This Homeschooling Life #18

February! January came and went in the blink of an eye, homeschooling wise it was a pretty good month for us. Winter always sees us spending more time indoors, escaping the cold and the rain, focused on more projects and filling our days with crafts, books and lots of baking!

Someone asked me last month how Lola was getting on at school. She’s been there for just over three months now, and is still enjoying it. She’s settled in pretty well, has made some friends and seems to be adjusting to her new normal. The early morning starts are still a little much {I’m forever grateful that I don’t actually have to take here – getting up to wave goodbye is as much as I can manage at that time of the morning!}. She’s enjoying most of her classes and is pretty much at the level she needed to be, they’ve given her a little extra maths catch-up, but in general I’m amazed at how well she’s slotted into such a different way of life. It’s also given me a confidence in all we’ve done over the years – knowing that she has the skills to adjust, to learn what she needs to, to follow her own path – such important life skills.

January saw us shake up our routine. We’ve spent years doing ‘school work’ in the mornings on days we’re at home, with the kids having free time whilst I work in the afternoon. It never really worked that well, but their Dad seemed to expect them to do ‘school work’ before play, so that’s what we did. Suddenly, mid-month I realised that we could switch things around and find a rhythm that suited us. So now, after seeing Lola off, I spend the morning working, doing jobs around the house that need doing, and pottering, whilst they get to wake up when they are ready and having their free time. Sometimes they spend the entire morning on facetime to their friend, letting us all hear their {very loud} karaoke, other times they’ll play board games, or spend the morning painting or creating. We usually all come together for some read-aloud time in the living room, before we have lunch. Then I’ll spend a couple of hours working with them on their school work – reading and maths some days, lapbooks or projects or art the other days. Our days seem to flow so much better this way, and we are getting so much more done.

Last month we read ‘Julie of the Wolves’ as our book club book, I’m loving the read aloud time – although I struggled with the first half of this book, it just didn’t seem to flow, but half way through I found my pace and we loved the book! It led to us watching the Spy in the Wild documentaries, as well as this amazing video showing what happened when they released wolves back into Yellowstone Park.

There was a lot of cake baking.. Kiki experimented with an amazing double layered, marbled cake that was DELICIOUS! Nothing beats having kids who can bake by themselves… though we still need to work on the cleaning up after part.

We fitted in some Chinese New Year Crafts and started new lapbooks, and put together some ideas of what they want to study over the next month or two. Feel like after a few wobbly months, we’ve back up and running again!

This Homeschooling Life is a linky for you to share either a week, a day or just a moment from your life as a homeschooling family. We are hoping it will be a really nice way to discover new blogs and learn how we all do things differently.