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Family Engagement and Homeschooling

I've mentioned before that as a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador I am required to write about a focus topic once a month. For November they asked us to write about family engagement. At first I wasn't sure what to write about. We are a homeschooling family and as far as I am aware my family and especially my husband have been very on board and supportive with this decision. So I started thinking about ways I try to involve my family in our education and how we share what we are doing with them. This blog for example is a great way for my family to keep tabs on us and see what exciting things we are learning. A blog also acts as a journal of our homeschool weeks. Later I know I will enjoy looking back and remembering what we were doing when my kids were just starting out, and I think they will have fun looking back and seeing what we did when they are older. I also share a lot on Instagram, which is another fun way to see what we are up to. Our family doesn't live close to us so I like to use social media as a way to share with them. It is so great that both grandparents have a way to see lots of pictures of what we are doing.

Another way we include the family in our learning journey is to write postcards. Mother Goose Time usually incudes a postcard activity in the monthly curriculum. They get to decorate the front of the postcard and then I have my daughter write about what we were learning for the month and then write a sentence or two about the most interesting thing she learned. My son dictates to me and I write down what he says. We then mail them out to their grandparents so they can see what they learned. My kids love sending mail and its a great way to get them practicing writing skills while recalling information they learned.

I also like to keep my husband involved. He sees a lot of what we are working on and we always have projects in different stages of completion around the house. He talks to the kids about what they are learning and attends field trips and outings with us. He always gets excited about what we are doing and is always willing to help out when he can. He is usually at work when we are doing our school work but when he is home with us he is always ready to work on a project or go on an adventure with us. We also have great communication. Sometimes I joke that we are having parent teacher conferences together. I feel that it is important for him to know what we are doing.

Family engagement is very important even as homeschoolers. I would even go as far as to say its important especially because we are homeschoolers. We don't have report cards or progress reports. There are no parent nights or science fairs. Being transparent and sharing our successes with our family is important. It creates excitement for the kids to be able to share what they are learning and talk about it with their family. I also love sharing what we are doing because sometimes friends or family might even have resources that go along with what we are doing that they can share.

 Here are a few fun activities that we did this week that promoted the feeling of family engagement during our week of learning about the Understory layer of the rainforest.


We had a fun day of learning about where chocolate comes from and then we did a chocolate tasting. This is definitely an activity that everyone can do together and get excited about it. Who doesn't want some bonding time over chocolate and It was a great lesson in the different forms that chocolate can come in. We tried cocoa powder, nibs, dark, and milk chocolate. 

We also made there beautiful orchids. 



They came out so well that we are using them to decorate our house with. They are right out there for everyone to see and the kids can talk about them to people. They are so proud of them. 

Another way to get the whole family involved this week was to get outside and see some of the things we were learning about. We live in Washington which has temperate rain forests and we read a really lovely book that shared facts about several different rain forests and when we got to the section that talked about the forests where we live we were already very familiar with the plant life that grows here. We made sure that we looked for things like moss on the trees, and licorice root growing out of the trees similar to the orchids we learned about earlier in the week . We noticed ferns and bugs and trees. Nature walks and family hikes are excellent ways to get the whole family involved in the learning process. Mother Goose Time provides ample opportunities or family engagement and ways to involve everyone in the learning process. 



*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*





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