From virtual dance and parkour lessons to craft-filled afternoons with friends plus challenges to read every day and to get outside, January is turning out to be a busy month. Here is our Lesson Plan for this month.
Virtual Classes
I’m constantly on the lookout for virtual classes to break up our days at home and to keep things interesting. Fortunately, we’ve had no shortage of opportunities to fill the schedule. The kids do pretty well with video calls. We try to keep our screen time use low so there isn’t much in the way of “Zoom fatigue.”
Mondays, we log on for lessons with some of our homeschool friends for ballet. They have been offering virtual classes and when allowed by government health and safety guidelines, in-person classes as well.
Tuesdays, our local library system hosts virtual “Crafternoons” ranging on various seasonal topics. Each craft theme uses supplies readily found around the house. While the kids freestyle their creations, the library staff reads selections along the theme. We’ve made toilet paper roll snowmen, New Years Day crowns, tree ornaments and more.
A new addition to our schedule is a virtual parkour class. My kids already bounce off the furniture and walls, I thought this would be a fun opportunity to teach them how to do it safely – or just a great excuse to be more active during these dreary months.
Wednesdays, we’re looking forward to the library rebooting their nature club for the winter season. We participated in the summer session last year. The kids made nature journals and studied flora and fauna happenings in the backyard.
Tea Time on Thursdays is our weekly opportunity for the kids to show off their read aloud skills and to connect with family. We hardly miss a week.
Fridays bring a new session of Art Explorers (aka Art Appreciation). Last session, we were learning about local artists for Native American Heritage Month and spooky masterpieces for Halloween.
We’ve also hosted a virtual book club once a month on Fridays for a group of our homeschool friends the last few months. We pick a book to read for the month and get together to over a few discussion questions and a shared craft.
When I first started teaching the kids at home, I felt the need to check a bunch of boxes each day. Reading? Check. Math? Check. Social studies? Check. Health? Check. You get the idea. One of the many benefits of homeschooling — we don’t have to do any of that. Finding your rhythm is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard. Trying to do anything else just leads to burnout.
Instead of tackling all subjects every day, we broke apart the week into themes. At first, it was based on our in-person class schedule but we’ve semi-settled into this new routine and have made adjustments periodically.
We ease into each school week with fun.
Mondays are for Music, Movement, Art (a deeper dive) and Math.
Tuesdays we expand our exploration of Language Arts concepts and reserve our afternoons for Social Studies projects.
Wednesdays begin with Music and Math with Science projects in the afternoon. Often these projects take us outside.
Thursdays are much like Tuesdays where Language Arts are our morning focus and Social Studies are in the afternoon.
Fridays are more of a free-for-all in terms of Math. We like to play more games online or board games and for Science we break out Kiwi Boxes or aim for more energetic activities.
We like learning Language arts (reading, writing, etc.) in many ways. Some of the more creative ways we’ve infused a love of learning this subject have been:
- Read aloud challenges
- Poetry Teatime
- Education.com games
- Teach Monster app
- Flashcards
- Pen pal letters
- Word searches
- Book clubs
- Write a secret language
- Nature journaling
- Instant messaging
- Magazine subscriptions
- Reading recipes
- Karaoke