Getting Settled In: The first few weeks of homeschool

This week was an absolutely horrific week for anyone, literally everyone, in California. We are currently limited to existing in our hot, without A/C house, unable to open any windows to cool down, because the AQI is by far the highest I’ve ever seen it as fires rage on every side of us. And while we are uncomfortable, and I can taste the smoke and toxins in the air, we are indeed lucky to have a roof over our heads, while many in this state cannot say the same.

So while the world continues to come down around us, our decision to homeschool this year was reaffirmed this week as the best decision for our family. The flexibility we experienced this week was exactly why we chose this route. Air’s too smoky to venture out in the morning? No problem - we’ll do all our indoor work now, and take the rest of the day to Netflix and chill. Pacifica is currently clear and the only place to get out today? Great, let’s make it a beach day and catch up on school work later in the evening. This flexibility and autonomy was exactly what we were looking for when we made this decision, and it paid off this week.

I also got to witness the one-room schoolhouse wonder of different age collaboration. Quite often a child will ask for help, and another child will offer to jump in, freeing myself from doing all the guiding, which is such a gift all the way around.

Settling In

This week we took a review and routine approach, with our focus on establishing a daily rhythm, and reviewing the skills from last year, which thus far is solely math. It’s a shock to the system to go from lazy summer days to full time school work, so we’re taking an ease-in approach to ensure success rather than hit a wall early on and experience frustration.

It was also a week to introduce the different math manipulatives to each child and let them practice using them on problems they were familiar with already. I spent time with each child going over their curriculum for the year, what it looked like, how it would be done, and which books we’d read.

Our eldest will probably need to have “Science Saturdays” to have a committed adult with her to perform her labs - I cannot imagine trying to pull of some of these labs with two younger ones in tow! But again, we can do that! We want to do that. Science is one of her favorite subjects, so putting so much time and energy into it is well worth it.

Ode to the Cardboard Box

Given the environmental stress this week, we also focused on play. We’ve been saving boxes from deliveries and this week they were stacked up high as they could go, turned into fortress walls, took tickets at a puppet show, and flew us to a farm in an airplane.

Lesson Plan: Junk Art

Friday we took most of the end of the day to work with junk! I have a drawer dedicated to collecting odds and ends; add a glue gun, and the creation possibilities are endless. We made a fairy, a flying insect, a rolling suitcase, and a chicken-feathered dinosaur.

Lesson Plan: Yearbook

This week we continued our yearbook work. The first week they recorded their “About Me” stats for the first day of school, and this week we continued to document by taking photos, noting down highlights turned into paragraphs and recording quotes from certain three year olds who have interesting ideas of what we did this week.

I’m still figuring out how we’ll make the yearbook itself. I’m leaning towards using a printing service with the pre-laid out templates and letting each kid craft their page for the week? Or otherwise continuing to record and then working on the yearbook as a final project transferring their notes and photos to a book template at the end. 

I’m curious how you handle the yearbook or other portfolio-style documentation of your homeschool child’s work. Do you print something more formal and polished? Just keep a file? Or something in between? I can only imagine all the ways to collect the wonderful work children create while home.