​Ana's Week 

I always love doing a community heroes week during the week of September 11th each year because that week always brings to my mind how grateful I am that we have so many amazing heroes in our country who sacrifice their lives daily to save us from harm. My dad and stepmom lived in NYC at the time of 9/11, and I found out on that day when my dad called my school to say that he was okay that my dad was supposed to be in a building that got hit by one of the falling two towers but his meeting was cancelled last minute. Each year, I say a prayer of thanks that he is okay but I am also aware that if he were there, he would have needed the guidance of police officers and fire fighters who headed straight to those towers to help in order to find a safe place to go. Obviously, Aria is a little bit young to really talk to about the events of 9/11, but after this week she does understand how lucky we are to have people in the community who look after us and save us despite the danger.

Now, our main focus of the week was on fire fighters, partially because there were so many fun things that we could do related to fire and partially because after visiting the FDNY store in NY, Aria has been obsessed with all things fire. We have started our own co-op out of my home, and this week we added a new family to the fun, which was awesome! For co-op we set up an obstacle course so that the kids could practice preparing to be fire fighters. We also created a “save the magnetic letter” ladder game, a numbers rice box (big hit for the littles), a fire colored sand box for the kids to trace letters, several fire themed art activities, a “build a fire station” activity table where the kids could use recycling items or magnetic shapes to build a station, and one of my friends even brought a healthy snack that the kids could turn into fire trucks. The kids really had a blast with that, as everything is more fun with friends. The next day, while Skylar was in her preschool prep, Aria and I did more focused materials like worksheets and reading her readers, but this was a really fun day! We also made our own home safety video where she talked all about fire safety and getting in and out of the house in case of a fire. It was a good way to practice our home fire safety plan and make sure that it really stuck in her mind.

Aria responded really well to our police day, as I created my own crime scene that she had to wake up to and solve. This wasn’t easy, as there don’t seem to be any preschool level “crime scene” ideas out there, so I’ll tell you about what I did so that you can try it in your own home if you want to! I put 3 stuffed animals in “jail” (aka under a chair with bars on it) and she had to figure out which one stole the superheroes and dinosaurs out of their box. I used rice scattered on the floor to help her figure out they were hidden in the rice box and used cocoa powder to look like dirt. Then, I had the stuffed animal “step” in the dirt to leave footprints and left the dirt on the stuffed animal so it was easy to find. Aria loved it so much that she asked for more crimes to solve after rest time. So, during rest time, I had her Merida doll “eat” the porridge of her stuffed bears like the story of goldilocks (leaving pieces of oatmeal on her doll to find) and had her cat “steal” her favorite blanket and hide it in the dryer, leaving clues about the laundry room near the cat. Let’s just say, Aria loved the idea so much that she spent the rest of the day creating her own “crimes” for us to solve. Maybe I have a future detective on my hands?

The rest of the week we focused on heroes in the community who help keep us healthy. I chose this year to do doctor and dentist, though I realize that dentist is a bit of a stretch. However, I really wanted the girls to understand just how bad it can be if you don’t brush your teeth, so combining it with these other topics was nice because it made brushing your teeth seem extremely important or the situation might be dire! Both doctor and dentist day were a bit lighter schedules. I knew I wanted to do an activity day at the library on Tuesday, so we did a lot of hands on science and fine motor activities for dentist day before heading out. On Friday, I chose to do doctor day because I needed to clean the house before a friend from out of town came to dinner. The girls were able to play doctor with their stuffed animals while I cleaned and a lot of the writing and numbers worksheets I found are things Aria can do on her own now without my constant oversight. It’s nice we are getting to this stage! But I think it’s also important to think about your week in advance as much as you can when planning so that you know which days you can overload and which days you need a lighter schedule due to fun activities in the community or time with friends!

Anyways, I could probably spend weeks on this unit if I chose to do “community workers” this year, but “community heroes” was really great for Aria’s age. Plus, there were some important things that she is finally old enough to learn about safety that finally sunk in because of our safety focus! My big win of the week was teaching Aria how to call 911 or dad from my phone even if it is locked! Please tell me about any of your big community heroes wins this week and I hope you thoroughly enjoy this unit as much as we did!

Jessica's Week

Well, we drastically cut back our activities for community week in favor of a vacation to the Mother Earth News Fair with friends. Between our regularly scheduled fall activities ramping into full swing and the extra getaway we only had time to touch on this theme. Good books went a long way for us, since we were able to pack them and still get in some nightly reading. We also chose to copy an idea Ana had shared and make our own video. Since we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing fire safety in past years I chose this topic paired with a favorite book we read, “No Dragons For Tea”. Taegan LOVED reenacting the story and I got her to teach fire safety tips in four yr old fashion as well. The best part was sharing our video with family and friends knowing other children her age may get educated in the process. I’m so proud of my little actress and couldn’t resist sharing her video with you all too!
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Since our “movie” was a hit we expanded the drama to playing detective. I found a great set of “case files” and police ideas on Creative Family Fun (https://creativefamilyfun.net/lets-pretend-police-station/) and set up a few crimes for her to solve. Her favorite part was using our family dog Roo as a canine helper who sniffed out the stolen candy and directed her to a stuffed cat in need of rescuing from a tree. Her daddy and I took turns playing the bad guys and often ended up in handcuffs but T let us out of jail in time to make dinner so I guess we must have learned our lessons lol. 

Takeaway from this week, drama comes naturally to four year olds. Might as well harness the dramatic flair into something positive! 😉

Jessica's Week:
​Well this week wasn’t perfect but it was better than the last. We began our farm to food theme with a trip to the Indiana County Fair. It’s my favorite because they have an entire barn dedicated to teaching young children about farm animals and where their food comes from. They added a new attraction this year in the form of farmer Ed’s “Ready Set Grow” magic show. He travels the country teaching fair-going kids fun facts about farming during an interactive and very entertaining magic show. Be on the lookout for farmer Ed’s show at your own local fair bc it was fantastic!
I skipped this theme last year since I thought of it as being more toddler appropriate but brought it back bc of our new co-op venture (which will take place on a working farm). I surprised myself with all the new themed activities I was able to find for 4-5yr olds. We spelled out farm animal names, matched baby animal names to their parents , and cleaned muddy pigs to find their letter sounds. I used our deer corn sensory bin to practice measuring with fraction cups as T pretended to make corn chips, popcorn, cornbread, corn syrup, corn cereal and corn chowder. It was fun coming up with so many different foods made from corn. Building a corn silo from an empty carton was fun too. I kept all our activities play based  since Taegan struggled to enjoy the more academic undertakings of last week. I also let this be a more field trip focused theme. 
Besides the local fair we also took a trip to Bruster’s ice cream store. I spent some time beforehand teaching about how milk comes from cows and is made into other products we enjoy regularly. At Bruster’s we helped turn the milk and cream to a very yummy treat! Taegan got to add flavorings and help operate the machine so our tour was very interactive. Since every Bruster’s offers the 1hr tour for only $7 I recommend setting up a trip of your own if you have a farm, food, or ice cream themed week.
Our last field trip happened right at the farm where I’ve started a local homeschool co-op. For more details about how and why I started a homeschool co-op check it my blog under our best ideas. Taegan and I baked homemade bread to take to our first weekly meetup as a snack. Unfortunately, while we were waiting for the bread to rise our power went out. Hurricane Florence has brought us some nasty weather over the last few days and nearly flooded our backyard creek. Sadly, by the time I could bake our bread it had turned to a hard lumpy mess. We made a quick stop at the grocery store for new bread and braved some flooded roads but it was totally worth it. This week at co-op we acted like barnyard animals, made our own butter by shaking cream, played some farmyard games, and toured a working organic farm. Taegan’s favorite activity at the farm was picking raspberries from the greenhouse and petting a newborn baby duckling who was aaadddooorrable (in her words 😅). 
If it had not been so rainy I would have very much liked to get her help winterizing our own garden and picking apples from a local orchard but I’m sure we will still do these activities in the weeks to come.

Click here for the downloadable ocean unit  
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Ana's Week

I thoroughly enjoyed ocean week this week and I really think that my excitement about the week helped me to really teach Aria the week well, which meant that she really got a lot out of the week and thrived. Not only did she seem to learn a lot about the ocean and have fun, but she also worked really hard on her literacy and math.

We incorporated a lot of hands on activities this week, from making waves and ocean layers in a bottle to playing with ocean animals in water beads (huge hit for little sister) and putting on puppy shows. We spent time playing with kinetic sand, in our pool, and in the sand box. We also took trips to Petsmart to see the fish after a doctor appointment and went to Callaway Gardens to play in the lake and on their beach. Obviously, it isn’t an official beach, but we enjoyed pretending and getting a chance to practice our swimming!

I also incorporated learning the ocean names into our lessons this year. Aria doesn’t quite have all of the names memorized after this week, but she can point out each ocean on a map. It was also a great way to practice recognizing the names of the continents.

We enjoyed doing smaller things like playing ocean board games and putting together ocean puzzles or using the Water Wow! ocean pads for a little bit of entertainment while I needed to get things done. Aria’s favorite thing to do this week was painting a shark’s jaw and making shark’s teeth out of molds from a kit. We found a shark kit at Michael’s on major clearance last year and Aria has been dying to pull it out. It came with an awesome informational poster that gave us some great insight into sharks and allowed us to have long talks about sharks, their teeth, and their place in the ocean chain.

