When we started homeschooling, we had a few goals for our kids. We want them to have a customized education that helps them become happy, healthy adults. So life skills are one of the subjects that we teach and focus on in our homeschooling. Learning financial skills is one of the life skills we work on.
Download The Allowance Chart we use with our kids.
We’re excited that our girls are starting to understand money. It’s a going to be a long series of lessons as they grow. But we’re off to a good start.
What do you teach your kids when you are homeschooling?
It can be a little overwhelming because there are really so many possibilities!
First, you’ll want to make sure that check with your state or provincial requirements. Some places have certain subjects that must be taught at home. So make sure you check that!
But if you live in a place like we do (Ontario, Canada), where there are few to no requirements, let alone a requirement for certain subjects, deciding what you are going to teach can be a little overwhelming.
So lets break it down a little for you.
Traditional Subjects
You can start by looking at the traditional subjects. You know the ones that everyone knows and that are taught in schools.
Math
Science
Language Arts (reading, writing)
social studies/history/geography
art
music
physical education/health
bible/religious studies
Lifeskills
A lot of parents spend time helping their kids prepare for adulthood, by teaching some basic lifeskills.
household chores (laundry, dishes,
cooking/baking
pet care
gardening/yard maintenance
homesteading/animal care
auto repair/ small engine repair
plumbing/ woodworking/ electrical
Even more Options
Looking for more options? Pretty much anything can become a subject of study when you are a homeschooler.
coding
nature studies
robotics
handicrafts (sewing, knitting, etc)
business/ entrepreneurial skills
pretty much anything your kids are really interested in
So there are lots of options of subjects, when you homeschool. The upside to all this choice? You get build and design a homeschool program that is unique to your family, your values and your children.
Unit studies are growing as a popular homeschooling style. And rightfully so! They are highly engaging. You can easily pick from thousands of topics your kids are interested in. And you can study one topic as a family with each child getting something out the unit.
You can buy unit studies and even find many online for free. But what if your kids are found a subject they are really into and you can’t afford the curriculum or you can’t find any for your child’s rare topic choice.
In that case, you can build your own and it’s actually very easy. Just follow these 6 simple steps. We’ve even got a Free Printable PDF to help you build your own!
You have to start by picking a topic. Once you’ve decided on your topic, decide what subjects you want to hit while you doing this unit. I often recommend trying to hit no more than 3 or 4 subjects in a single unit.
2. Books
Find some books on the topic. Gather anything you can find. Picture books, poetry books, non-fiction, field guides and novels.
I also like to try and find one big book, a novel or chapter book that we can read throughout the study. I look for something that is related to the topic if possible (like Charlotte’s Web in an Insect unit study). Sometimes, it’s a little bit of a stretch but we make it work.
3. Hands-On activities
We like to keep our unit studies to about a 4-6 weeks, with a month being our most popular timeline. So in a month-long study, I’ll aim to find 3-4 hands-on activities to do with the kids. Pinterest is my go to for ideas.
4. Media and TV
TV, movies and media can be a great learning tool in your homeschooling. I like to find something educational for the kids to watch every now and then. Sometimes a 5 minute YouTube video can explain something better than I could in an hour. Look for YouTube clips, documentaries or educational shows like Magic School Bus for ideas.
5. Field Trip
Get out of the house and find a cool place that is related to your topic. Go and visit a museum, a specific floor of a science centre, a play or literally a field.
6. Big Project
A big project can be helpful way to pull all you’ve learned together. Sometimes we do it at the start of our unit (Like planting a garden when we’re learning about plants and seeds). Sometimes we do it at the end (like a big experiment at the end of our Scientist unit).
7. Recipe (Bonus)
If I can find a fun recipe, then it’s a little bonus. I get the kids to help me make it and include it during our poetry teatime.
Unit studies can be a fun way to get kids excited about learning at home and are often a great pick-me-up idea when things get a little blah. We often do a unit study in January, after the excitement of the holidays wears off and we’re feeling a little unmotivated.
To help you create your own unit study, we’ve created an awesome PDF. You can download it for free! It’s designed to help you create any unit for your unique family!
Last summer, I asked Alexie what she wanted to learn and do in her homeschooling this year. She had a few suggestions. One of them was to have more tea parties.
That’s certainly an idea I can get on board with.
Poetry teatime was an idea from “Brave Learner” author Julie Bogart. The concept is simple. Host a tea party with your kids and share some great books and poems.
If this is an idea that you think your kids would love, let me walk you through how to host the perfect poetry teatime.
