When we follow the plan (mostly)...

It is hard to believe we have been homeschooling for 4 years!  I have learned so much.  Funny thing to say, right?  I'm supposed to be teaching my kids and yet I'm the one learning.  Oh, they are learning too, so much every day!  But wow, the things you learn about yourself during a journey like this.

The main thing I have learned is to relax!  We are definitely relaxed homeschoolers these days, meaning that I don't stress about what we do and do not get done each day.  I know that some days we will plow through and do more than I even have written in my planner - and other days, we may scratch the entire plan and spend the day with the chickens.  We do love these ladies!

Learning happens whether we are sticking to the plan or just hanging out.  In fact, I believe more learning happens when we don't stick to the plan.  ;)

But, on those rare days when I totally have my act together, it goes something like this.

The girls woke up early today (thank you to our lovely cat, Daisy).  After a breakfast of oatmeal, the girls got dressed and Jujubee (9) took Kaybug (2) downstairs.  I took this opportunity to work one-on-one with CocoBear (5) who is currently doing Oak Meadow Kindergarten.  We started late, so we are on lesson  12/13.  Yesterday I read the Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, so today we drew Jemima and the letter J.  We did a tongue twister with the letter J together, and a lot of fun movement games.  Then we played Jack Be Nimble.  Here she is jumping over the candle stick (we aren't staying at our house, and this is the only "candle stick" I could find here!  ha!).  Even the other two girls enjoyed this.

I told her the story of the 6 sided honey jar, we drew some stars made of triangles, and she did a number worksheet (she is a worksheet behind, so is doing 5) that we got from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I'm not big on worksheets, but she loves to "do math" like her older sister, so I grabbed this free printable for her.  

By this time, Jujubee and Kaybug were done playing downstairs, so Cocobear started playing with them and we had a snack.  Then it was Jujubee's turn.  

She starts her day with a weather journal.  Her favorite part is filling in the thermometer and checking to see what type of clouds are in the sky.  I found the thermometer as a free printable, then she cut them out and pasted them into her journal.  

Here is her weekly to-do page.  I found it over at Only Passionate Curiosity and it has been great!  She loves knowing what she is doing each day, and being able to check it off.  We chose to put it in a page protector and use a wet-erase marker instead of printing new ones daily.  

We already learned the new material for the week for math (we use Math U See for her math), so she completed her worksheet, and was done for the morning.  Time for a break until nap time when we can focus on spelling and handwork. My mom had an idea for the three of us to make a granny square blanket, so we are each crocheting granny squares and then Mom will join them into a blanket.  Jujubee is enjoying creating new color patterns.  

And that's it.  If I'm feeling ambitious during nap time, I may look in the Oak Meadow 3 syllabus and see what is next in Science or Social Studies.  We started late with this, too, but aren't doing everything in it because we already completed Christopherus 3, so OM3 is just for fun and to continue learning until we start our next school year.  We enjoyed both of them, but I'll do a better review later!