family learning Archives | Heavenly Homemakers

IT’S HERE!

Our Summer School at Home Curriculum is ready for you to grab and enjoy!

But first, the WHY.

There are always many practical and spiritual reasons that I do what I do and create what I create. This particular big project idea came about because:

Summer is coming and…

We want our kids to learn more about thinking of others, serving others, and showing love and care to others.
We want our kids to stay on track academically. If we aren’t intentional about keeping their noses in good books they might back-track and struggle when school starts up again in the fall. Plus we want to focus on teaching life skills like how to read a recipe and shop on a budget. ;)
We want to provide a lot of fun activities for our kids this summer that don’t involve screens.

Also – some of our kids really need what Summer School offers, but our kids’ school isn’t offering it for all ages as we assumed that it would. No problem! I got an idea for how our family could keep our kids’ learning alive throughout the summer. Then, the ideas exploded so my family plans turned into an entire, shareable curriculum!

Summer School at Home

Summer School at Home Toolbox is overflowing with incredibly fun ideas and resources!

The best part is…ok…two best parts. Fine. THREE.

Best Part#1: The kids really won’t know that they are actually learning. Summer School at Home is not really like school at all. No doubt – your kids will be learning. But this particular learning will look to your kids like cool projects, crafts, activities, outings, and picnics – all with intentional learning aspects that won’t hurt even a little bit. It’ll all just feel like a really amazing summer break to them!

Best Part #2: Many of the ideas in each of the folders overlap with ideas in the other folders. For instance, the Math Pack shares an idea for setting a budget as you decide on what picnic food to make, and you can use recipes from the Cooking Corner to make your picnic. Then you can take your picnic somewhere as suggested in the Investigation Station and follow all of it up by journaling about it with a fun template in the Writing Tools packet. Just do some of it, or do it all – whatever works for your family!

You can use ideas from the Craft Kit along with the Serving Suggestions. The Math Pack will direct you to double recipes and divide cookies using recipes from the Cooking Corner. There are some really cool ways to get your kids excited about reading in the Reading Nook. And guess what else???

Best Part #3: None of this is hard for the parents. If these activities were difficult, WOULD I BE DOING THEM?? Goodness no. What in the world?

Summer School at Home Parent Guide

I put together a helpful binder to highlight some of what you’ll be receiving in this curriculum: Summer School at Home Parent Guide. <— open it up to see how this works!

Get all the info you need when you click here to open up a small eBooklet that tells you more about what the Summer School at Home Toolbox includes. BONUS: You will love how affordable all of this is!

What ages and grade levels does this cover?

This curriculum is very adaptable so you can make it work for all ages and academic learning levels through middle school. At our house, I foresee that our kids ages 4, 5, 8, and 10 will get the most from this with our 2 and 3-year-olds tagging along and being very engaged with the activities too. Our 1-year-old will come along for the ride, of course. He’ll love all the outings, playtime, and sunshine.

How can I get the Summer School at Home?

Summer School at Home is available in our Club Membership Portal now!

We felt that it didn’t make sense to offer this as a stand alone package in our shop because of all the other curriculum, printables, cookbooks, and other resources already available to Club Members. Since we’re adding it to our Membership Site, you’ll be able to utilize our full collection of items (worth $1,000s) for your kids and family while you enjoy Summer School at Home. There’s so much here that it’ll truly amaze and excite you!

Join now and get a head start looking through all your family can do this summer. You are going to love this!

Let me know if you have questions. :)

If you’ve been reading here long, you already know my favorite books for homeschool. But who doesn’t love talking about books? So I thought I’d share again and talk a little bit about what our school year might look like.

Do you like how I said, “…what our school year MIGHT look like”?? I’ve been homeschooling for many years (18!) and if I’ve learned anything about homeschooling or about life in general it’s that one should not make firm plans. Instead, one should try to be fairly organized, but be willing and open to changes that are sure to be necessary!

What? Life is uncertain?

Yes, just a little bit. I’m looking at you, COVID. But on a personal level, I will share this example:

Malachi is a sophomore in high school this year. (Asa has graduated from college, Justus will be a college senior, and Elias a college freshman/sophomore.) We had planned to homeschool for just three more years and then tra-la-la right out of this homeschool life that we’ve loved so much.

