DIL Homeschoolin in Winter | Mom of 10

mid January in our home school means we are making every effort to get outside even though it's cold we're plowing Full Speed Ahead through our book workk we're taking a little time for some fun and games together bringing the kids along with me for some life skills and continuing all the work that we have to do in our [Music] home the kids have been doing a really great job of getting right to their work they helped me make up their checklists at the beginning of the year so they planned what they were going to be working on James here is making a crown of Charlemagne this is just an extra fun activity that's part of his Veritas press self-paced history lessons um he's the only one that decided to do this but it was kind of fun watching and put it together but each of the kids at the beginning of the year help put together the checklist and make decisions on what they're going to be working on this year and they've been doing a great job just sticking with it when they're part of the planning they're much more motivated to work at it what like I'm just doing like this okay yes I think I fig out that one but like for you know how to find the area of a circle you know how to find the area of a rectangle you know how to find the area of a triangle surface area means you are using you are finding all the shapes on a three-dimensional object so you have the circle the circle and then you have the side so you have to find the area of two circles then you know obviously you take this off and like we said this is going to be obviously a rectangle so you're finding all the shapes in a three-dimensional object and adding them together and that is the area of the surface of this whole three-dimensional object it's a Juggle having Toddlers and preschoolers when you're trying to work one-on-one with other kids but sometimes I'll let some of my other kids take a break to play with them or we just find ways to make it work our area of a circle is pi r s okay so yeah you really need to know your formulas that's going to really be helpful for you it's really important to me to meet my kids' individual needs and it it can be a challenge I think one of the biggest things that I've learned is to just listen listen to what they're saying sometimes they go off and play and they just don't need you that much they're busy they're doing things that they want to do other times they're asking you over and over again if they can try something if they can do this experiment and that's when it's time to key in and listen to what they're wanting to do James helped us with the lunch he wanted to make the sausage that was really helpful my little guys needed to be outside when I took the kids outside our outside cat was chasing a mouse and this was really fun where's the mouse uhoh where is it he got it it's sque trying to catch that Mouse stick slim these days have really chilly but getting the kids outside distracts them and it also wears them out we you yeah but we're put on top all right sit down you ready okay you jump and then get all mom look uhoh what happened to your KNE hold on hold on whoa here set up I can doit and down up and down up and down put them up let your legs up yeah it's 7 73 taking time for play is so important and this is something that I have to remind myself of over and over as a mom because there's so much work that always needs to be done there is there's always something that I can be doing or pressing that I think I should be doing but spending time just enjoying each other and having fun laughing playing games having competition this is really fun it's a nice distraction for us and it just builds relationships we put this piano in the barn this is just an old beat up piano just so that the kids could go and play some other places but it seems like wherever we go someone is always playing the piano and you know I really should be thankful for this at least it's not a 2-year-old that's banging on it at least they're playing nice music but it's sometimes hard to remind yourself of that maybe your kids have some particular craft or interest that just consumes them my kids tend to be pretty Musical and it's wonderful and sometimes we just need a little break from it we came in from playing outside and Julia was my kitchen helper today so we worked on getting the kitchen back in order before afternoon read aloud while we were cleaning up the big kids were pretty good about getting their books and heading to the living room because they know what's next I got a couple of things in the mail this morning and I wanted to take the time to share them with you the first one is this Peterson Field Guide coloring book this one is Birds I'm going to do this along with the Burgess bird book I've done this before a couple times with my older kids and we've done the bird book and the animal book Burgess has two different actually I think they have a Seaside book as well that we've never done but I had been doing just a couple random things with Julia and will who are my six and 8-year-old but I hadn't been doing a formal science curriculum with them I tried to start reading um swimming creatures by apologia and I got a couple chapters in and they just weren't interested and I started realizing I'm doing this more for me than I am for them to just feel like I'm checking off that box and I'm not going to do that so they weren't interested I feel like when that happens you just need to stop and wait a little bit until they're a little bit older till they start showing a little bit more interest or till you find something that they're interested in however I do remember doing this these with my other kids it's very laid-back I don't feel obligated to do every bird I just do the ones that interest us and these are really fun so um when my older kids saw these come in the mail they were like oh I want to do this I wish you had bought one for me they have really good memories of doing them so that makes me know that I'm on the right track because they had so much fun so we're going to be doing this with Will Julia and Holland and actually with my youngest child I've done this for years whoever is the three or four-year-old they get one of the older kids old books which is somewhat colored in and still has some stickers in it but we just point them to some some of the birds that aren't colored and find some stickers and they feel like they're a part of it so um we're going to be doing that for her but these are really fun because they have all kinds of birds in them and then in the front they have some corresponding stickers that you can see the second thing that I got today is this book the door and the wall by margarite deang jelli my kids are learning in the time period of the middleages Renaissance and Reformation