Spring is coming! You can feel it in the air and you can see it all around. Crocuses, daffodils, buds on the trees, and all plants start to pulse with life again. It’s time to start thinking about the garden and move as many lessons outdoors as possible. Focus on the life cycle of plants and animals. When it comes to animals, nature will teach us a lesson here because it looks like our cat will have kittens. But these are all plans. And what did we do in our homeschool during the months of winter hibernation, when the rain and wind were prevailing and the weather was not too welcoming for outdoor explorations?
If you want to know what books and resources we use this year, jump into this particular post where I share our curriculum picks.
English
We do a lot of writing and reading. Boys have their textbooks to learn and practice the basics of the English language and composition and additionally, we have dedicated days to write freely according to their imagination. At that moment they both decided to write their own proper chapter books.
We have finished reading Treasure Island and have learnt about the famous pirates including Francis Drake as well as looked into some ships. Then we moved to read Old Greek Stories by James Baldwin which served as a refresher of Ancient Greece topic we did last year.
Boys narrate different types of text and write short paragraphs and articles for other subjects that we study. For example: Dominik wrote a persuasive essay (short and sweet!) to convince a reader why he liked the painting he had seen. Oskar had to write a short article on a chosen historical person based on 3 resources. He chose Johannes Gutenberg. We had a short biography of him at home, found some info online on the Britannica website and we went to the library to pick some other resources. We found “1000 Inventions and Discoveries” by DK.
Once a month boys go to the book club for homeschoolers (although our library also has one for schooled children) which is always helpful to keep them reading!
We keep practising spelling according to their level, age and skills using Twinkl resources for years 4 and 6. To reinforce it I ask them to include some of their spelling words in their writing.
Maths
We follow the year 6 curriculum with Oskar who grasps concepts quickly. At the moment he is practising ratios. And you never know when it will pop up in our conversations. We were making mango lassi as part of our topic about India. Well, we didn’t have mangos so we used pineapples instead and guess what… boys didn’t quite like it.
– How many pineapples did you use? – asked Oskar
– About 300 grams.
-Aaah, your ratio was wrong. – he concluded.
That is how you know they learn!
We are still more at the level of a typical year 3 with Dominik. We keep practising multiplications and divisions daily and now look into various measurements. I think lots of baking is coming! !
A long time ago in a charity shop, I found a little game Fraction Action Snap where you can play a snap game to match the same fractions. Every now and then I take it out for Domi to revise the simplest fractions.
We keep doing maths mysteries (from Twinkl) for fun, but it is also an amazing way to consolidate their knowledge and for me to assess their progress.
History
I like the fact that with boys I can revisit history. When I was a child I found history boring with all the dates, people and facts to remember. We add to our history lessons a few living books and suddenly historical facts and people unite into one whole, creating a wealth of emotions, passions, difficult decisions, mysteries, in short: life itself. Dates are still difficult for me to remember, luckily young minds are better at it. Working through history chronologically helps a lot. Additionally, we run timelines, where we add more important events or people. And so we are currently in the Renaissance period in Europe, where the Reformation and all its chaotic consequences are raging. While reading about Elizabeth, I also found recordings of Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for children on Librvox and we listen to them a bit.
We have borrowed from the library books about the Gunpowder Plot and Michelangelo, and I’m still looking for other interesting fiction based on this period. I need to check the works of Alexander Dumas to make sure they are children friendly, as I have a vague memory of them being quite passionate… 😉
Additionally, we started listening to great composers who were born in the XVII century. Hayden was first.
Science
Who doesn’t like fun experiments!? My boys surely do but let’s not forget that there is so much science happening just around us in our daily lives.
We have a very interesting textbook about physics and chemistry. The science behind it is quite complicated but written in such an accessible and interesting way plus there are lots of short experiments to test theories and boys like it very much. They have fun doing experiments and I ask them to follow up with some written explanations. They can use drawings with labels, comics or just paragraphs of writing. So this winter we have looked at how substances mix together. We did an experiment where you put water of different densities on each other and ended up with a rainbow of colours (OK, just 3 colours…), a Lava Lamp and wrote a play about Archimedes trying to find a way how to check if the crown maker used all the gold to prepare the crown for the king.
Additionally, the boys watch lovely Lara and her Theatre of Science videos and just finished a topic on all sorts of wings and the physics of flying. They had lots of fun in the park trying to control an RC styrofoam plane, which was a birthday gift. They nearly lost it and learned that the higher the plane the more unpredictable the winds are and it becomes impossible to control…
Under science, we also count our nature walks where boys learn a lot about the world of plants, habitats, seasons, weather, and climate. We keep visiting the woods next to us to see what is happening there. We had identified most of the trees (oaks, ashes, beeches, a few conifers, chestnuts, sycamores, birches and way too many holly bushes J) We observed how fungi eat up old trunks – it is of course long process, but fungi are easily spotted when there is not much vegetation! There is even a small pond where now we can see some newts appearing. We have talked about the needs of plants and photosynthesis.
We have started to grow an avocado from the stone again. That is going to be a long process… but here are our beginnings and 2 months later progress. I hope you can see how it starts germinating.
Geography
Our geography notebooks are getting fatter with all the information boys record about the countries we studied. With a subscription to Banjo Robinson – World Traveling Cat, which sends one letter each month from different countries, we have visited India, Canada, Mongolia and China. I have to say it is aimed at younger children but boys love the recipes that come with each letter and of course all the fun facts.
Another way we approach geography is by mapping the places we read about in our read-alouds. At the moment we read Stories from Shakespeare and a lot is going on in Italy and its islands, but also in Greece, France, and Britain.
As for more local focus, we have visited Ashdown Forest. What a nice walk on one of the first beautiful days when it felt like spring. We experienced how strongly the wind blows in an open and hilly area. The boys found a quiet space with a tree to climb and sketched the landscape.
Languages
I found a simple French podcast French Made Easy plus we listen to fairy tales in French on Youtube. My main focus is on my own language. I speak to them in Polish but sadly it is not enough to make them speak the language. I ask them to read and write and teach them our folk songs (not that I can sing, so again thank you Youtube….) We also regularly call Granny.
Drama
A lovely home group that we are part of is going to perform an Easter play and most of our activities revolve around the rehearsals, lines, costumes etc. Boys enjoy the work, the fun and all the social involved.
Art
We do some painting and drawing and look at famous paintings in chronological order. We visited the National Gallery in London for a fantastic workshop. Since in history, we have got to the XVII century I have added to our schedule listening to classical music as from this time more famous composers enter the stage (and we learn about them in history too.)
Making some art pieces related to the country we are studying is another fun and hands-on way of learning. I’m not sure if it is more geography or art, but that is the beauty of rounded education – subjects do cross over each other.
We have made a lovely watercolour painting of the Taj Mahal. The idea was to have a symmetrical reflection (aah maths…) of the palace in the water and for this effect, we were to fold a dried watercolour picture onto a watered bottom of the page. It did not work well, and I’m not sure why. Maybe next time I will try folding before the painting dries out.
Crafts were somehow neglected this wintertime. We did some little projects like the moving pictures below but not much. I promise to get better in spring!
Sports
I think we have plenty of exercise: hiking, football and swimming are what we did this winter.
And what about the most infamous socialisation aspect? I hope you see from the above that we are not hermits! We meet people at our homeschool group, we meet up with kids’ friends, we go to sports activities, we visit adult friends and go to church. And we personally enjoy our little and more intimate group of friends.
