Posted on by — 4 Comments

Knights and Castles – Middle Ages Mini Unit

coat of arms

We are beginning to study the middle ages in our homeschool, and I’ve decided to make it into a bunch of different mini-units. Our first one will focus on knights and castles.

Read further for all the books we read as well as the activities we did, but come back soon and check out our other middle ages units as well. I will be posting them on the blog as we complete them!

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

the door in the wall

Read Aloud Novel

“The Door in the Wall” by Marguerite de Angeli takes place in the middle ages. It follows the story of a young boy who is destined to become a page but is suddenly ill and unable to fulfill his duty. A monk comes to his aid and encourages him to learn new things and work on becoming stronger. His hard work will soon pay off as he will play an important role in protecting the castle.

This book came highly recommended (from many other homeschool mamas online) as a historical fiction novel to read while studying the middle ages. The language can be tricky to understand, and by reading it aloud, I was able to explain what many different things meant. (I also learned some things myself!)

The book is 121 pages and contains 10 chapters, most of which we were able to read in one sitting. The last two chapters were much longer and took us a couple of days to get through.

I also love the message and theme that surrounded the story. Hard work and perseverance can really pay off. When one opportunity ends, another one might come along. You may think about a modern day phrase, “When one door closes, another opens”. All of these ideas brought on great discussion with my kids.

We all enjoyed this book so much. Although we used it to study history, we also used it for my oldest daughter’s language arts lessons. (Read about that here)

More Books

I love using the library as our main source for books, and for this unit, I even visited a local used bookstore. That may get dangerous in the future. I could’ve bought so much! I found tons of good reads and I’ll share the best ones here. You can also check out my YouTube video where I share a peak inside of the books as well.

coat of arms

Coat of Arms

Almost every book we read about knights talked about a coat of arms. Knights would decorate their shields in a way to represent who they were. This was a fun activity to express who we are and decorate our own pretend shields.

You could definitely cut cardboard and paint if you wanted to go all out. We just used white paper! I cut the papers into a shape of a shield and I offered a couple of options. Decorate the whole shield or divide it into 2-4 pieces and add different designs to each piece. They each did something different, but I loved seeing what they chose to add to their shield.

I had them tell me about their designs and what it meant to them so I could write it on the back. It’s a great piece of art for their portfolios.

cardboard castles

Create Castle and Drawbridge

This activity and the two following activities were completed after reading portions of “Castle” by David Macaulay. This book seemed a little intimidating to me because it’s quite long, but it was highly recommended. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful and we learned so much! It did take about 3 days to get through it all.

We created a castle using a cardboard box from our pantry. This blog post breaks down the entire process. Since I have younger ones, I did a little bit of prep to help the activity run smoother. By the time we were ready to start, I already had the boxes shaped.

I had my two oldest each decorate their own castle. I will admit that once it was time to create the drawbridge, I could only help one at a time. If you had older kids, it may be fun to hand them the supplies and say – how can you make this work?

With my two (ages 6 and 8), we talked about it as we went, and I had to do a lot of the work so that the drawbridge would do what it was supposed to. Even still, they loved the finished product and immediately got their Barbies out to start acting out a castle attack. It was pretty cute to watch, and such a fun way to assess what they’ve been learning – through play! I love it!

Castle Drawing and Narration

Before we read our Castle story one morning, I found a video that taught my girls how to draw a castle. Now, we love Art for Kids Hub, but their castle drawing could only be watched if you pay for a subscription on their website.

So, we did something crazy and decided to just draw the Ice Castle from their YouTube channel. I encouraged my girls to decorate it like the castles we have been reading about. My oldest did just that and kept the snow. My other two girls just went full blown Frozen and kept the ice castle.

Either way, it was still fun and I decided to use their pictures as a visual for their narration of what we read that morning. I wrote something for my two oldest girls and kept it in our yearly portfolio. I love how it turned out.

Build-A-Castle Rotation

Just one more day of reading this book (“Castle”), and I wanted something fun to finish it off. We have a few open-ended toys at our house, so I chose four different bins full of blocks to get us started.

