January Homeschool

I feel like these are probably boring to anyone but our moms but I personally love reading about other families’ homeschool endeavors so I’ll keep sharing for now.

January was just more of the same in some ways, but we’ve got a good kind of routine going that all of us like so we’ll take it!

Every morning we eat breakfast and read our devotional, brush teeth, do a few chores together, and then curl up on the couch during D’s first nap for some reading. (There is lots of weirdness peppered in here because of time to nurse, getting dressed, changing diapers, etc). Lately we’ve been doing a poem and song from What Your Preschooler Needs to Know, a picture book, some Spanish, another picture book, and then a Bible story (from The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible in January). After that, the girls color while A and I work together on some ABC and 123 stuff.

I found some Bible dot-to-dots at the Dollar Tree this month so I got both, an ABC and a 123 version. If there’s a dot-to-dot in one of those that goes with our Bible story then we do that together, otherwise he is still loving that Star Wars number workbook.

Sometimes we do an ABC workbook page if we didn’t do an ABC dot-to-dot, but mostly I’ve been doing fun games for him… see if you can bring me three things that start with S before this timer dings, setting up ten big letter magnets with ten toys and having him match the item with the letter it starts with, etc.

He’s also still loving writing projects and we do one almost every day M-F. He’ll color a picture and then tell me the story to write (he now likes to write the title and a few words in the story himself), we write letters to family/friends/Dad, and he’s been enjoying making fun lists in his journal… 5 books I love, 5 things I like to do with my family, 5 of my favorite foods, 5 things I did this weekend, etc.

We took a break from their musical instruments for a while since D was always napping at first. Now they’re back and driving me a little crazy, but in a cute way. I had told myself we’d do more art and music this month and I do think I did well with music but art, gosh. I just hate art. It’s so messy. But I really am trying! We painted with their mess-free paint set thing which is not mess-free, but is at least stain-free.

We have been incorporating simple games into their Spanish review each week too and last week I gave them each a Duplo for every word they knew. They built towers out of them and then the kid with the tallest tower at the end (A, of course) got to pick out the naptime book. I am all ears if you have any ideas for “trivia” style games because those will work well for Spanish words!

One of my 2018 goals was to take a field trip each month. Not only do I want them to get to learn by experiencing things, I also feel bad because they pretty much only leave the house for doctors’ appointments these days. (Four car seats, winter weather, new baby, SVT before that, tubal ligation after that, avoiding the flu… always something!) We explored a nearby pond over the summer and our January field trip plan was to explore the same pond in the winter and talk about what was the same and what was different. We all went out together one Saturday but the weather was terrible so we ended up walking around Cabela’s instead. I was really disappointed but Ryan pointed out that the kids really did learn a lot asking so many questions about all the animals on display. I think February’s field trip will again be to try and explore that pond.

Ten of our favorite picture books from January: Bernice Gets Carried Away // The Quilt Maker’s Gift // The Bear Ate your Sandwich // The Deer in the Wood // Say it // The Little House // The Snowy Valentine // A Pocket for Corduroy // BB-8 on the Run // Little Hoot