1.Make Some Snacks
We love to make some food for our party. We often make some kind of baking, whether it’s cookies, muffins, or loaf. Because of Alexie’s food sensitivities, we usually have to make 2 different recipes, but it’s just a normal thing for us. We also like to make seasonal choices or to connect with a book or poem that we will read. By doing a little baking we are adding some math and science to our teatime.
2. Set the Scene
It’s important to take some time to set the scene for our tea parties. We set the table with our nice china, little plates, and cute napkins. We light tealight candles, arrange some flowers, and make it a pretty place to sit. It’s also a great idea to set the ambiance by playing some soft music in the background.
3. Serve the Tea
Serving the tea is very important and how we kick off our tea time. Feel free to serve whatever liquid you would like. Favourites at our house include pink lemonade, iced tea, and hot chocolate in the winter.
4. Start Reading
Julie Bogart started poetry teas as a way to foster a love of poetry in her children. And while we often read poetry from one of our Shel Silverstein books or others, we’ll also read things other than poetry, too. We’ve read Christmas stories during the holidays, picture books by some of our favourite authors, or even a chapter or two from a chapter book the girls were already reading.
While the idea of poetry is nice, I also love the idea of teatime just being a time to read and share a love of literature. And when the girls get older, they’ll be able to take turns reading aloud and might even take the opportunity to read one of their original stories or poems.
So many parents complain about their kid’s inability to hold a pencil properly. We hear this a lot, especially from the parents of kindergarteners and preschoolers.
Being a teacher, as well as a homeschool mom, I have a few tips and tricks to not only encourage proper grip but also the enjoyment of writing.
Alligator Grip
I found with young children, practising the Alligator grip is super helpful. Our goal is to get a pencil grip that is 2 fingers on top and the thumb underneath, with the pencil resting in the crook of the hand.
Using the little rhyme “Chomp! Chomp! Chomp! Bite! Alligators like to write!” we chomp down our pencil and then hold it right where the paint ends.
Strength and Coordination
Most people don’t realize how much strength and coordination are required to write with a pencil. You must have the fine motor skills in your hands and the strength in your fingers to hold the pencil. Then, you need to have the upper body and arm strength to push down on the paper with enough force to make a mark. And then there’s the coordination to make readable letters. It’s a lot of work for a young child. Many get tired quickly. And tired leads to not wanting to write, which can lead to arguments and frustration for everyone.
We let our daughters use a marker for their writing work. Markers don’t require any upper body force, which means one less thing to think of. And they get the encouragement of seeing marks on the page right away. And it’s way more fun, getting to pick a fun new colour every day.
Keep It Short
If your child is still struggling with holding a pencil, consider shortening it. A long pencil gives more options on where to hold it incorrectly. It also can be difficult for them to balance it correctly on their little hands because of the long length. Consider things like golf pencils, mini markers or chalk, all of which are short and require you to hold it at the end rather somewhere in the middle.
Art and Writing are Very Different Things
Art and writing both use similar materials but the outcome is quite different. The way you hold a marker, crayon or pencil while drawing is very different from the way you hold a pencil while writing.
Allow children lots of opportunities to explore writing mediums in an artistic way to strengthen their hands and arms (but don’t focus on the grip). Only focus on the grip while forming letters. Even if your child draws letters in their drawings, let them do so how they want. It’s all part of the learning experience and they are testing out how their grip can change the way the letters look.
Writing can be a lot of fun, especially if you don’t over-burden a child with too many expectations. Let them doodle, write in a secret journal, or draw on the pavement with chalk. It’s all working towards building writers who love to write and can hold their pencil properly.
Last year we started a tradition. During the month of December, the girls really look forward to two things. They love to do their daily advent activity and they love their daily Christmas book.
You see, on December 1st, the girls wake up to find the advent calendar set up and 24 presents under the tree. Each present is a book — a fun and festive book for us to read together.
Now, I don’t buy 24 new books. But, what I do is wrap up 24 Christmas books that we already have. Since my teaching days, I’ve slowly built up my collection, adding a book or two every year, stalking up when they go on sale after the holidays. Now I wrap up 24 of those books. We’ve got classics like “The Night Before Christmas” and “The Nutcracker.” We’ve got some wintery books, like “Frosty the Snowman.” There are also fun and quarky books, like “Saumari Santa” — which is a favourite around here.
