This Homeschooling Life #6

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Another new month and the sixth edition of ‘This Homeschool Life’. I have to admit to being a little glad January is over. It’s probably my least favourite month of the year. We all struggled to get back into any kind of ‘routine’ after the lovely Christmas break. This month so far has been wet, cold and very windy which hasn’t inspired us to feel like doing much at all.

For me, I felt like I hit a bit of a homeschool burnout this month. Feeling a little overwhelmed with life in general, and the constant-ness of everything. Add in a severe lack of sleep, bickering children and a week long migraine and it’s a recipe for disaster! I decided the best course of action was to just let go of the worry. Go with the flow and remember WHY we chose to home ed. Not to have them sitting down doing ‘school at home’ but to let them follow their own interests. Home ed is an entirely different route, and looks so different to school. Sometimes my brain still returns to the ‘school conditioning’ that it was so used to growing up and forgets that it’s ok to be different!

So… I got the girls to have a think about what they wanted to learn over the next couple of months or so. They came up with some great ideas and we came up with a couple of ideas for each one… for example, Baya is horse mad and decided to she wanted to study them. So we thought she could do some horse inspired art – maybe a 3D model or some Dala Horse esq paintings.. as well as making a mini fact file about horses. Creating mind maps is a great way to get the kids inspired and thinking about what is important to them. I’ve found over the years that topics that they have chosen are met with so much more enthusiasm!

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We’ve been joining in with Nurture Store’s Art Spark group the past couple of weeks. We all love painting and creating, and having some daily prompts and ideas has been just the thing to kick-start us this month. Right now what I need is ready-made ideas that don’t require me to think or plan too much! It’s also been lovely having a community of other families joining in to chat with and share what we’ve been creating. The girls had fun making some wax resist watercolour paintings {I enjoyed it too!] and really really loved making some milk marbled paper.

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The girls love doing science-y stuff, and I came across Mystery Science {on facebook I think}, It’s a site full of ready to go science lessons aimed at roughly ages 6-11 so fits pretty well for us all to work on together. We signed up for free access until the end of the school year {end of June}, so far we’ve worked through the Birth of Rocks topic and it’s been fun – videos to watch, worksheets, discussion questions and some fun hands-on experiments.vega duplo this homeschool life

We haven’t been doing many trips out lately, I don’t know why as we used to go out lots, I think we’ve just gotten bogged down in life and work… I’d planned to go for a couple of days out last week – I was planning on Chirk Castle and a nice long hike to Erddig… unfortunately the weather was awful – so windy I think we’d have literally blown away if we’d tried to walk anywhere! So last week we headed to Chester for the day instead, thankfully the weather was a little nicer there. We took a walk around the Cathedral and then headed to the Grosvenor Museum after a yummy lunch out. A change of routine was just what we needed. We headed back to Chester on Friday on to meet friends to make some land art in the park too.

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Those days out made a big difference – I’m definitely going to plan in some more trips out, I can’t wait for some better weather now so we can spend more time outside. I don’t actually mind being out when it’s cold, but pouring rain and storm-strength winds are a different matter!

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. We’d love you to link up with us and share what homeschooling looks like for your family. 
 
The linky will open at 8am on the first Monday of every month and throughout the rest of the month the hosts will share your posts on their social media channels. 
 
The Hosts:
 
Adele who blogs at Beautiful Tribe 
Laura who blogs at Side Street Style
Polly who blogs at Enchanted Pixie
 
The Rules:
 
1. Link back to one of the hosts. You will find the code for the badge at the bottom or if you prefer you can use a text link.

2. Link up a post from your month, no more than 3.
 
3. Link directly to a specific post, not your main blog.
 
4. Follow each of the hosts on at least one of their social media platforms.
 
5. Visit and comment on some of the other blogs linking up.
 
6. If you share on social media then you can use the #thishomeschoolinglife so we can all find each other.

This Homeschooling Life


2 Comments

  1. Jess @ Along Came Cherry

    February 2, 2016 at 08:40

    I’m so glad January is over! It’s my worst month of the year and I’ve really struggled with this one. I think it’s interesting how we’ve all kind of mentioned the school comparison, my Mr C it’s an issue I think, just always feeling like we should be doing more. I loved that link you shared the other day actually about how much time is actually spent learning in school, it really helps puts things into perspective on wobble days. We haven’t had many trips anywhere either, I really wanted to go to the beach for the day one weekend but it either rained on This Sunday we had planned to but Tiger was ill. I’m so looking forward to nicer weather and spring! xx

  2. Adele @ Beautiful Tribe

    February 4, 2016 at 12:24

    Going out makes such a difference. We were home a lot in January and I’m convinced it affected my outlook in a big way. We went on a home ed field trip to a fire station yesterday and it reminded me that yes, this is what it’s all about! Of course, being home is important too. It’s all about striking that balance!

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