Caffeinated Homeschooler

Its been a hard week here. We have each come down with some sort of a 24 hour stomach bug, its been cold and hard to get out of bed, and lets not forget about the excitement of the holidays and winding down the end of the year. Everyone is just a little off. My son has thrown a tantrum every morning this week and while we have done some school this week we have taken it slow and skipped a few days. After I post this I will probably grab some coffee and cuddle with my kids in the big bean bag chair and watch a movie. Nothing wrong with ending the year snuggly, warm and relaxed. This week with our  Mother Goose Time curriculum we learned about winter living. We did day 16 which was lumberjack and day 17 which was log cabin. We also went back and did the sewing mittens activity from week three that we skipped. I like to keep the activities that we don't get to so we can get them out later and do them on a day that we don't have anything to do or just need a little extra. With a

With Christmas coming in just a few short days we decided to take it easy this week. We did lots of cookie baking, present wrapping, and movie watching. For my daughters school work this week we mostly focused on learning about different Christmas traditions from different countries. We then made an ornament to help us remember what we learned for each country. It made for a very fun and meaningful Christmas tree this year. The only part of our normal routine that we continued was our Mother Goose Time . The great thing about this program is how flexible it is. I love that I can really get into a week or even just a day and do everything that is listed in the teacher guide, or I can pick and choose what we do to make it an easy fun day. I liked that even though we weren't really doing a lot of school this week Mother Goose Time helped to make it feel like there was still some structure to the day. We continued our morning routine of calendar, weather, song and a story which helped

Its been a very cold week here in Washington as well as in our home classroom, we are finishing up week 2 of Mother Goose Times  Winter in the Woods and I would have to say that this so far has been one of our favorite months. We are having so much fun learning about all things winter and everyday there is a new theme packed with exciting activities. This week was all about the forest and how it changes in the winter. We learned about pine trees, pine cones, snowflakes, icicles, and snowmen. The cold weather is making us want to stay snuggled up in our beds, but once we are up and my kids hear about what fun things are planned for the day with Mother Goose Time they are ready to go. Even though my daughter is in second grade I still include her in some of the activities. We usually start the day by doing the calendar and weather together. Then I introduce the daily topic poster and have a brief discussion about it using the discussion ideas that are provided on the daily topic post

This week has been so much fun with our Mother Goose Time curriculum! The theme this month is Winter in the woods and while it is a perfect theme for the month of December, I think we are relating to it in a very real world way because of our move. We are for the first time experiencing a real winter. So instead of just reading about season changes, cold weather, snow, and hibernation we are actually experiencing it. It is 25 degrees out in Washington right now and it hasn't snowed yet but there is frost covering the ground in the mornings and it is beautiful. On day 4 the invitation to create was all about making tracks in the snow so of course we bundled up and made tracks in the layer of crunchy frost that was covering the grass. It was a super sensory experience for them, and something my little San Diego natives have never experienced before. We looked at our foot prints and felt the frozen plants. Then we came back in to warm up and used shaving cream mixed with glue to mak