We wrap up each book and put them under the tree. On odd days Alexie opens the advent calendar and Zoé picks a book, any book under the tree. The next day, we alternate. Once we open it, we put the books in our book basket (kind of like a reverse book basket) and we read them again and again over the weeks leading up to Christmas!
Here are the books that will be under our tree this year!
These are the books that we will be wrapping up this year. What favourite holiday books are on your list? I’ve always got my eye out for some new great books to add to the collection.
A few years ago, we started going to the pumpkin patch in the fall and it quickly became a favourite family tradition. So, every year during the month of October, we drive out and spend the day at the pumpkin patch. It’s the perfect day.
After a few hours of wandering through a corn maze and wagon rides, we found the mountain of pumpkins and picked out our perfect pumpkin. Zoé found ours this year and it was a great big pumpkin. We loaded it up in our car and headed home to carve it up.
While we were carving our pumpkins, we decided to do a little math activity. Using the super awesome worksheet below, we had some fun practicing measuring our pumpkins. Alexie learned how to use a ruler and a tape measure. We measured the circumference, diameter, and weight of our pumpkins. We also estimated how many seeds were in our pumpkins and then counted how many were actually inside. This is clearly a skill we’ll need to work on, but it was just a fun thing to do.
We designed fun faces for our jack-o-lanterns and had a fun and educational evening. Oh and then we roasted the seeds. They were delicious and the perfect way to end the day!
Lots of people like to go pick apples at an orchard once the fall weather arrives. Well, the sweater weather is here, but we don’t have to leave our house for apples. We are lucky enough to have a few apple trees right on our property. So we picked some of our apples and decided to make an “Alexie-friendly” apple crisp recipe.
With Alexie’s food sensitivities, we do a lot of baking. We have to make everything from scratch using some unique ingredients. But we like our special, seasonal treats. So we’re making a classic apple crumb that our whole family can enjoy together.
Eczema update
It’s been almost 7 months since Alexie got her food sensitivity diagnosis, and there have been lots of changes.
Our diet has changed a lot. Since Alexie is dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free and grain-free among other things, we have to get creative. “What do you feed her?” is the question we get the most. We basically live on fruits and vegetables and meat. We use quinoa a lot. From just quinoa, to quinoa pasta, to quinoa flakes. We also use a lot of cassava flour, which is a great flour alternative.
She doesn’t nap much anymore. Prior to her diagnosis, she was napping every single day. Like 3+ hours a day and still sleeping her whole night at almost 4 years old. Once all her scabs healed up (which took about 5 weeks) she gave up her nap. I think her body needed the extra sleep just to heal and fight infections. But now that her body is healed, she just doesn’t need as much sleep. She still takes the occasional nap but they are only about an hour long and maybe once a week.
Apple Crumble
6-8 apples (ours we small so we used 8 or 9)
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup vegan butter (we use Earth Butter or Melt butter, soy-free)
Peel and chop apples. Toss with 2 tsp of cinnamon and place into a pie pan.
In a bowl, combine melted vegan butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, quinoa flakes, and cassava flour.
Spread on top of apples and bake in a 350*F oven for 30-35 minutes until apples are soft and the crumble topping is golden and crisp.
Allow to cool a little and enjoy!
Alexie really enjoyed her special dessert and actually we all love it. It’s nice to be able to have these fall recipes and traditions that we can all enjoy together.
Stéphane has a fascination with looking at things under the microscope. And like father, like daughter, so does Alexie. These two love finding things, especially in nature, and examining them under the microscope.
Since it’s fall, he decided to do a Fall themed microscope discovery session with Alexie. He gathered a bunch of cool, autumn things and brought them inside. With our super cool (and affordable) digital microscope, they got busy looking at each item.
We also had a great little printable made up for our various microscope sessions. Here, Alexie can draw what she sees on the screen and “record her findings” like a real little scientist. This printable is great for a variety of ages and you can download it for free right here!
This month, we’ve been slowly getting into the flow of things. Stéphane is back to work, the girls’ groups, classes, and activities are slowly starting up again and we are really starting to find our rhythm. And part of our rhythm has become a daily walk.
So far this month, we’ve made it out almost every day, even rainy days. We’ve enjoyed walks around the neighbourhood, down to the park and through the various trails near our home.
During our latest walk, we decided to add a little activity. We made a fun scavenger hunt of leaves. Our Northern Ontario trees are unique and we wanted to spend a little time learning about them. We made a photo list to help us identify leaves and off we went on our walk.
The girls loved looking for the leaves and learning their names and more about them. And, the exercise and fresh air were great too!
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