for history and I knew that I wanted to get a couple of books in that have to do with this time period I've read this one before with my older kids and it was so good so we're going through The Chronicles of Narnia right now I'm going to fit this in somewhere um because I just know this would be a great book for that time period that Arthur not only drove the Saxons out of Britain but that he conquered many parts of Europe until at last he ruled over 30 kingdoms then for some years there was Peace during these years at first it was only words soon it came to blows they had come to the feast on arm sometimes when you have older kids they get so used to your routine that they can check out maybe not purposely but everything's so familiar to them and I was reminded this week of the benefit of just involving them giving them some responsibility and so I tried that this week I've done that before with some of with our older two boys but having them be in charge of morning time or having them read the story they're much more engaged winter is a great time to read poetry to kids and these are some of the winter poems that I am reading to my kids right now you can find these on the blog I'll leave a link below for you I'll probably read one maybe before our afternoon read aloud or read one during morning time um we usually read it and then talk about it I don't get too technical I feel like when you get too technical with poetry it takes all the pleasure out of it so I might ask what does this line mean or what do you think the poem means or how about this word um and that might be it one thing about poetry is that the more you read it the more you get out of it so I will usually read a poem more than once whether that means I'll read two in a day or read one today and then read it again tomorrow read it again the next week the more you read poems you get something new out of it every time so you can find these over on the blog if you're interested in using some of them I also wanted to show you some of the winter picture books that I'm reading to my kids I have a blog post that has all our favorite picture books for winter so these are just a few of them snowy day stranger in the woods ow Moon you can see our books are not just for show we actually use these I think Benjamin probably got to that one and then snowflake Bentley this is just a great story about a young man who was fascinated with snow next morning I made oatmeal for the kids for breakfast and we got started on our morning work we're still going through the simple morning time notebook this has our composer study hym study memory work um all the group subjects that we like to get in folk songs Shakespeare grammar study my son William is so obsessed with basketball and basketball cards all during breakfast he was organizing these basketball cards and I just find him doing this at all hours of the day we're reading the William Shakespeare play as you like it in the book Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary lamb get the audio version of it and listen to it the actual play what I'm reading to story all right as you like it during the time that was divided into provinces having toddlers in morning time has always been the biggest challenge of morning time I try to have puzzles blocks different little toys that the kids might want to do during this time we keep them in that dresser drawer over in in the corner there um but if all else fails and if they're such a distraction that we can't focus we'll either stop and try morning time again the next day or I'll have them do a few minutes of quiet time in their room I'll give them just a couple toys if it's the baby I'll put him in his bed for just maybe 5 minutes just whatever we need to finish the story and to just buy us a little bit of time and this in her puzzle Ben don't take her pieces do the fire truck Aton can you take some of them out and let him try to put them back in do your fire tra puzzle here they lived ooh very nice good job was just going to another option that I've used from time to time is to let one of the bigger kids finish morning time and I'll take the little ones out and play with them or read a book to them whatever they need and so we will be always be with the Lord encourage one another with issues having to do with the app's Chinese ownership so are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is in fact subject uh to doing in work [Music] Mom 350 350 1,750 wait [Music] 1, really easy yeah and I okay all is a short hand and a long hand okay the short hand points to these numbers and tells us what hour is that's how we read it 9 the hour is 9 and the minutes are at o means the beginning of the hour going to match up these times try to figure out and trap Aton is learning to measure opposite angles in a quadrilateral and William was working on learning time I don't think he's ready for it but he wanted to learn so I showed him just a few things back to the subject of listening to your kids I had something happen this week that reminded me so clearly of this Holland kept begging me over and over again to help her with this sticker book so I stopped everything and we worked on it a little bit every day she just wants to learn more on the other hand William was playing basketball and every time I got him to do his work he always didn't want to stop he's working on basketball so he just needs a little bit more breaks and she needs a little bit more mental stimulation big doll little doll black and white doll when your newest reader realizes he can read books to someone else it's really exciting and to see him reading books to his younger sibling is also just very sweet three big dogs one thing we all need in January is time outside we don't often want to push ourselves to get out but when we get out it's so good for us so we signed up for some winter hikes with our Co-op [Applause] you see we go on a hike you want to go on a hike I let my older kids choose if they want to come on this hike with us they have a little bit extra work than some of the younger kids and sometimes they want to get that done but most of the time they'll message their friends and if their friends are coming then they come too I have the home of an insect but you know what that black walnut could be a home for an insect there could be bugs inside there because the plant grew around the bug yep and it created like when you're the [Music] bug well this was a really really fun week going out on this hike with our friends being out in the fresh cool air it was good for our bodies and good for our minds as well just to get a break from everything I want to thank you for coming along with me on our day in the life of our homeschool I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I'll see you next week [Music] m