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.
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.
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.
Ask any homeschooler and they will tell you that the most common question they get is about socialization. While it’s not an issue (see our post here on putting this question to bed) some parents do worry that their children aren’t getting enough socialization.
The truth is, unless you are living under a rock and never leaving your house, your child is probably getting enough socialization. But if you are looking for ways to give your child more oppertunities to interact with others here are some of our favourite ways we socialize our homeschool kids.
Where we like to take our kids to socialize:
Playgroups/ Hubs
Preschool Programs
Errands/Appointments/Shopping
Visiting Family
Extra-curricular Activities
Our Neighbourhood
Public Spaces (like a library)
Hopefully this will give you some ideas of where you can take your children to interact with others and help them socialize. Where do your kids do their socializing? Let us know!
We planted a little garden in some raised boxes in our yard. It was a super hot day, but we had fun and some popsicles along the way.
We planted several things including tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, carrots and mini pumpkins. We are also lucky that we have raspberries and apple trees that grow on our property, too. Hopefully we get a good little harvest and learn some great life skills!
We have a bit of a strange Valentine’s Day tradition.
Every year we splurge on really nice steaks from our local butcher and make a fancy dinner for our family. Steak, garlic roasted potatoes, sauteed mushrooms, green beans and some kind of fancy dessert. We eat by candle-light and make a fun night out of it. And then we do something most people would consider strange.
We plant tomato seeds.
You see where we live, we have a super short growing season. Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t have an awesome little garden, just that we have to plan well and if we want to use our own seeds, then we have to start early.
So we start planting our tomatoes on Valentine’s day. It’s a little unconventional but it works for us and it makes a unique family tradition. We use our heirloom seeds that we collected the year before and start a whole bunch of tomato plants. We’ll use what we need, and give the rest to our family in the spring.
It was a cold, snowy day and we had no interest in heading outside. So we stayed inside and got to work building a fort!
We usually get dressed every day, but every once in a while, we like to have a PJ Day and just relax. But that doesn’t mean that the learning stops.
Fort building is a great activity for little kids. It fosters creativity and imagination. It has all kinds of engineering aspects and it’s a great way for them to build something life-size.
Forts are a great way to make other activities exciting, too! Want to know what’s more fun than reading? Reading in a fort, of course! A fort is a great place to do puzzles, read or colour.
Leaving a glass of milk and a plate of cookies is a cornerstone Christmas tradition for most families. Growing up, I always looked forward to putting the cookies out on Christmas Eve. I was always a little particular about what cookies Santa got. They had to be the tastiest, cutest cookies I could find.
And, of course, they had to be homemade.
Making the Christmas cookies became just as much of a tradition as putting them out on Christmas Eve.
This year, we got busy making some very special cookies for the Old Man in Red. We considered many recipes but finally decided on these Peanut Butter cookies with Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt. Dad was really adamant that these were one of Santa’s favourites. So, we got busy making them.
They turned out really good. They were easy enough to make with 2 little girls, but were special enough that they would make Santa feel extra special when he came to our house.
Baking has so many great educational components and aspects. We’re reading a recipe and directions, doing fractions and chemistry, and it’s really packed with hands-on (not to mention edible) lessons. Let’s not forget life skills! Kids need to learn these valuable skills and you can easily start them young.
I can assure you, Santa took a couple really big bites out of them on Christmas Eve!
