Tag: stay at home mom

Homeschooling

by Ariana Peters, posted in school/studying, kids, life

Homeschooling a 2.5 yr old can be challenging, very trying on my patience, frustrating and so very rewarding. Watching him progress and take leaps and bounds forward is wonderful.

Butterfly grow kit
This was a good introduction to life cycles

The nice thing about homeschooling is that I can tailor our days to the kids. On days he is having a hard time we can do no schooling or just 1 or 2 things. On days he is doing well we can bust the work out.

This morning was sort of a good morning. The baby woke up early (not the good part hahahaha) and my husband got up with her after I fed her. I stayed in bed but realized I wasn’t going to fall back asleep easily and figured 30 extra min of sleep would probably end up making me more tired so I got up and went for a run.

We then had a slow morning of watching some cartoons and relaxing. After breakfast we busted the work out cause he was focused.

Baby colored while we worked.

I also read aloud to them for 10min from a magic treehouse book.

Every day is different, what we do and what we get done is different.

The next day was a good morning and we busted it out again. He had some excess energy to burn so he would run a lap around the house and I’d stop him to answer a school question then he’d take another lap. We got through 4 workbook pages and a spread in our things to spot book this way and he laughed the whole time.

Our first week homeschooling

by Ariana Peters, posted in Uncategorized

This week we are focusing on the Ocean

Monday

We started off with this documentary while we did his bottle and played a little.
Then we read one BOB book (we have already been doing this for a few weeks) and we read this book about ocean animals
On our walk we (and by we I mean I talked and pointed things out to him hahahah) talked about seeds (each of those brown things are the seed from a tree) and how they grt knocked off the tree and can fly away and make new trees

I also pointed our blackberries and talked about how they also have seeds that help them grow after they drop to the ground. 

Lastly, we read a poem from a book called Songs of the seasons which has about 60 poems going through the seasons of the year.

Tuesday

We had the same basic morning. Finished the oceans documentary and read the ocean life book and the next in our BOB book set.

In the afternoon I tried a simple sensory bin with things around the house……he hated it hahahahahahaha. He was angry that I wouldn’t let him eat the beads.

We also looked at this weeks suggested painting from our exploring nature course.

Wednesday

We started drain the seas on national geographic and read the next BOB book. In the afternoon we practiced our ABCs

Thursday

Same morning routine. Then in the afternoon we went to a new park for a playdate.

We were also supposed to read a Magic Treehouse book about Pirates but Amazon had delayed it indefinitely.

Friday

We watched drain the seas and took 2 walks and practiced counting from 1-10.

Our public library was closed for renovations and was supposed to reopen on Tuesday but due to the increase in the delta varient they did not. They just announced that they will be starting curbside pickup again so i am going to try and get that set up for us to do.

Saturday

We are finishing the week by reading the poem from our exploring nature course.

On a side note i started the movie Finding Nemo and turned it off within 15 min. I HATED it. First the mom and all the siblings die then Nemo gets kidnapped!!! Sorry if that was a spoiler. I know I watched this movie years ago but clearly that was before I was a mother.

So that was our very basic first week. We haven’t perfected this by any means. I’ll bring you along for another week next month.

Home school prep

by Ariana Peters, posted in baby, kids, school/studying

Ok first off, yes, my baby is only 8.5 months old. I fully understand I am not REALLY starting homeschooling him. However, I am lucky enough to be a stay at home mom right now so I want to make the most of it. I simply want to make sure that I am giving him opportunities to learn as much as possible. Most of it will all be through play and exploration.

I have done a very rough layout of the next 3 years. Basically I picked a theme each week of the year, with a few no theme more relaxed ‘off weeks’ thrown in. I had a weekly calendar page that i spilt each day into 3 parts. The first section is year 1, its a lot of reading (me to him hahahaha) ABCs, sensory bins, fun on topic movie nights, learning to color things like that. Year 2 builds on that by adding in tracing and more emphasis on counting and matching small adjustments like that. And year 3 we add in more counting/math a few fun basic age appropriate science experiments etc. Here is a basic example

I also purchased ‘Exploring Nature with Children‘ which I am very excited about. Again the first year or two will just be me pointing things out and talking a little more and each year we can build on it. There is also a weekly poem and art piece to look at and study.

I love the BrainQuest workbooks and other items so as he advances we will add some of that in.

I am also looking at The Good and Beautiful curriculum and will slowly order some of that and as he advances ncorporate that. I also want to slowly incorporate lots of farm study material. Those kind of things will be very relevant as he is feeding our chickens and gathering eggs one day. And asking how plants make a lot of the food we eat and things like that.

Tomorrow we start our first week of ‘official’ not official homeschooling hahahah. Our theme is the ocean as well as totally different theme of seeds from the exploring nature curriculum. I am going to document this week and I will update you next weekend with how it went!!