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10 Christmas Activities for Homeschooling

10 Christmas Activities for Homeschooling

December is one of my favorite times of year to change things up and have fun veering off our normal homeschool path. That’s why we include Christmas activities in our homeschool plans whenever possible. This holiday season we’ve stayed busy with mixed media Christmas art and Christmas Around the World. Now that those projects are winding down, we can add some other things to our December homeschool mix.

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Homeschooling Boys

Homeschooling Boys? Four Things You Need to Know

Homeschooling is a grand adventure and homeschooling boys can be especially fun or frustrating – depending on your perspective.  As a homeschooling mother it’s vitally important to remember that boys are different as we learn how to work with the way they are wired! Thankfully, homeschooling allows us the flexibility to embrace this. So here are 4 things to keep in mind as you embark on this adventure.

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Activities & Resources for Teens Interested in Engineering Careers

25 Activities & Resources for Teens Interested in Engineering Careers

The word engineer is derived from the Latin words ingeniare (“to contrive, devise”) and ingenium (“cleverness”). Today, engineering is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In anticipation of Engineers Week next month, I’m delighted to share with you 25 activities and resources to help you teach engineering concepts to teens.

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The Ultimate Homeschooler's Christmas Countdown

The Ultimate Homeschooler’s Christmas Countdown

If there’s one time of year I enjoy above all others, it’s Christmas time. There’s just something about the sights, the sounds, and the smells that make me warm all over. Growing up, one of my favorite things to do each season was to move the little mouse to a new day in our Christmas Countdown Calendar. Nowadays as a mom, I want my kids to have nostalgic Christmas memories just like I do. That’s why I came up with our Ultimate Homeschooler’s Christmas Countdown. It’s an inexpensive, original, and educational way for our family to prepare ourselves for the holidays, and it’s something that even my teenagers look forward to every December. Today I’m going to share with you how to get started with this delightful Christmas tradition. Trust me, it’s a keeper! 5 Steps to the Ultimate Homeschooler’s Christmas Countdown 1. Find yourself a miniature Christmas tree. Whether you decide to use a store-bought Charlie Brown tree or have your children make one out of paper makes no difference. Just find one you love, and put it smack in the middle of your homeschool space. Put some lights on it if you’d like, but don’t add the ornaments just yet! 2. Make a stockpile of 25 simple ornaments. There are so many ways you can do this. We usually use a template to cut book-shaped ornaments out of foam. You could also use plain glass Christmas balls (if you’re that brave!), construction paper or cardstock, or any other design you can come up with that will leave ample room for your kids to write on them later. Keep them in a basket or other decorative container somewhere near the tree, but don’t hang them up! That comes later. 3. Head to the library and borrow 25 Christmas books. It’s times like this that I really appreciate the fact that we live near a rather large library. There are so many books to choose from! After you bring the books home, have your kids help you wrap them up in Christmas paper. Then, place them under the tree. 4. Starting on December 1st, read one book from under the tree each day. This is when the countdown begins. On December 1st, have one of your kids choose a book from under the tree and let them unwrap it. (If you have more than one child, this is a great way for them to learn to wait their turn!) Choose an ideal time to read it together. Some families may opt to do it first thing in the morning, while others may save it for bedtime. Still others may choose to include it in their homeschool routine. Do what works for you! No matter when you do it, your kids will become more and more excited each day as they see that book pile dwindling. 5. Each day, write the name of the book you read on an ornament. Did you think I forgot about the ornaments? Nope. This is where they come in. Each day after you finish reading your Christmas book together, have one of your children neatly write the name of the book on one of the ornaments they made and then hang it on the tree. As with watching the book pile get smaller, your kids will love to see the ornaments move from the basket to the tree each day. While the tree may look sparse with one ornament on December 1st, that makes seeing it in its glory with 25 ornaments on the 25th all the better! Homeschooling allows families so much time to make beautiful Christmas memories together- memories that are sure to make their way into your children’s traditions when they have kids of their own. Now it’s your turn. Do you have a unique way of counting down the holidays?

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Benefits of Baking With Your Homeschool Kids

Benefits of Baking With Your Homeschool Kids

Homeschooling often provides us with time with our kids that other parents envy.  We’ve used that time to visit local parks, serve our church community, and often times, baking together.  Besides being fun and yummy, baking with your kids can bring some decidedly positive results. Pausing a difficult lesson for a muffin break.  Packing cookies for a picnic.  Capitalizing on a rainy afternoon to bake up something warm.  You won’t regret a minute of it. Relationship Building Being intentional in spending time with our kids will, I think, mean more to them than just about anything.  When we set time aside, put our phone away, and focus just on them– we are showing them their value in a very tangible way. Think of the best memories you have from childhood.  For me, many of these were everyday activities spent with people who loved me.  Making memories with your kids will strengthen your relationship.  Not only in the here and now, but shared memories strengthen the bond you have for years to come. Tip:  Keep a real or virtual ‘scrapbook’ of your baking adventures together. Communication Girls and boys tend to have different communication styles.  Baking with your kids is an activity that leans into each of their strengths. For boys, the side by side communication of being active doing something while you talk can help them open up.  Try bringing up a topic of discussion as you both scoop cookie dough.  Ask an interesting question while you frost or decorate. Girls will open up just being one on one with you in the kitchen.  Depending on your daughter, you may or may not even need to have some discussion starters on hand. Tip:  Here are some ideas to get the communication going. Life Skills There was one summer that we had chocolate chip cookies at least once a week.  My eldest son had learned to make them and made it his mission to keep us stocked.  Since then, he hasn’t made them much, but he certainly has the skill down pat! Learning to follow a recipe, becoming confident in safely tweaking recipes, and even knowing some recipes by heart are all important life skills.  And it’s our job as parents to apprentice our kids in gaining the skills they need.  Remember, skills are developed through lots of practice, not by doing them once. Tip:  Schedule a once a week baking day with your child. Fractions I know I can’t be the only one who only truly understands fractions because of baking. Listen, I know that baking isn’t a math curriculum, but it is perhaps the best real life application of adding, subtracting, doubling, and halving fractions that I’ve found.  So why not be intentional in passing this useful practice onto our kids? How about giving them a simple recipe to make a double (or half) batch of?  Maybe add your white sugar on top of the brown and seeing how much the two measures combined equal.  Or combine your liquids into one large measuring cup to see what they total. Tip:  Here’s a simple cookie recipe that can be easily halved or doubled. And here’s a list of some more fun recipes to try with your kids: Brown Sugar Cookies Chewy Cookie Bars (with 3 variations) Cinnamon Stick Cookies Brownies Gooey Rice Crispy Treats Frosted Shortbread Squares Freezer Friendly Scones Or try something savory with these easy Cheesy Chicken Roll-Ups What are your baking traditions with your kids? Do you have a favorite ‘kid friendly’ recipe?

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Lessons Learned From Remodeling With Kids

In our homeschool journey, we have had the opportunity to teach our children through do it yourself projects (#DIYplus5) and home remodels. I can almost guarantee none of our children will build houses for a living when they have graduated yet they will have the “know how.” When we started our first home remodel, we had no idea how our working on a house would morph into some of our greatest assets and building blocks of our children’s education.

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Why You Should Teach Gardening in Your Homeschool

The thought of gardening with kids can conjure up one of two thoughts; either idyllic sunny scenes of children playing in plentiful vegetable patches; or visions of your child covered head to toe in mud, clutching some kind of creepy-crawly! Of course the reality lies somewhere between the two extremes. Gardening with your children can enrich their education and enhance their learning experience. More and more families are seeing the benefits of incorporating horticulture into the home education of their family.

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