Homeschooling in April.

April was a busy month — maybe soon I’ll get our recap up! — but I wanted to share some of our April learning materials and activities. This was the month we finally got back into our homeschool routine, now that I’m out of the classroom and back at home. We no longer have an entire homeschool classroom set-up, that’s not what we need in our lives right now, so we are making do with just a small shelf space. It’s actually working really well.

Just a reminder that Javi (7) is in first grade in a public school so he’s gone for most of the day. Lola (5) is in half-day Pre-K, five days a week. And Eva is home with me. Some may not call what we do “homeschooling” for those reasons, and that’s okay. Until there’s another word for it — we’re homeschooling. 🙂

Easter-themed: The first week of the month, I put out a few Easter-themed activities. I have 10 little cubby cubes and most of the activities focused on Practical Life or counting. We also did a few painting projects — can’t go wrong with paint!

Science: As soon as Easter was behind us, we started Life Cycle work. We talked about daffodils and tulips and learned the parts of each plant, and did some coloring and painting work.

Field Trip: A week later, we went to a tulip farm and picked our very own tulips. The girls loved this and they were so excited to see tulips in real life!

Experiments: We received our subscription kits from KiwiCo, too. This month was all about planting which the girls loved. Lola’s “watch it grow” box is growing snap peas and Eva’s window kits have her growing squash and green beans. They couldn’t be more excited to water their plants every day.

Math: Eva is solidifying 1-10 and Lola started working with the Decimal System. She is using the Montessori Bank to practice with units, tens, hundreds and thousands. She’s so proud!

Language: I’ve been doing a lot of research about the Science of Reading and I’m sort of blown away. Like I knew it, and it’s nice to have it fresh in my mind. So I’ve been putting out different activities for Lola each day where she taps out sounds, builds the word with magnetic letters, draws a picture of the word and then writes the word out with letters. I think it’s complementing her work with the Movable Alphabet nicely. Eva has been working on enunciation with her new phoneme set, and rhyming words with our new puzzle.

Reading: Lola read her first book! I repeat: LOLA READ A BOOK. This is a HUGE deal and she is PROUD. She’s excited and motivated and we were all just so happy for her. She is reading the Bob books. I’ve also been getting her to do some of the Science of Reading worksheets where she has to read a few sentences and then answer two questions about what she read. I never really worked on reading comprehension with Javi — he sort of just got it — but I can tell it’s helping her with her confidence and helping her think critically.

STEM: We were gifted two Super Blocks from GiiKER (use code: jasmine15 for 15% off) and we’ve incorporated them into our little routine each day. It’s a console with over 1000 built-in games. You have to fill the light up dots with the correct colors and it improves concentration, spatial awareness and gives such a sense of accomplishment as they level up. Lola’s not totally into puzzles, which I have shared, but she loves this! Javi’s obsessed! He brings it in the car with him.

Baking: We’ve been baking each week! We made egg fritattas, banana muffins, cinnamon rolls, pizza, cookies — the kids love to be in the kitchen!

Play Group: We added a free play group into our schedule once a week. It’s a 90 minute class that includes free play, snack, story time, music and movement, a group game, and an art project. The girls are loving it.

Outdoor time: We spent a lot of time in the yard, getting it ready for spring, and lots of time in the mud kitchen which is always a favorite! Javi also did some community service work and helped clean up our town playground for Earth Day.

Then, of course, there are sports, enrichment activities and various services the kids all participate in!

Anyway — that’s just a small peek at what homeschooling (for us) is like these days. 🙂