Tag Archives: planning

Involving Children in Creating Their Routines

As home educators it is a good idea to include the children in what they study and the order in which they study subjects. They don’t go to a school and thus don’t have to be in a situation where they are told what to do and when to do it. However, even in brick and mortar schools the students get to pick some of their courses as they get older.

Tiffany and I were talking the other day about this subject. Well, we were talking about how she dawdled getting her lessons completed once she was old enough to do them independently. We brainstormed some ideas that might have helped her focus a bit better.

One of those ideas was to communicate clearly that she could do her studies in whatever order she desired. I made a checklist of things that they had to do but she didn’t realize that she didn’t have to do them in the order listed.

Involve the Child in Planning

Another idea was to let her have some say in the topics she studied and to help her brainstorm those. Write them on sticky notes and let her rearrange them.

Another idea is to allow the student to pick a topic for the month or even just a week. Or pick an overall subject and then pick weekly topics to study. There are a lot of ways this can be done. By allowing the child to have some input into what they are to study, they are a bit more motivated to do the studies.

Another thing that we did do was to rotate between science and social studies; we did not study both in the same month. You can have a broad topic like mammals and the first week they can do some basic study about what a mammal is and make a list of them. Then they can pick a specific mammal to study the next week. Or have them pick a water mammal, large mammal, or small mammal to study each week. Oh and by the way, mammals are vertebrates, so you can study what that means. There are different types of mammals, see this website for some information.

Older children can be encouraged to dig deeper into the subject or find an unexpected example of the subject . . . e.g. the armadillo is a mammal. You can have each one write some questions about the topic (with their corresponding answers) that can be used to play games for review.

A Child is More Apt to Enjoy Learning about a Topic of Interest than Something Chosen for Them

Talk with your child about what you think is important that they learn and find out what they’d like to learn. Then find a way to include them in planning out how they learn.

It is still important to have times of study together, in as a group . . . Bible sharing/teaching and read aloud times are just two ideas of this but it can be anything you need to do with everyone. Teaching your child how to study independently is an important skill too but you don’t want to sacrifice family bonding.

Even the Youngest Child can Make a Choice

You can start this process even with very young children. It starts with letting them pick which outfit they want to wear or what they want to eat (choice 1 or choice 2). It can progress to do you want to play with this toy or that toy or do you want to play with clay or color.

As they get older, they can choose between learning about fire trucks or polar bears or whatever else you give as an option. This helps you learn your child’s preferences and can help you tailor their education in a way that delights them.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to help your children enjoy learning. After all, learning is a lifetime endeavor, not just something done as a child because someone makes you.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

February Wrap-Up; Planning for a Good March

As things turned out last week, Michael’s van decided to be finicky and not start on my errand day. So, he had to take the car, which was okay by Tiffany and I since we didn’t feel like running errands anyway. ;) Michael stopped at the store and picked up some essentials, so that we could make it through the weekend.

But I decided that we could actually make it until Wednesday, which was the last day that Sprouts had their roasts on sale for $2.88 a pound. That is a great deal here and I usually like to get one each week of that sale, so I got a couple this week. :) The last one we had was really good.

I cannot believe it is already March! Tiffany and I had our monthly check-in with each other. I like this because it gives us each someone to talk to about how things are going and set goals for the month. Some of those goals are based on the challenges of the previous month. :o

We could not justify spending any money to eat out this week since we chose not to do this on errand day (and my gift cards were depleted) so I decided to make something special for us. Ham and Cheese Scones! Only problem is that we really needed to have our meeting early in the day rather than around lunch time, so we chatted after breakfast.

February Check-In ~ Lifeofjoy.meI fixed us eggs and zucchini hash and Tiffany fixed the tea. I got down some nice cups that I either got from my mom or one of my ancestors. :) I love them; they are so pretty and dainty. I did douse those eggs with nutritional yeast after taking this picture. :D

Tiffany and I both took notes in our bullet journals(bujo) as we went. We paused to draw some rectangles to fill in the beginning. Then later I made some notes on some sticky notes on how I want to design my next month bujo pages.

BuJo Feb Check-In ~ Lifeofjoy.meI’ll pretty it up later but I like how it turned out and I don’t have a bunch of meeting sticky notes to make pretty. Those sticky notes are my brainstorming schedules, routines, and bujo pages. :(

One of the things on those sticky notes is about habit trackers. Mine did not work very well last month. See.

Failed BuJo Trackers ~ Lifeofjoy.meNotice all the squares without x’s? Well, there should be very few of those. The only reason there are x’s on the Weekly Must Do tracker is because that is all about the blog daily posts and I have to do those or not blog. :o

I’ve got a plan though, so I’m encouraged. That is one thing I like about a bullet journal, when something doesn’t work, change it. If this were a planner, I’d be stuck for the whole year. ;)

Unfortunately I did not implement a lot of the things I wanted to last month. I’m referring to those things that I planned to do at the first of February. I have learned some things about myself through this. A tracker or list does not encourage me to accomplish a task. But a reminder and attaching a new task to an existing task works quite well.

With that in mind, I’ve revamped my morning routine, to accomplish some of the goals I set with Tiffany yesterday. I’m looking forward to implementing some of these changes.

I still made the Ham and Cheese Scones from AllDayIDreamAboutFood.com and they were quite yummy. I may play around with the flours a bit to lighten the calorie load so that we can have two without feeling like we overindulged. ;)

Ham and Cheese Scones ~ Lifeofjoy.meThey were delicious! We had them with a small side salad and a “after work-out” shake. They tasted sooo good we both still wanted another one. ;) I’ve sent out a question to the THM groups to see what they think about how many can be eaten in a sitting. :D

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough for today. I’m excited and hopeful for accomplishing many things this month. I hope you are too.

Until next time, God bless,

 Michele ºÜº