Then two years ago God (long story short) said, “You know how you got rid of all your elementary school books? Well, here are some more kids for you to raise and teach. Indeed, you are starting right over again. Go ahead and order all the books again.” If this hasn’t been the biggest lesson in not making plans, I don’t know what is.

It’s also been the most beautiful lesson.

So here I am, with my adult and college sons out of the house. And my sophomore “baby” who has now become the oldest of four boys at home, hahahaha.

What might school look like this year?

Malachi will be finishing most of his high-school-only classes this year and begin taking college classes for dual credit for the rest of his high school years. You can read here about how we do this for our family.

Brayden is a 1st grader this year, and I need to tell you this:

We have truly loved homeschooling our older kids. But I was tired and truly ok with and even excited about being finished three years from now. When God gave us more babes, I actually had to grieve a little (more than a little). I thought I was done raising kids and teaching and training and chasing. I was ready to move on, and I might have already danced a jig on the biology book I thought I would never have to teach from again.

While I was so grateful and amazed and excited that God was adding to our family, I simultaneously grieved the loss of what I thought my life would be at this point. It’s hard to explain, but my feelings were big and intense.

What if homeschooling wasn’t the answer?

We considered public or private school for our new guys. It’s not that we’ve been opposed to the school system anyway, especially in our area. Homeschool is simply what we believe God led us to with our older four sons. So sending our new ones to school when the time came…might that be what this new season would bring for us?

But God said no to that option, at least for now. We prayed for months over this, and we only had peace about homeschooling. Brayden especially needed the stability and daily consistency that homeschooling would provide. So I said, “God, if you want us to homeschool these babes, please, please make me want it.”

And He did.

Only after experiencing such hard emotions over what this new life brought could I experience the big joy over what God said yes to. He truly made me want to do this again. It is all Him.

God does not give us these challenging gifts with a pat on the head and a “go get ’em!” No, He gives us these gifts and He says, “I will provide you with everything you need to serve me in the ways I’ve asked you to.”

God absolutely made me want to – and even excited about – homeschooling all over again. I might even be more excited than I was when I homeschooled “Round One” because I know more now than I did when I first started out 18 years ago. Our God is good, big, faithful, and the best provider there is. I love how He works, and I love experiencing His goodness in these brand new ways.

There are no words for the beauty of this life with Bigs and Littles.

So we ordered this years’ books, and I cried.

Why? Because seeing the books and remembering the beauty of my time with our Bigs back when they were my Littles has been precious. And thinking about how much I love our new Littles and how I can’t imagine life without them now, and realizing that I get to live this life with them and enjoy these books and times of learning with them – well. I cried.

I GET TO DO THIS ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

I snapped this picture when our box of Sonlight books came in and sent it to our Bigs saying, “Remember unboxing day?!” They had a variety of fun responses. Yep, they remember!

Brayden is excited to be considered a first-grader this year. He’s a bit behind in a few academic areas, so we’ll be working through the Sonlight’s Kindergarten history, readers, and literature books. We’ll give him a mixture of K-1 math lessons from a variety of sources. He’ll do grade 1 handwriting (Getty-Dubay). We’ll get books from the library to learn about whatever he is interested in. We’ll do lots of enrichment activities (more about this soon!).

I started with Sonlight 18 years ago and while there are many more options now, I still always go back to Sonlight. Part of this is because it’s familiar and comfortable. But it’s also awesome, so why change what’s working for us, right?

My Favorite Books for Homeschool

My favorite thing about Sonlight curriculum is how there are no textbooks involved. We read awesome literature together, learning history and science in a more natural (and more fun!) way. Not only that, the history and the reading options almost always sync up. So when we are learning American History, the readers are from that time period too. Or if we’re studying World History, the readers go along with that era. And they are age/grade appropriate. I just love this!

So that’s a bit about our upcoming school year. Though I have more to share about how I’m trying to organize our days to actually make school happen since we are also chasing around two busy toddlers while keeping up with a high schooler and a college community. So stay tuned for that post!

Tell me what your upcoming school year is looking like! So many are choosing to homeschool this year because of the changes COVID has brought to us all. Have any questions? I don’t know everything, but I do have many years of experience and can answer what I can!