How learning looked – end of 2014

It’s been a while since I’ve recapped our learning, so I thought I’d do a post to finish off our learning in 2014. There was lots going on with the holidays, but my favorite things during this time were all the game nights! After counting and organizing our games I decided we needed to play them more, and we did!
learning end of 2014-21learning end of 2014-20learning end of 2014-19learning end of 2014-18learning end of 2014-17learning end of 2014-16learning end of 2014-15learning end of 2014-14learning end of 2014-13learning end of 2014-12learning end of 2014-11learning end of 2014-10learning end of 2014-9learning end of 2014-8learning end of 2014-7learning end of 2014-6learning end of 2014-5learning end of 2014-4learning end of 2014-3learning end of 2014-2learning end of 2014-1
(for some reason these photos are in reverse order, but I’m going with it!)
Lots of indoor activities, but they still wanted to play outside if at all possible (even if 32 degrees!). They’ve made friends with the neighbors, older kids who they love to run around with. So fun, I love our neighborhood. No problem with “socialization” at our homeschool 🙂
Tuesday (5.5 here) has talked us into having her rest time downstairs (as opposed to playing or reading in her room). This gives her lots of time to set up things safely out of the reach of her 2.5 year old sister! She also LOVES to listen to audiobooks on our CD player (a high school graduate present I never imagined would last this long!). We get them from the library. She loves Clementine books, as well as any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Farmer Boy is a particular favorite. She can listen to them over and over. Usually doing a little something else at the same time (patterns, knitting, drawing, etc.).
In the Farmer Boy book Almanzo talks about putting popcorn in milk, equal sized glasses, and how the popcorn will fit in the glass of milk without overflowing. Can we try this mama? Yes!
I love saying yes. Can we paint our faces? Yes! Can we paint your face? Yes!
Lots of sensory play. We love Asia’s book 150 Screen Free Activities (affiliate link). And now buy baking soda in 13.5 lb bags at Costco! Also a garlic press + play dough, try it! By the way Tuesday made the “corset” in the picture of her playing with baking soda and colored vinegar. She is so so so proud of that thing!
A giant cardboard house thanks to a new light fixture at grandma’s. We had this set up in the living room but had to move it for the tree. When we brought it downstairs I let them go nuts painting it.
We hit up lots of independant game shops on Black Friday and randomly grabbed My First Carcassonne (affiliate link). If you want a game that is awesome to play as adults but even young kids can pick up on, this is it. We love it.
Tuesday made “Christmas” cleaner. Here is a link to our cleaner. So easy, and she loved giving it an extra minty smell for the holidays.
Writing, writing, writing! I made a little book for Tuesday. Small slips of paper hole punched and bound by a binder clip. I write words she’d like to spell out on them, so she can go back. It currently has all of our friend’s and family’s names, “happy” “birthday” and many others.  I can’t remember where I saw this, but I didn’t come up with the idea. It works great and she references it a lot. Speaking of writing… found an old Mad Libs. Oh the hilarity!
Perhaps the most exciting thing for an unschooling mom like me to see is the moment an idea solidifies for my child! This happened in December with math equations (or word sentences or whatever people call them now). She had been adding things up for a while, but never wrote out the equations. I found this little old slate, which had been mine. Since Tuesday is so into “prairie girl” things she, of course, loved it. She wrote ” 5 + 5 10″ so I showed her what an equal sign was. Boom! She’s all about equations now, so fun.
Extra curriculars: Tuesday and Bennet are in gymnastics now, homeschool bounce at the trampoline place for both of them, and our local children’s museum has a “homeschool hangout” class once a month that Tuesday loves. She’s all, “Ok, see you later mom!” and I pick her up three hours later with her bubbling with what they’ve learned. Wild that she’s so self confident and outgoing. I just love her!
I really want to show you how I’ve changed things around for the new year, but for now I’ll leave it at learning from mid-November through December 2014!

Join the Conversation

4 Comments

  1. Glad to hear about all the good learning taking place! Tuesday has good taste! I loved the Little House books as a kid too and would beg my parents to do pioneer days, haha.

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply to Amber Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *