kids Hub videos.
+ we also pulled out the Handwriting Without Tears book one day this week and did a page, I need to remember to get him to do that more often.
+ after our foster boys left us on Friday we spent the rest of the day and the weekend playing family games. We played Colt Express, King of Tokyo and Apples to Apples.
There’s a little peek into our week and some of the resources we’ve been using! What are some games you enjoy? What is something that’s been working in your homeschool lately?
This week we had a mix of what I would call “school days” and “extra curricular days”.
We had a field trip to a museum one day and went sledding with one morning with a bunch of friends.
It was really a perfect balance this week where both my introvert and extrovert got a bit of what they prefer.
OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK IN REVIEW
For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:
The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4 The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1 The Preschooler – he’s 3 The Toddler – he’s 2
(The preschooler and toddler came to us in the fall via foster care.)
Here’s a recap of our week:
+ one evening my daughter decided she wanted to make brownies, so she grabbed a box mix and got to work. Baking is one of my favorite sneaky ways for kids to work on their math skills (also, life skills!).
+ one day this week the kids played Chroma Cube for math. It’s a good deductive reasoning and problem solving game. I kind of wanted to shove them over and play myself . . . (You can see more of our favorite game here.)
+ we continued with our Bible journaling, and like I had planned last week I read out of the Action Bible for them and they drew pictures and wrote a summary of the story in their own words. I would still like to find a good, comprehensive children’s illustrated Bible. I have a couple on hold at the library, we’ll see next week if they are good or not.
+ we played another math game one day. I just dealt the kids a few cards (the same number) and they tried to make the largest number they could with their cards. We did it with a variety of different numbers of cards so they could practice saying larger numbers (like 353,837) and it was a good reminder how important place value is.
+ while our preschooler and toddler had a family visit one morning I took the older two to the same children’s museum we went to last week and they had a lot of fun in front of the green screen.
+ one thing my six year old pulled out a few times to play with on his own this week was Snap Circuits. He has spent so many hours creating different circuits with this kit.
+ a friend of mine was telling me that she often lets her grade one class watch a video from Storyline Online during their snack time so one day while I was making lunch the kids watched one. Of course my Lord of The Rings fan wanted to watch “Sam” read a story:
+ lately my six year old has been reading to me from the Usborne First Readers, like Mole in a Hole and Goat in a Boat.
There’s a little peek into our week and some of the resources we’ve been using! What is something that’s been working in your homeschool lately?
I feel like we finally started to hit our post-Christmas homeschool groove this week. Plus the -30 C/F temperatures from last week gave way to -5C (23F) temperatures so that was also really helpful!
One thing I hope to add in for next week is the beginnings of a morning basket. I asked for some input over on Instagram the other day on what people’s favorite items are in their morning baskets and I’ve been pulling a few things out for ours.
Anyway, let’s chat about last week before I get too excited about a week that hasn’t even happened yet!
OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK IN REVIEW
For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:
The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4 The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1 The Preschooler – he’s 3 The Toddler – he just turned 2!
(The preschooler and toddler came to us in the fall via foster care.)
Here’s a recap of our week:
+ We started back into our Bible journaling this week after taking a very unintentional extended break from it. I was feeling like reading directly from the Bible was going a bit over my six year old’s head so this week we used a children’s Bible which I think was too below my kids so I think for next week I am going to try reading from The Action Bible and we’ll see how that works.
+ Speaking of Bibles, I finally picked up The Beginner’s Bible. I know this is supposed to be a Bible to read to preschool-ish age kids but I thought it would be perfect for my six year old to read from. It seems to be a really good reading level for him.
+ One day this week we went to a local children’s museum. This was my six year old’s reward for finishing his reading lesson chart that I created for him. He gave the place a rating of 194/5 stars so I guess it’s a good thing I bought a membership. There were a few different areas the kids liked, this section was filled with tubes of air that you could stick giant pompoms into and watch them shoot through the tubes and come back out.
+ With the weather so much warmer we spent some time outside playing at the playground, it made me excited for spring but I need to remind myself that I still have to wait a few months before spring actually arrives.
+ The kids continued on with math this week and like I decided last week on Friday I gave them the option of doing two pages in their math workbook or playing SushiGo. Oddly the six year old decided to do the workbook so I played with the nine year old.
+ I am working on letters A-D with the preschooler, I’m very impressed with how quickly he has been catching on to everything I’ve been teaching him in the last couple of months. One of our favorite alphabet books for young kids is Dr. Seuss’s ABC.
