Are mornings easy for anyone homeschooling? When my oldest was a bit younger and I first started looking into homeschooling I had these lovely visions of making breakfasts with a cup of hot coffee in my hand while my child looked through the morning basket that I had laid out the night before, a basket filled with thoughtfully curated and thought-provoking activities and texts which related to our monthly theme. As he read quietly I would gaze out the window while stirring eggs before we met at the table to eat our breakfast and discuss the coming plan for the day.
Some days we almost make it there, and maybe someday we will, but for now life is just a bit wilder. We are off eggs for the moment while trying to get the baby’s eczema under control so I instead make separate breakfasts for everyone, and by the time I get breakfast served my coffee is long past cold, but it takes too much energy to re-warm it (and I will most likely just misplace it anyway) so I drink it cold while shoveling food into my mouth before the baby tips his plate onto the floor and this is where the dream of my calm morning goes to die. But after we clean up and the boys spend some time outside, in what has been the earliest spring ever experienced since moving here 11 years ago, I get the baby to bed for his first nap and we finally sit down for school.
I draw down the basket that I prepared last night, reading through the math and phonics lessons that I planned for us. My boy could do math for hours but is easily frustrated by phonics, so we begin with the tough stuff and I repeat the mantra for him, “you can do hard things,” because let’s be honest, learning to read is one of the hardest things most kids will do in the early years. I set down our cups of tea with lemon and honey, which seems to help set the tone of the lesson to one of calm and courage. He is an active, loud, big feelings boy and doing undesirable tasks can be difficult for him so I try my best throughout the lesson to be calm and patient, to make him feel seen and heard while still affirming that he is capable of big things. So we open our phonics and begin – the hardest part of our current school routine, but made easier by the amazing program that we are using. I started out with a couple different programs, but Reading Reflex feels so intuitive and such a natural way to learn how to read, I am forever grateful to have stumbled upon the homeschool curriculum video that led me here. We get through our 15 minutes of phonics with a liberal amount of hand-holding (literal) and lots of encouragement. He can easily do the work if he simply acts on his instincts, but like both my partner and myself he over-thinks. Isn’t that one of the hardest parts about this whole thing, both the mothering and the schooling – watching our own struggles manifest in our kids?
Next we venture into Singapore’s Earlybird Kindergarten math which is a breeze for him, we are cruising through the 1A text, which makes sense since he seems to be strong in STEM subjects. After math we start our read-aloud – right now it is a chapter book, Dinosaur Cove to coincide with our dinosaur unit study (post on the dinosaur unit study to come). He adores books and being read to and so I generally read a short chapter book per day out loud. Luckily there are a ton of Dinosaur Cove books at our library so we have ample material. We have also read a Cam Jansen mystery and Magic Schoolbus chapter books relating to dinosaurs. The unit studies at the present time are definitely more fun than serious. I check out as many books as I can find through our library (I hit my inter-library loan hold limit last week) and we pick and choose which ones are of interest. I generally lay out a few new books for him to look at in the mornings while I am getting breakfast ready and will read him any that catch his eye while the baby naps. He has been listening to Digger Rex podcast throughout the day and also has watched a couple of the Land Before Time movies. We have been doing a weekly activity – last week we dissolved baking soda ‘dinosaur eggs’ with vinegar drops and this week we will make salt dough fossil prints with our dinosaur miniatures. The activities are fun jumping off points for us to talk about actual dinosaur eggs and fossils, but I don’t push lessons or learning on these activities, they are just meant to be fun in his pre-k year. My focus right now is really just on phonics and math, but he is definitely picking quite a bit up and has told me that he is becoming “a dinosaur guy” since we started. This is one of the things I love about homeschooling – the space to explore and discover potential interests.
For now we are in a routine and it is good and working so I will relish in that. Things will shift, times will change, the toddler will move down to 1 nap and life will re-arrange until we settle into the new normal. And through it all we will figure it out, as we always do. Not always in the most graceful way, but doing the best that we can.
Some Favorite Library Check-Outs This Week:
The Rainbow Cleanup: A Magical Organizing Adventure by Clea Shearer – This was a surprising hit with my son, about two friends cleaning up a messy room so that they can find what they need to play. My 5 year old was so inspired that he went through his room and choose a bag full of toys to donate, and then we worked together to organize all the remaining ones on his shelves and into his drawers in a logical manner, so definitely worth a check out!
Amos McGee Misses the Bus by Philip Christian Stead – My son said he enjoyed this book, but I think it was more one of my favorites, I think the illustrations are beautiful and I enjoyed the slow pacing of the book as well as the idea that it is okay to do things at your own pace in a world that seems to be rushing by.
What Do They Do With All That Poo? By Jane Kurtz – Of course anything to do with poo is going to be a hit with my 5 year old boy, but this was an interesting read especially regarding how zoos manage all the waste from the animals who live there.
In My Garden by Charlotte Zolotow – I was surprised at the zeal with which my son exclaimed that he loved this book, it was slow and repetitive and I did not think he would enjoy it but kids surprise us. I loved the way it went through the seasons and focused on the changes and how our activities and perspectives on beauty change throughout the year, as well as the focus on growing things.
Fox: A Circle of Life Story by Isabel Thomas – This is a beautifully illustrated book, but the mother fox does die, so maybe not one for small readers who are sensitive to death. We talk about death and life a lot in our house, and the amount of time we spend outside in nature my son has inevitably been exposed to a fair share of insect and animal death so he wasn’t bothered by this story. But it is beautifully done and we used it as a great launching pad to talk about death and life and decomposition and rebirth.
Do Not Lick This Book: It’s Full of Germs by Ivan Ben-Barak – we are full on into sick season this month and so this book was well-timed. My son and I both loved it and it was very informative, we especially loved the photos under the microscope of skin and teeth – led to a great conversation about brushing teeth which is one of my son’s sticker chart tasks for this month.
The Minpins by Roald Dahl – This is a very creative story and the illustrations are so fun. I put it in our love pile because I think it is a really well-done story, however my son was a bit bothered by the monster in the story and asked that we not read it again, so perhaps a story for a slightly older child or one who is not bothered by monsters, but again, really well done.
The Power of Yeti by Rebecca Van Slyke – I loved this because we have been talking about doing hard things in our house a lot lately with our jump into school and phonics, and I loved having this book that exemplified growth mindset for my son!
Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera by Candace Fleming – This is one that my son picked out, he has always been very into our honeybees so I wasn’t surprised to see it in his pile, but I was surprised at how much new information we learned in this book. It is written in a very accessible way for this age group and my son fell in love with the main character, apis (although she does die at the end as honeybees generally live no longer than a month, but the book does end on a happy note with a new one being born).
Gifts From the Garbage Truck: A True Story About the Things We (Don’t) Throw Away by Andrew Larsen – Okay this was the biggest surprise love from the library from this week, it was one my son picked out and it was probably my favorite. It is a true story about a garbage man, Nelson Molina, who finds and displays treasures that he pulls out of people’s trash cans – there is now a museum full of his finds that people can visit. We both adored this book and I am excited to check it out for our Waste unit study in 26/27.