On a final note, this week finally got our Math U See book, and Aria loves it so much. Aria already can count to 100 and write her numbers up to 100.  Therefore, we have started with the Alpha rather than Primer level (aka, the second level of Math U See). This means, we are working on addition and subtraction, which I think the blocks really help her to enjoy. We haven’t received our Sing, Spell, Read and Write curriculum yet, but Aria practiced writing over 30 sight words and using them in sentences this week, finishing her Kindergarten prep workbook in its entirety. Our big win of the week was completing this workbook because I told Aria that once she did, she could be considered an “official kindergartener.” She loves that. One of the great benefits to homeschooling is that while according to state law, Aria can’t start kindergarten in a full blown classroom for another year, in our home, she can achieve whatever she wants to as long as she works hard. She worked hard to be a kindergartener, so I’m happy to be able to call her one!

I love that Aria seems to think that our thematic activities are a “break” from our focused math, literacy, geography, Bible, and foreign language of our mornings. She really loves the ocean, so it was a great second unit of the year to really pump her up for what is to come. Plus, we were able to mix fun stuff that Skylar enjoyed and learned from with more difficult concepts and longer, more educational literature that is more suited to a 5 year old. Ocean week is always a win, and I can’t wait to revisit some of the information when discussing Australia and the barrier reef at the end of the year!

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Jessica's Week:

I don’t know about you but getting back into the swing of things with that first week of school can be rough. We had an amazing summer filled with lots of vacations, fun, outdoor play and rarely spent more than a half hour at a time on any “school” related activities. So Taegan was not at all ready to settle down and focus on learning this week. Since this is our third year going through most of these themes I tried to focus a little less on the fun stuff and concentrate a little more on theme related reading skills, math etc. It suffices to stay my 4.5yr old did not agree with my approach. She wants to read, she’s probably capable of learning how at this point, but she DOES NOT want to put in any of the time necessary to really learn the skills. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “this is boring” throughout the week. 
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I often have to remind myself that every child is different and needs to learn at their own pace. With the time and effort I put into preparing play based lessons I want my daughter to be the smartest, most advanced, kiddo in her age bracket on the block. She is inventive and a strong-willed social butterfly, but academia (at least so far) has not been her greatest strength. In my heart I know that’s ok, she’ll learn when she is ready, and honestly, she’s still probably much more advanced than many kids her age but I struggle with my frustrations where this is concerned never-the-less. Several times this week I had to “take a break” and let her play while I tried to keep myself from screaming into a pillow. I wanted to yell, “Why aren’t you paying attention? Your never going to learn this if you don’t focus! How many times have we gone over and over this?” Sigh. None of that would have been productive. So instead I prayed, had a little extra chocolate and wine, and tried to breathe deep. Ocean week was not our favorite but it had its positive moments and that’s what I’m trying to focus on enjoying.

We spent our last week of summer at the beach in Michigan and I took some time to discuss tides, marine plants/animals, etc introducing our theme. My hope was that when we got home she’d be all revved up to learn more about the ocean. No luck there, she was more wore out with it than excited but there’s no changing the theme that late in the game so we pressed on. I tried out a new experiment showing water densities which was a hit, and she loved tossing around the beachball covered in sight words. My other big win was a watercolor painting of the ocean layers and including gluing in the animals who live at each depth. 
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Ocean bingo was a good review of naming a wide variety of sea creatures (I am amazed she remembers the names of things I forget like sea anemone, squid and urchin) and T matched up all the oceans with their locations on a map easily, hooray! Our in depth focus this year was a high point of the week. Since Taegan spent hours on the beach hunting for shells over the summer I decided see what all we could learn about them. We compared and contrasted the different types she has in her collection and read a simple book titled, “Oceans Alive, Sea Shells” by Shari Skeie. It tells what shells are made of, the different shell names and which animals call them home. Sooo interesting. It was also fun to just spend some time playing with our shells. We pretended the toob animals used them for a home, built sculptures from them, traced shells to color in, and hid them like lost treasure in kinetic sand. The play and sensory stuff was great but most of our other activities created more frustration than fun. I'll spare you the gory details of describing them all lol. 

For those of you who breezed back into school and have children eager to complete a workbook, rejoice in your blessings. For those who may be struggling to teach the basics and make school fun, you are not alone. I realize compared to Ana, I might come off as a hippie unschooler. My daughter is no where near as advanced as Aria but I hope this post encourages those of you like me… who’s children are perhaps not yet ready for the rigorous academic studies of modern education… you can move at your own pace, or in an untraditional format and still be a good teacher to your children. It’s a concept I am still learning to accept 😊 but I think its an important one.