+ My nine year old does a lot of reading on her own that I don’t usually mention every week (I do share many of them in my monthly reading wrap ups on my personal blog though), because she reads so much I don’t often assign her books to read but one thing I have challenged her to do this year is read through the Bible (my husband and I are also doing it as well). Most days she has her Bible reading done even before she gets out of bed in the morning. In case you are wondering, the Bible reading plan we are using is via the Read Scripture app.
We finally started easing ourselves into homeschooling again this week. With Christmas and then spur of the moment dental surgery for one of our little guys and then pneumonia for another one we were kind of forced into a longer break than I had originally planned for.
It’s just a good reminder for myself to appreciate once again the flexibility of homeschooling. I can’t imagine trying to get my school aged kids to school every day when we had all this other stuff going on.
Of course, we jumped into homeschooling in what will probably be our coldest week of the winter. The temperature barely got warmer than -30 all week. School buses weren’t running but kids are still expected to be at school (and I was so glad I didn’t have to drive mine!).
OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK IN REVIEW
For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:
The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4 The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1 The Preschooler – he’s 3 The Toddler – he just turned 2!
(The preschooler and toddler came to us in the fall via foster care.)
Here’s a recap of our week:
+ we learned about cheetah’s and caracal’s thanks to Wild Kratts. In the winter while hiding from the freezing temperatures we tend to use a lot more technology in our homeschool and as someone who does not appreciate the cold I am totally okay with that.
+ the winter always feels like the perfect time to work on a family puzzle so I pulled out this 500 piece Norman Rockwell puzzle that I picked up at Dollar Tree in the fall. So far we’ve just tried to do the outline and I’m not too impressed with the puzzle, it’s nearly impossible to tell if the pieces go together . . . I may end up getting rid of it and pulling out a different puzzle.
+ each of the kids did a little bit of math out of their workbooks (we use some that we found at Costco). We’re starting back slowly so my daughter is doing some multi-digit addition and subtraction review and my son did some addition and subtraction up to 20 review.
+ my six year old continued on with the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We’ve taken this book slow over the last year or so because he kind of hit a wall for awhile. Learning to read has not been an easy task for him but he has made so much progress. He still mixes up the sounds for b/d/p quite often and struggles with some words that he’s seen thousands of times but can read bigger ones (like, he has no problem reading the word “little” but almost always stumbles over “the”). He hit a bit milestone this week though but completing a sticker chart that I had made for him quite awhile ago, as a result we are going to be going to a children’s museum next week!
+ the preschooler has been obsessed with naming the colors of everything lately. When he came to us less than three months ago he didn’t know any colors (or really how to speak at all) and now he knows most of the colors. He’s had a huge learning curve and has loved it.
+ because the temperature was so cold for most of the week one day I let the kids have the option between doing math from their workbook or playing Sushi Go. Not surprisingly, they chose the game. Sushi Go involves using a variety of math skills while playing and it was a good trade off. I might make this a Friday tradition for the winter. (You can see more of the games we like to play here.)
I would love to hear about your homeschool week, let me know what you learned about and/or some of the resources you used.
January is a pretty terrible month for weather here in Saskatchewan. Looking at my temperature gauge right now I can tell you it is -35C (-31F) and -50C (-58F) with the wind.
Needless to say we don’t venture outside much in January and we all start to get cabin fever a bit.
With the cold weather also comes a bit of the winter blues and a bit of a homeschool winter slump.
Knowing this would happen (because it happens every year) back in July, when the sun was shining and the air was still warm I decided to be proactive and I asked for some ideas over on Instagram on what you all like to do when the winter slump occurs.
Oh, now we’re down to -52C (-61.6F) . . . after writing this post out I’m going to have to use some of this advice and do some of these in our homeschool today!
Because my Instagram followers are awesome they shared all sorts of ideas. I am going to share a lot of them here but there were so many you can check out the original Instagram post for all the ideas.
Ideas to Help You Homeschool In a Winter Slump
Also, one thing to note: adding hot chocolate to any of the following suggestions always makes things even better!
Author/Book Study
The winter is a great time to pull out all the books you’ve collected over the year. There were a couple of people who gave ideas for specific author/book studies they were going to be doing this winter:
Barbara Reid books and her plasticine art (my nine year old loves plasticine books and tv shows – Shaun the Sheep – so I know she would love this!)
I mean, Lego is just an everyday activity here but even more so in the winter months.
Audiobooks
We love listening to audiobooks in our home (we usually listen while we are eating our meals), you can check out all my audiobook tips, including the various apps we use for listening to audiobooks here and a list of the best audiobooks here.
STEM activities
My kids love STEM activities! Unfortunately I’m not the greatest at doing them myself but my husband is pretty good at it! You can check out all our STEM posts here as well as some great STEM books here.
Historical documentaries
This was a great suggestion but one we’ve never really done. If you have some great historical documentaries that are good for kids I would love to hear them!