I set out four blankets for our morning time and put a bin on each blanket. We had Magnatiles, Mega Blocks , Duplo Legos, and wooden blocks. I told each of my kids that I would set a timer for five minutes and they’d have to build a castle out of that specific toy.

At the end of the timer, no matter if they finished or not, they would rotate to the next blanket and build another castle. They thought this was the coolest. It really broke up the time well! They made all kinds of castles and it was the perfect way to finish off the book while keeping hands busy and ears listening. It was also neat to see their creativity and became a beautiful way to assess their understanding!

Still on My Wishlist

I always like to have a few ideas in my head of what I want to do for our unit studies. I’ll usually make a board on Pinterest (See my middle ages board). The thing is, I don’t always get to every single one. That’s because they are mostly enrichment! And if it adds more stress to complete it, then I put it off for another time.

I love homeschooling with this philosophy because I don’t feel pressured to check a bunch of things off. We still learn so much through our readings! The next couple of activities are ones I wanted to do but didn’t quite get to during our unit. However, they’re too cute not to share! I’ll be saving them for a rainy day, but I hope they might inspire you if you’re studying the middle ages!

Sir Cumference

The Sir Cumference series is so much fun. They are picture books based in the medieval times that teach math concepts through stories.

We found ours at the library. I checked out four of them and we simply read them together before bedtime for a few nights in a row. My kids loved them!

Although we didn’t do an activity to go along with it. I kept thinking how fun it would be to do a simple graphing idea with some candy or cookies, just like in the “Roundabout Battle” story. Check out this candy bar graph for an idea of what I mean. You can also see this photo of an M&M pie chart for another type of graph the book used.

These are such simple ways to bring the book to life and experience the graph in our own hands instead of just the story.

Armor of God

One of the books that we read had a Christian message, and it was called “The Brave Young Knight”. The book was great alone, but I had this idea to do a little armor of God study to go along with it.

You can find the armor of God in the bible in Ephesians 6:10-20. Once we read about it in scripture, I wanted to create a fun, easy knight using aluminum foil shapes. This link will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

As we review the armor of God, I hoped to cut the different pieces of the armor out of the foil, glue it on construction paper and label it. I just feel like this could be such a fun way to link our study of knights to what we learn in scripture. It’s also a great visual to help us memorize the verses.

Movies/Shows

We have a family movie night on the weekends, and I love when I can match it up to what we are learning. During this unit, we watched a couple of movies that were related to knights and castles.

First, was The Sword in the Stone. This is an old Disney film that follows the adventures of a young boy who wants to be a knight. It is very magical, but it does take place in the time period. Since I have kids ages 2-8, it was a great one that we could all enjoy.

Another weekend, we let the bigger kids watch A Knight’s Tale. Now, this one is rated PG-13 and it took a little editing on our part.

First, we had to talk with the kids about the language. We also had to be prepared to skip a love scene in the film. The only other thing was one of the first scenes. You see a man’s butt and there’s also a visual of someone hanging in the background. Beyond those few parts, the rest of the film was fantastic!

I highly suggest you read through the Common Sense Media page, and as always, choose what you think is best for your family. Everyone has a preference for movies, and as parents we get the privilege to choose what is shown in our home. In my opinion, it was worth the watch, even though we skipped a small bit. The film portrays that time period so well. You can really see the different classes of people as well as things like jousting and coats of arms, all of which we discussed together the weeks before.

More Unit Studies

Come back soon for more unit studies related to the middle ages. If you liked looking through these ideas or if you try one at home, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

We’ve been doing unit studies like this all year and I have most of them on the blog. I’ll link some of them below if you’d like check them out!

Ancient Egypt

Weather

Space

Ancient China

Vikings

Thanksgiving

Posted on by — 6 Comments

The Door in the Wall – A Charlotte Mason Inspired Novel Unit – The Middle Ages

The Door in the Wall

The Door in the Wall is a novel that takes place in the middle ages. This Charlotte Mason inspired novel unit will connect both history and language arts. The living book will provide passages that allow your child to study grammar, spelling, and vocabulary while practicing the skills for copy work, narration, writing, and dictation.

