Hello all,
This post is a culmination of our Home ed this year. I have combined 4 weeks of home ed into one post and I think I might be onto something here. It seems to be getting more and more difficult to continue documenting our home ed on the blog but I do see value in it and want to persevere. So this is me persevering.
April!
Let us start with my 3 year old using professional sketching strokes in her little nature sketch.
Now that your enjoyment is out of the way, we can get to the serious documentation.
Nature study/Science : Nature study has been such an awesome addition to my life as a former educator. Opening my eyes to so much learning and life that can happen through nature. God alone in His wisdom knew and ordained me to be an educator in the former years, move to a naturesque place like Goa and then find Charlotte Mason methods of education. What a joy to live out that well written part of my life story. This month, we chased dark rain clouds during the first rain of the season, we caught dried leaves falling out of the trees, we saw squirrels jumping from one tree to another, the beauty of budding and flowering on trees in the wild, root systems popping out of the soil and oh so many cicadas mating! We saw beautiful trees on our walks and read about the differences between trees and people. Ahna made her first science chart for it too by telling me what to write. She made the drawings herself though and look how cute!
We chased cotton seeds flying in the air, spoke about the direction of the wind, saw it land on our little seedling tray and take root and spoke about wind seed dispersal. Hope has joined our little gardening journey this time around. She seems to be prepared enough to begin her gardening training. She understands more words, follows directions and is able to communicate a little better than before. So she gets to enjoy watering and caring for our garden on some days. I’ll still do most of the work when she is in bed.
The sunbirds finished their egg laying season on our balcony and flew away in time within a 22-24 day cycle. We did not get to observe it all very closely but definitely watched most of the nest building stage. After they flew out, we took the nest down and observed it. Ahna remembers the bulbul nest and how it was differently shaped and the birds used different material for it. We spoke about how each bird innately knows how to build their nests to suit their kind and how that is Gods wisdom that he imparts into His creation.
We got to witness a bonus nature study this month when our neighbours’ pregnant cat gave birth to kittens! We saw the birth of 2 kittens and spoke about some of it.
Art and handicrafts
Ahna enjoyed an outdoor natural paints workshop that we signed her up for. We had studied natural dyes earlier this year and made some using flowers so this opportunity intrigued me. She coloured some tee shirts and upon returning, I did another stamping activity with her and Hope where we stamped some flower prints and leaf prints onto a tee shirt. We then wore these to a birthday party and all of us were dressed in the flower theme.
We made home made playdough and used it almost every morning for creative play time. Hope and Ahna both enjoyed this. Ahna enjoyed the process and Hope enjoyed the end product.
Since one of the books we read this month was Brave Irene, she enjoyed picking up stitching for a bit. We made a felt puppet, stitched a couple of felt sheets to each other and started making a cloth puppet too. She took to using puppets and making up stories during her free play time. She is now comfortable poming a needly through felt on the circle I mark for her. I like that she is keen to learn even though the task does not sustain her attention for too long. It is easy to equate sustained attention to interest so I follow her lead on the time she wants to spend on this activity.
Cooking and cookies!
This month, we started a home business! We call ourselves ‘Cookies and cards’ Ahna makes the cards, and sometimes we make the cookies together. She goes with her dad to deliver them and meets some of our clients to hand over the cards. It has been such a rich experience to add to our home education once a week. I only bake when I am already baking cookies for the girls once a week. I am careful not to let this side track me from other responsibilities in the home ed and Ahna has been consistently excited to make the cards.
She also wanted to try out a few new recipes from her cook book so we tried (and failed) and baking potatoes with a filling. Well, we ate it in cutlets the next day. We decorated some focaccia bread and rolled up some pizza dough. Ahna also made her own pizza to bake and enjoyed the whole process. She loved making her own tacos too on taco lunch day. Since she has been enjoying putting her own food together, I have been cooking in a way I can encourage that for her.
Reading/Narration
Through reading we covered concepts of counting and patterns in Math and she also got curious about addition as a concept so it has been one of the areas of conversational learning we are exploring. We also continued our bible read alouds with her narrating back to us bits of what she remembers and was able to pick up.
The month of May, we hope to take some time off from scheduled study. We will continue our read alouds and conversational learning as and when opportunities present themselves but I will not be trying to have time set apart for these. Ahna will turn 4 this may. My little one turning 4. My firstborn.