Our Homeschool Week: Feb 21 - 27

Stress is never a good addition to homeschooling. I fought a migraine for the first three days of last week. It was a huge setback and when I started to feel functional again I had a lot of work waiting for me. So, it was a light week in our homeschool and in my business at NorthStar…again. Which was a bummer because I really wanted to finish writing our Rocket Science unit. It's SOOOO close to being complete! And there's also a part of me that felt guilty about not homeschooling more last week. That's the part of me that was taught to value achievement and productivity over feeling and just being true to yourself and your needs. It's a value I'm working to overwrite for myself and my kids, slowly and painfully.

Sometimes, you have to learn these life lessons by being hit over the head REPEATEDLY with exactly why you are doing it wrong. When I first started homeschooling, I did it the hard way. We started with online schooling and I was still stuck in that lense of school and other people's expectations, and some arbitrary outside standard. My son was having none of it. He wasn't ready to write at the level of the assignments and it was a HUGE struggle. We both felt terrible. Slowly, I came to see that I needed to get rid of the external expectations and meet my child where he was. He needed support, not pressure. As time went on, this took us down the path to explore interest-led learning and unschooling. We aren't radical unschoolers, but it is my goal to give my child power and autonomy in his own education. All the unit studies I make and use from NorthStar are intended to be a RESOURCE, an invitation, not an expectation. I actually hesitated to use the term unit study at first, because I didn't want to be confused with more rigidly structured educational approaches.

But I digress, what this all means is that last week, we needed to slow down and relax for the week and I'm glad we did. I also spent a lot less time tracking our week so this post is a bit incomplete. I love the expression - “there are no educational emergencies.” (If you know who said this, please tell me!) I homeschool BECAUSE I want to embrace connection and honor our needs OVER meeting external expectations. My son took Monday to play with his best friend. The rest of the week he spent a lot more time reading to himself and cuddling up to watch movies with his sister and me.

Read on to hear more about last week's activities, reading, and other homeschool fun.

Magical Moments

Dip Dye Flowers and Butterflies A while ago, my kids and I did an experiment involving food coloring and paper towels, in order to learn about the wicking property of water. It’s something I’ve wanted to include in the water unit I have been working on for our store. I had these pretty dyed papers left-over and I held on to them because I knew we could come up with something fun to make with them. Today, inspiration hit, and we made flowers and butterflies. It was a nice prompt to look at the anatomy of flowers too. The Parts of the Flower poster is from another homeschool resource creator, I’ll try and find the link. The book is Explanatorium of Nature by DK which is a favorite of my biology-obsessed son.

Exploring

My son explored some media about the paleolithic and neolithic era. This lead into a PBS Eons marathon while I was catching up on work. He really enjoys this series.

My daughter’s sensory play prompt for the week was a sink activity with ocean animals. This girl loves water! The bathroom sink meant a lot less mess than other places.

Reading

Note: I’ve included affiliate links for the books and games mentioned here. All opinions are my own. If you purchase through my link I get a very small percentage that helps support this small business.

Still Reading:

• When on Earth: History as You've Never Seen It Before! by DK

• Usborne Encyclopedia of World History by Jane Bingham

• Explanatorium of Nature by DK

Evening Read Aloud:

Kane Chronicles: Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan -

Read to Self:

• 13 Story Treehouse: Monkey Mayhem! by Andy Griffiths

• The Notebook of Doom Series: Flurry of the Snombies by Troy Cummings

Playing

• Domino Math Games - This game was a lot of fun! These were from Games4Gains. *Not an affiliate we just a love of math games of all kinds.

Making

Landmarks - We had a fun building challenge trying to construct classic buildings out of blocks. We talked about structural features of buildings and the similarities between buildings.

Practicing (Math & Literacy)

The 13-Story Treehouse books provided a great prompt to talk about large number addition, multiples, and exponential growth! Every book they add 13 more stories to the treehouse. We discussed the “logic” of how the author named the series. He tried to figure out - was it addition, multiplication, or something else.

We also did a little multiplication practice in an Usborne Times Table activity book. Usually, this kind of stuff flops for my kid, but he liked this one because it had a lot of images and games.

Typing - Journaling on the computer was my son’s choice again this week. It took a LONG time for him to type this out and, truthfully, I wandered off and didn’t have the patience to sit with him through it. However, he is self-motivated to improve his typing so he stayed focused for a long time.

Thanks for reading about our homeschool week! I hope you connect with our experiences or find something interesting to read or explore with your children.

If our gentle, respectful interest-led homeschooling approach appeals to you, be sure to check out the curriculum in my store. It’s based on our daily homeschool experience with activities road-tested by my kids and their friends. We research and vet our studies thoroughly to ensure the science is accurate and all resources reflect values of environmental stewardship and social justice.

Stay up to date on our daily homeschool life! Follow @northstarhomeschool on Instagram.