Went to the homeschool parents meeting a few evenings ago and now I’m all pumped up for the year ahead! Tons of topic ideas are spinning. I like to focus on a topic each week (or sometimes for two weeks). This week we are talking about sharing (any guesses why I picked this one?). Each week we pull scripture about our topic and dig out some related craft projects from our Bible activity books. On Monday we talked about the little boy who shared his bread and fish and how Jesus used it to share lunch with the entire crowd. We also (very creatively) incorporate our science lessons into our theme. Since we are learning about plants and how they grow this week, Grandma is going to share a clipping from one of her plants with us that we will plant in some soil and attempt to nurture and grow. Then, on Friday we will make thank you cards to Grandma for sharing with us, getting in a bit of art and creative writing too. We take field trips every Friday. Sometimes we’ll simply head to the to the park and other times we’ll travel out of town for an exciting new adventure. This week we will picnic at the park and each of the boys will have just one part (ingredient) of lunch in their sacks and will hopefully realize that we will all need to share. We go to the library each week as well and seek out books about our topic that we read throughout the week. And when possible, our math and reading/writing work and our vocabulary words incorporate bits of our theme too.

This last month I planned each week of August in advance. Last week we discussed babies and since our science lessons were on animals we incorporated lessons and projects on baby animals too. The highlights of last weeks topic include visiting the hospital nursery (where our newest addition will soon be born) and learning about how we use animals for food (we made our own butter), clothes and work. Planning the month in advance worked out great, so I think I’ll take some time this weekend to plan out all of September. I created a topic planning worksheet, a field trip planner and a weekly lesson plan to help me with my curriculum planning, which you are welcome to download for personal use.

Tiffanie

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Homeschooling, I am finding, can involve a lot of spending. We pay for curriculum and everything that goes along with it. Every school supply, every manipulative, every poster and science project and field trip and printed handout and book… you get the point. To keep expenses reasonably within our budget, I have become pretty darn creative. Most of what we use for manipulatives, science experiments and the such are items gathered from various locations in our home. (Oh, the things you can do with your dishes, or canned goods, or collection of DVD’s – which are great for reading exercises, creative storytelling and alphabetizing.) We keep shoe boxes, milk jugs and assorted plastic containers for random projects and various uses. Blocks and legos make great alternatives to buying another $20 dollar pack of linking cubes and having the kids help to create their own flash cards (for all that we use flash cards for) is not only a lesson in itself, but can be a lot of fun. Using their toys as visual props or to act out scenes and scenarios is amusing and helps my kidos to better remember what it is that I’m saying. Hands on learning and real life experiences don’t always have to mean an expensive trip to the museum or science center. All we have to do is travel to the kitchen and bake some cookies (I prefer oatmeal) to learn about the metric system, solids, liquids and gases or following directions. And the laundry room… it holds great lessons on color sorting, counting and size comparison (and what could be better than learning and laundry)! An exploration of the back yard is full of hands on science (be sure to schedule in enough time to finish these lessons with a bath) and the internet provides unlimited access to anywhere in the world. Using the computer, hats, scarfs and other items for dress up along with our imaginations, we can go where ever we want and learn all sorts of interesting things when we get there. Not only is making use of the supplies and resources in our home cost efficient, but it’s a ton of fun for the kids and often times they don’t even realize they’re “doing school”.

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