We finally started easing ourselves into homeschooling again this week. With Christmas and then spur of the moment dental surgery for one of our little guys and then pneumonia for another one we were kind of forced into a longer break than I had originally planned for.

It’s just a good reminder for myself to appreciate once again the flexibility of homeschooling. I can’t imagine trying to get my school aged kids to school every day when we had all this other stuff going on.

Of course, we jumped into homeschooling in what will probably be our coldest week of the winter. The temperature barely got warmer than -30 all week. School buses weren’t running but kids are still expected to be at school (and I was so glad I didn’t have to drive mine!).

OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK IN REVIEW

For reference, here’s the low down on all the kids:

The Daughter – she’s 9 and in grade 4
The Son – he’s 6 and in grade 1
The Preschooler – he’s 3
The Toddler – he just turned 2!

(The preschooler and toddler came to us in the fall via foster care.)

Here’s a recap of our week:

+ we learned about cheetah’s and caracal’s thanks to Wild Kratts. In the winter while hiding from the freezing temperatures we tend to use a lot more technology in our homeschool and as someone who does not appreciate the cold I am totally okay with that.

+ the winter always feels like the perfect time to work on a family puzzle so I pulled out this 500 piece Norman Rockwell puzzle that I picked up at Dollar Tree in the fall. So far we’ve just tried to do the outline and I’m not too impressed with the puzzle, it’s nearly impossible to tell if the pieces go together . . . I may end up getting rid of it and pulling out a different puzzle.

+ each of the kids did a little bit of math out of their workbooks (we use some that we found at Costco). We’re starting back slowly so my daughter is doing some multi-digit addition and subtraction review and my son did some addition and subtraction up to 20 review.

+ my six year old continued on with the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We’ve taken this book slow over the last year or so because he kind of hit a wall for awhile. Learning to read has not been an easy task for him but he has made so much progress. He still mixes up the sounds for b/d/p quite often and struggles with some words that he’s seen thousands of times but can read bigger ones (like, he has no problem reading the word “little” but almost always stumbles over “the”). He hit a bit milestone this week though but completing a sticker chart that I had made for him quite awhile ago, as a result we are going to be going to a children’s museum next week!

+ the preschooler has been obsessed with naming the colors of everything lately. When he came to us less than three months ago he didn’t know any colors (or really how to speak at all) and now he knows most of the colors. He’s had a huge learning curve and has loved it.

+ because the temperature was so cold for most of the week one day I let the kids have the option between doing math from their workbook or playing Sushi Go. Not surprisingly, they chose the game. Sushi Go involves using a variety of math skills while playing and it was a good trade off. I might make this a Friday tradition for the winter. (You can see more of the games we like to play here.)

I would love to hear about your homeschool week, let me know what you learned about and/or some of the resources you used.