Easing Back Into Homeschooling
We started back into homeschool this week after a long break and it went really well! It helps that we started each day gathered together in front of the wood stove to read. BRRRrrrr… it’s been cold and snowy out this week! I think there’s little groaning or fuss about starting to homeschool each morning because it’s so cozy and nice in front of the fire!
Once we were all there (some days that took longer than others!), we set the timer for 25 minutes to read. Can I tell you a secret? Several days this week, we hit the timer again (ahem, and again!) to read longer! Even ED is reading a lot — she’s working her way through the Magic Tree House books, but also is going through the 20+ children’s books I checked out from the library. 🙂 I’ll highlight some of her favorites in another post.
We did not jump back into all our subjects… here’s what we did in a nutshell
- Reading – each day
- Writing Workshop – each day
- grammar practice – one day
- German – each day
- Math Circles – 3 days (more about that in next week’s post) The kids BEGGED for more time and were upset when I said we had to stop! 🙂 A great sign!
- Math Reasoning – 2 days (the kids have several different math books, but this week they did a couple pages from their Math Reasoning book, which is by the Critical Thinking Co.)
- Science – 2 days
What we didn’t get to? Well, we didn’t start anything for history or spelling… and didn’t start in on new topics in their formal math curriculum.
The kids started back to their activities again. DD found out that she has a new coach for aerials and can do another class each week. She’s psyched! ED had rhythmic gymnastics (2x a week) and also started ballet. It was her first class and she loved it! LD had gymnastics practice and is competing in a meet today (Saturday). He loves going out of town alone with Dad so that’s a treat for him! The girls are excited about girl scouts starting up, but their meetings aren’t until next week. LD and I finished up our last week of physical therapy (I had issues with my hips stemming from a lower back injury — related to all my (ear) surgeries last year… all that lying around after each (6) surgery. Meanwhile, LD was trying to get over Achilles tendinitis) Oh, and DD and LD started back to choir practice as well. All this sure keeps us hopping!
As for the blog, I have a ton of work to do behind the scenes, fixing links and updating to the new format. I’m looking into a few ways to monetize the blog (affiliate links and selling a few of our printables) after so many years of offering everything for free. Hopefully by selling a few of those, I can off-set the cost of running the blog. Also, I will be a contributing author to the new blog, Everything Kids,over at Parents.com. And, I have posts about Math Circles, Writing Workshop, and last semester’s posts about our Earth Science activities yet to write. Plenty on my to-do list in addition to all the other things that keeps parents like us busy… laundry, dishes, meals and so forth!
I hope you had a lovely week back to school too! ~Liesl and the Kids
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