Baking
It not only warms up the house but they learn math and you get something delicious out of it at the end! It’s a win all the way around.
Crate Subscriptions
Crate subscriptions can be a lot of fun and the winter is the perfect time to try them out. We’ve had Little Passports before as well as Kiwi Co.’s Tinker and Doodle crates and the kids have enjoyed all of them! If shipping wasn’t so crazy expensive to Canada I’m sure we would get more of them!
Handicrafts
The winter is the perfect time for all sorts of handicrafts. My daughter really wants to get better and sewing so a few months ago I made a list of ten beginner sewing projects she can pick from this winter.
Learn a new skill
Potentially in relation to handicrafts is to learn a new skill! But you don’t have to limit it to handicrafts, you could work on a new language, learning to code, there are tons of different options!
Educational TV
This one is an easy one that kids love and there so many options for! Some of our favorites include:
Such a fun idea! Build a fort, grab some snacks, lots of blankets and some books and you’re all set! While fort building you work on all sorts of engineering and construction skills.
While technically not a “game” I also like pulling out a big puzzle to do as a family in the winter (usually one between 500-1000 pieces).
Museum Tours
We have a few different indoor “museum” type places we like to visit and we often save these visits for the winter.
Library
We take out over $20,000 a year in library resources (and that doesn’t even factor in our audiobooks via Libby and Hoopla), so obviously we love the library! There are a number of resources available besides just books and they often have some great programming available for kids.
While I love the idea of art tables, laying out all sorts of craft supplies for kids to use as they wish, I’m honestly a little too OCD and a perfectionist to actually allow it. But I wish it was something we did here!
Mini unit studies
I had plans to do weekly mini studies this year and while we haven’t had them quite that often we do really enjoy them when we do them.
Always a win! You can make the playdough and play with it too! We make a gluten free version in our home.
If you have more ideas for how to spice things up in the winter and survive the freezing cold winter months while still educating your children I would love to hear them!
We’ve had a virus go through our house in the last two weeks that has slowly hit one kid after another and as a result it through off my December homeschool plan a bit.
Thankfully I didn’t plan for an intense academic month, my main focus for the month was the Christmas season and we have been able to do that. But because of the sickness I thought it would make sense to put our light two weeks into one review.
Also due to the sickness we relied more on technology for our academics, I am thankful that we have the ability and resources to turn to things like YouTube when kids are lying on the couch recovering from fevers and we all learn a lot.
OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK IN REVIEW
For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:
The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4 The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1 The Preschooler – he’s 3 The Toddler – he’s 1 (almost 2)
Here’s a recap of our week:
+ I wanted to learn about stars a little this month, nothing too in-depth but the topic just seemed fitting with Christmas, this is when we relied heavily on YouTube, here are some of the videos we watched:
+ We played Castle Panic with the fourth and first graders one afternoon. It was difficult with the little boys around but we managed to play, though we did die to the monsters so maybe we can blame that on the distraction the little ones cause.
+ The six and three year old each drew Batman. Because the three year old has only been with us for a month and a half I wasn’t sure how it would go for him (skill wise) and it was pretty hard so I ended up just putting my hand over his and we drew Batman together, he was so proud of his drawing when we were done.
+ The fourth and first graders both worked on math most days. It was almost always in their workbooks but one day I wanted to take my son to the chalkboard and show him how easy it was to add 10 with a one digit number, it was something that wasn’t coming quickly to him but once we started doing a few problems and I showed him the pattern he totally got it.
+ After the light week we had I wanted to create a bit more of a plan. I like to just use a notebook or a piece of paper and write out all the things I want each kid to accomplish. Honestly, we didn’t even get all that I had listed done this week but I am okay with that because we also added some things in that I didn’t plan for. Oh, and that Danger on a Silent Night book I had planned for my daughter to read over the course of a few days? She read it the first day, she also requested we get more of the Imagination Station books.
+ The toddler has been big into building towers out of blocks and the preschooler has been going through some of our wipe clean books, his current favorite is one I got from the dollar store years ago.
+ Also big on the preschooler’s radar right now is StarFall. I bought the full version for the year and the nine and six year olds are also playing it, probably partly out of nostalgia because I bought the full version for each of them when they were four.
+ My daughter spent some time doing some Draw So Cute videos, truthfully, sometimes they stress her out and she usually doesn’t like the look of her drawing while she’s in the middle of it but by the end she is smitten. I think her Hermione is adorable.
I know we did more in the last two weeks but this is all I can remember at the moment. We’re going to have a pretty light week next week and the week after we’re going to take off completely for Christmas. I doubt I’ll post a review next week, if I don’t the next one will be right around the new year, crazy to think about!
