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Christian, Homeschooling Mom of 2, Photography Lover, Southerner, Blogger, Encourager, and Prayer Warrior. I love sweet tea, my Nikon, cooking, & traveling.
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Saturday, May 8, 2010
Social Saturday: Reviving Homeschool
12:00 AM | 
Posted by
Meghan
Reviving Our Homeschool
Guest Post - Written by Honey Brown
I don't know about you, but the last term of any homeschool year is always the hardest for me! Around spring break is the time that I really have to motivate myself to finish out the year. Can anyone relate to that? I am getting bored with my materials and the excitement of another box day (and awesome new curriculum) is building.
I am the homeschooling mama of five children (four boys and one girl) and we are finishing our fourth year of homeschooling. We school year round and our new school year starts every August. We also live in Canada, so we need to order early to allow extra time for our materials to arrive by the start of next year.
The homeschooling catalogs have started arriving in the mail and I am beginning to think about what we are going to do next year. I don't know about you, but I love spending some quiet time in the evenings looking at the homeschooling catalogs. I have been looking in the catalogs and diligently planning, making lists and charts. Doesn't every homeschool mom do that? I need to order soon in order to be able to do adequate planning and preparation, but I am not exactly what I want to order yet.
In considering my planning for next year, I have been pondering what homeschooling magazines I will order. This will be my first year choosing a subscription, so I want to make good choices.
I also thought it would be neat to add in some fun, but educational magazines to our homeschooling next year. I can think of some great ways to use educational magazines are resources in our homeschooling. Extra learning built in without the kids realizing is always a good thing.
While I am contemplating and planning for next year, we still have to finish out this year. I want the year to end with a bang rather than a fizzle, so I am jam packing the next five weeks with our regular work (and pushing the kids extra hard) and I am adding in fun, fun, fun.
Who else needs to motivate themselves to finish out this year amidst the glitter and sheen of the new homeschool catalogs on the night table?
I was just looking at the calendar and was shocked to find that we only have 5 weeks left in this term. Yes, you read that right. How can we make those five weeks as fun as the first five weeks were? You know the first five weeks - the new curriculum has arrived and everything is new and exciting... I want that kind of feeling for my last five weeks of this year.
Truth be told, I don't want to finish this year, I just want to jump into next year. So, I have tried to find some ways to really enjoy the end of the year. We have added in cooking class, more science experiments, and extra fun art exploration to keep things exciting.
Cooking Class on Mondays
Have you cooked with your children? It doesn't matter how young or old they are, I am sure that they would enjoy cooking with mom. Pick out some fun family favorites and teach your children how to make them - step by step. So far, we have made pizza dough, play dough, and chocolate cake. The catch at our house is that I make each recipe with each individual child. Our kitchen is small and there is not much space to work, so this is the only way we can do this. I need to choose my recipes for the next five weeks. I would love to have all of the boys learn to make oatmeal, pancakes, cookies, and a couple of simple main dishes. I need to spend some time planning this out before Monday arrives again.
Here are some fun resources if you are interested in cooking with your kids:
A Trip Across Canada on Tuesdays
For our afternoon of social studies, we are studying Canada. While the study that I am writing covers all of the provinces and territories, we will only be completing the overview of Canada and the province of British Columbia. Come and join us in our study, we would love to have you.
Science Experiments on Wednesdays
Wednesday afternoons are set aside for fun science exploration. We have made fizzy soda so far and it was so much fun.
Here are some great places to get science experiments:
Art on Thursdays
I have come across some awesome art blogs and would like to spend our remaining Thursdays exploring some free art with a variety of different materials.
Check out these art blogs:
We will do our workbooks and lessons in the mornings and then dive in to our fun stuff in the afternoon. I wish I could make everything totally fun, but sometimes math and language arts just have to get done (you know what I mean?). So far, this new plan has been working fairly well. It has been nice to bring the fun back into our day (I am not sure exactly where it went, but it's nice to have it back). Of course baking chocolate cake and licking the spoon is fun for any kid, but it is cooking class, foods, science, and a whole bunch more as far as school is concerned.
What are some things that you have been wanting to do, but never finding time for? Maybe you could incorporate them into some kind of weekly plan?
Author Bio - Honey Brown is married to a homeschool mama of five young children. She runs Sunflower Schoolhouse. She is also on twitter and facebook. In her free time she enjoys graphic design, creating homeschool products, and creative writing.
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5 comments:
What a great guest post, Meghan!!!!
Honey -
Thank you for all of those great links! I can't wait to visit every single one!
Blessings,
Sue :)
Hi Meghan,
Thanks for inviting me to guest post. I had a ton of fun preparing this article for you.
Blessings
Honey
Hi Sue,
Thanks for the great comments. I am sure you will love visiting all of those great links. You will find loads of fun projects to do with the kids.
Blessings
Honey
This is my first time at your site and I get this fabulous post! Wow, how great is that! Honey sure knows how to keep the kids motivated, but I guess that's part of being an experienced homeschooling mom. I've been formally homeschooling for a year and I only have one child and it's a lot of work. Now I have so many new great resources. Thank you!
Sara @ Saving For Someday
www.savingforsomeday.com
@saving4someday
Hi Sara,
Thank you so much for stopping by to read my guest post! I had so much fun writing it. I love to give people resources and information that I have found. Enjoy the resources.
Blessings
Honey
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