It’s been a good while since I’ve written anything – we’ve been really busy! I personally can’t wait for the homeschool co-op year to be over so we can gain back two of our weekdays! It’s been a great experience for both of us, to get out of the house, for socialization, and for K to learn important values like listening, independence, sharing, taking turns, etc along with the weekly explorations in science, art, reading, etc that they do. But it’s also been a drain on our time and has impeded the flexible lifestyle we are used to.

Since it’s been a while, here’s what we’ve been working on / up to!

1) Music

K got a keyboard for her 5th birthday and we’ve been using this color coded system to help her learn the basics. This book teaches two handed method from the beginning, with correct finger-key placement. It uses color to identify notes and longer/shorter boxes to identify longer/shorter note duration. Each song gets a little harder, introducing more notes, more movement, and more variation. K loves it. It’s a little challenging for her since she doesn’t have good fine motor skills – but that’s just another reason I love it and she needs it!

2) Geography

Our local dollar tree has a small section of educational books and teaching resources. On our last trip for craft supplies, I found a US map and a globe ball. We started out just talking about the hierarchy of country, state, city/town, which the maps really helped visually enforce. K wanted to know where we live, so we located our state on the US map. We’ve also since identified some of her “favorite” states – like Florida and Missouri – that we visit often.

We’ve used the globe ball to discuss continents but identifying them is still a hard task for her. We’ve gotten Antarctica down, so 6 more to go! We like to toss the globe ball and try to figure out what continent we see when we catch it. We’ve also watched a few youtube videos and tried to match the continent shown to us with the correct one on the ball.

3) Science

Also at the dollar tree was a Solar System mobile project, which my husband and K worked on one Saturday together. I’m pretty sure A did most of it, but K was at least seeing the planets and colored a couple herself. They didn’t finish it all, and she actually asked me the other day if we could finish it, so hopefully when we put it all together she’ll get a little more interested. She knows several of the planets names at least, so I think that’s a good start for being only 5!

4) Reading

K has been expressing more interest in spelling/reading so I looked up a big list of sight words that kids would normally learn in Kindergarten/1st grade, there’s about 70-100 words, I don’t remember exactly. I wrote each word on an index card and then organized them alphabetically into a photo album. Every week or two we pick 8 words out and put them on the fridge with their own special magnet, so that each word can be moved around independent of the other words. I usually try to pick words that  can be interchanged to make up several short sentences. For example, this week we have “I” “have” “a” blue” “bird” “he” “is” and “good” hanging up. From these words we get the sentences:

I have a blue bird
He is good.
I have a good bird.
He is blue.
He is a blue bird.
He is a good bird.
etc.

K is learning really well using this method! She loves pointing out words she knows in books and other places!

5) Writing

K has begun to ask to trace letters and numbers. I have a big activity book I got from Walgreen’s and a couple we got from the dollar tree. She picks pages at random and traces the letters, words, and numbers. She’s done a few color by number pages and dot to dot’s too. Other activities we work together on, when she can’t easily figure out the instructions/goal.

With this, she’s independently begun to write her own name! She still asks what letter comes next, because her name isn’t the easiest to spell, but given the letters she can correctly write her own name now, which seems like a huge win to me!

6) Math

K still enjoys playing math games on the tablet and is working with numbers up to 20 now, for both addition and subtraction. Some pages in the activity books require counting and filling in the missing numbers in a sequence and she does great with these – math is probably the area in which I supervise her the LEAST. She’s a numbers natural!

7) Character Building

We’ve been working on practicing thankfulness each night before bed. As part of our night time ritual, we each say three things we’re thankful for that day. We use these small tumbled stones to represent each thankful and collect them all in a glass jar so we can see how it all adds up! This is one of my most treasured moments of each day and I think it’s helped all of us be a bit more mindful of how blessed we are.

We also take a couple rocks to symbolize anything we need help with – like getting good sleep, making good choices, etc. We combine our “thankfuls” and “helpfuls” together in place of a common bedtime prayer – and I think it MEANS more than just reciting some words that happen to rhyme.

8) Faith

Speaking of prayer, faith IS an important part of our lives, but we take a very non-traditional approach to it. We do not attend a church as a family, but rather we take time to talk about spiritual matters/morals whenever it comes up. We take a more earth-centered, nature based, approach to spirituality so we talk a lot about taking care of the creation (not wasting water, not littering, recycling, etc.). We don’t like using myths or stories to explain things that science explains (like where rain comes from), but we will use them to explain holidays and why they are celebrated/how different people celebrate different holidays. We honor several seasonal observations, as well as several of the mainstream holidays.

Currently we are preparing for Ostara, or the Spring Equinox! Modern Easter borrowed a lot of the Ostara traditions so we will still color eggs and do an egg hunt, but we will also take time to notice the signs of Spring, to celebrate the changing of the seasons, and to give thanks to the Creator for this season of new life. We will celebrate Ostara as a family with a few symbolic activities such as planning/preparing our herb garden, making birdfeeders, etc.

I didn’t cover EVERYTHING, but that’s basically what we’ve been up to! Of course K still has free art time (and has been covering every surface of our walls with her drawings), and play time. We’ve had days where we’ve visited with family and friends and also days  where we’ve stayed home and done nothing. That’s the beauty of unschool life, you just see where it takes you from one day to the next!

Til next time!

–M