Way back when I started this blog I used to do a monthly review of our homeschool and I kind of want to bring that idea back. Over on my personal blog I just started doing weekly reviews and I want to do the same thing here homeschool style.

Because we don’t follow a particular homeschool method and are a bit more on the unschooly side no week (or day!) looks the same.

Since we added a toddler and a preschooler into our home* just over two weeks ago things really don’t look the same!

*Added to our home via foster care, if you are curious you can read more about it on my personal blog.

 

 

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’s 1 (almost 2)

 

 

+ For the first time this year we are fairly consistently using workbooks. We grabbed some MathSmart (Canadian math curriculum) books from Costco a couple months ago and the days we sit down and do school the kids generally each complete two pages. This week we actually sat down four days of the week so they each got eight pages done.

 

 

+ My son has been using these pencil holder thingys to help his printing and pencil grip and I have noticed a difference since he started using them (when he’s actually using it correctly and not being lazy). The preschooler is left handed and I’m finding it hard to figure out how to tell him to hold a pencil correctly, it just dawned on me that I should use one of these with him!

 

 

+ I actually tried to do our sit down work with the littles this week. So, we’ve been trying to figure out ways to keep them busy. Puzzles, coloring, magnets, mazes, stamps and painting/coloring with water have been the big entertainers so far. I may eventually write up a full post of different ideas on how to entertain toddlers while doing school, this is new-to-me territory.

+ On Tuesday we spent some time learning about Guy Fawkes, I shared a number of resources in this post.

 

 

+ This week also involved a lot of Mad Libs! They can be pretty hilarious and are excellent for learning the parts of speech. We got some free printable sheets from this site and I learned from Instagram that there is also a free app which I have now installed and we will use the next time we are in a waiting room or need to kill some time.

+ I made gluten free playdough last week and it has been played with this week as well. I personally don’t like playdough (I can’t stand the feel of it) but kids seem to like it so I made a batch every few months.

 

 

+ On the weekend the kids went to a birthday party. It was Star Wars themed so my daughter drew a Princess Leia card for the girl thanks to YouTube channel Draw So Cute’s tutorial. She has been drawing quite a bit from this channel lately, I would recommend it for kids around her age!

 

 

+ I’ve been reading this kids Bible to the preschooler and he’s been really into it. I love the illustrations. It’s a pretty simple Bible, so far it seems like a younger version of The Jesus Storybook Bible and I’ve added it to my to-buy list. (Other books on my to-buy list are this one and this one.)

+ Some more books we’ve had on repeat with the Preschooler include:

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Time to Sleep, Sheep the Sheep
• Up, Up, Down

 

 

+ The first grader is continuing to slowly improve his reading, though I’ll admit that we didn’t work at it very much this week. I think the only book he read to me was this one.

+ Technically it’s Friday so normally I wouldn’t post this until at least Saturday since the week isn’t over but my husband’s family is butchering pigs today and the older kids are going to go there and hang out/play with cousins so I’m counting our week as done!

 

That’s what I can remember from this week in our homeschool! Do you have any highlights from your week or resources you’ve been enjoying?

 

INTENTIONS FOR NEXT WEEK

I thought it would also be fun to set some goals/intentions for the coming week. We’ll see if I actually keep this up or not!

+ Try bringing out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons again for my first grader. We weren’t progressing any more so I put it away for a long time but I’m curious to see how it goes if we bring it back out.

+ Start a letter a week with the preschooler. I have never liked the whole letter a week idea, mostly because by the time my kids were ready for it they knew all the letters but now that our preschooler came to us with no idea of the alphabet it seems like a good time to try it out!

+ Find a bigger project for my fourth grader. I have no specific ideas at the moment but I think she needs something big to work on, I hope to spend some time brainstorming in the next few days.

 

There we go, a bit from our week and intentions for next. If you like the weekly wrap up format let me know!