Rethinking How We Do School

We're almost two months into our school year and while for the most part it has gone very well, it also has had its challenges. I have to say that homeschooling is no walk in the park and I have a newfound appreciation for teachers who have a lot more children to teach than I do.

I have a little girl who is very creative and loves doing crafts and so far this school year, we have done very little in the way of arts and crafts other than the fine arts component she receives at CC each week. It wasn't my intention to skip over that form of learning. I think that I just feel so compelled to cross all the items off the list, that I haven't considered what value there is in creating.

The nice thing about using a boxed curriculum is that has everything laid out for you, but  in the curriculum we are using there isn't much direction in the way of crafts. We have been diligently checking off all the required work for each subject we need to cover and there has been coloring while I read aloud to her, but we haven't had any fun crafty projects like most kids in kindergarten do.

My daughter has been memorizing lots of wonderful, rich information in CC. She loves the songs and the CC app, loves having the Bible read to her, and enjoyed math in the beginning; but now seems very bored with all that is involved in our school day. And since I am her parent as well as her teacher and I know my child, I know that we need to some things differently to make school more enjoyable. Obviously, we have to do all the required learning our state requires; but I need to spice it up a little bit and do a little more planning and preparation beyond what is in the teacher's guide.

One way I have considered changing things up a bit this week is with our science. We are learning about the parts of a flower and so I did some research on Pinterest and found some fabulous resources on Teachers Pay Teachers to use here as well as a fantastic flower diagram to print at Kids Activities Blog here. I also asked my husband to pick up a rose for us to study. She was so excited about the rose, but it was just too pretty for us to take apart to look further. It made her heart happy to see this beautiful flower that her daddy bought for science her.

Then, in what I can only credit as God prompting me to look outside from our school table, I was reminded that we have some variety of a rose bush in our backyard. I do not have a green thumb and the children don't enjoy playing in our backyard like they do out front so I had forgotten about the rose bush.

It warmed up considerably so we went to see the state of our rose bush earlier this week. To see if it would provide us with what needed to learn about the parts of the flower and we found this beautiful example to study, fully blossomed so we could see the pistil, stamen, check for pollen, and count petals without taking the flower apart.

We even had flower buds protected by their sepals to study.

Then, I panicked because I remembered  had absolutely no idea where a magnifying glass was for us to look closer with. Thankfully, God provided that, too - buried deep in our "junk" drawer. 

The following day, we put to use some of the resources I purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers and created this crafty project which she really enjoyed.

Incorporating ideas like this made our school day go a lot smoother and was more enjoyable for us both.