I talk a little more about this method of language arts in this post. It has given us so much freedom in our studies and I have enjoyed very much linking multiple subjects (history and language arts) to one book. Because of this, I almost feel like I have less on my plate, which I think can be helpful for any parent out there!

This novel was a part of our middle ages history unit study, which I will also link for you (COMING SOON). In that post you can see many different activities we did as we studied the time period, but they could also be great activities as a tag-along to this book! We are currently studying the middle ages now as I write this, breaking it into little mini units that I will post as we complete them.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

The Door in the Wall

“The Door in the Wall” by Marguerite de Angeli takes place in the middle ages. It follows the story of a young boy who is destined to become a page but is suddenly ill and unable to fulfill his duty. A monk comes to his aid and encourages him to learn new things and work on becoming stronger. His hard work will soon pay off as he will play an important role in protecting the castle.

This book came highly recommended (from many other homeschool mamas online) as a historical fiction novel to read while studying the middle ages. Our family used it as a read aloud which worked out great. The language can be tricky to understand and by reading it aloud, I was able to explain what many different things meant. (I also learned some things myself!)

The book is 121 pages and contains 10 chapters, most of which we were able to read in one sitting. The last two chapters were much longer and took us a couple of days to get through.

We all enjoyed this book so much. It was wonderful to read a book that took place in the time period we were studying for history. I also love the message and theme that surrounded the story. Hard work and perseverance can really pay off. When one opportunity ends, another one might come along. You may think about a modern day phrase, “When one door closes, another opens”. All of these ideas brought on great discussion with my kids.

Chapter Summaries and Discussion Questions

I wanted to include chapter summaries and discussion questions in this post for a couple reasons. First, I think it’s helpful to know more about what is in a book before reading it with your kids. When I have more information about a book I can come up with different activities or topics I may want to learn about with the kids as we read through it.

Second, someone reading this might want to assign this book as a silent reading option for their child. I feel like these summaries and questions may help guide you in assessing how that silent reading is going.

I did not include answers to the questions. Most of them are meant to start a discussion and can have a lot of different answers. I hope that if you are practicing narration with your kids that these questions might allow you to challenge your kiddos in what they tell you about the book.

SPOILER ALERT – If you read these summaries, some of the events in the story will be spoiled. Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid that, but I do hope that even still you find it helpful.

Chapter One

SUMMARY: Robin, a son of a noble family, has reached the age where he is ready to be sent away to learn about becoming a knight. Right before he is supposed to leave he becomes ill. A wandering friar hears of Robin’s condition and travels to help him.

How do you think it feels to leave your parents at such a young age?

What is the plague?

What do you think Brother Luke means by a door in the wall?

Chapter Two

SUMMARY: Robin arrives at St. Mark’s where he is cared for by Brother Luke. He is learning new skills while getting accustomed to his new living space.

What was it like at St. Mark’s?

What kind of things does Brother Luke do to help Robin? What skills does he teach him?

Why do you think Robin got upset with the boy that called him Crookshanks?

Chapter Three

SUMMARY: Robin works hard on his whittling project and learns a helpful lesson about patience. He makes a plan with Brother Luke to learn many different subjects with the help of other monks.

What does Robin learn while learning to whittle?

What kind of things does Brother Luke want to teach Robin?

What do we learn about Robin and his illness after reading the letter to his father?

Chapter Four

SUMMARY: Brother Luke takes Robin fishing where he sees a group of boys playing. He experiences different emotions as he yearns to be well, but he also gets the idea of making himself something to help him walk.

How did Robin feel when he saw the boys swimming?

How does Brother Luke plan to help make Robin stronger?

How do you think crutches could be a door in the wall?

Chapter Five

SUMMARY: Robin receives a reply from his father and makes plans to travel to Shropshire. Robin, Brother Luke, and John-go-in-the-Wynd travel together by foot. The journey is not easy and a fork in the road causes a delay.

What did Robin’s father say in his letter?

How does the fork in the road affect their journey?

What kind of attitude does Robin have on the trip?

Chapter Six

SUMMARY: Robin, Brother Luke, and John continue traveling and stop at a place to sleep. Unfortunately, they are forced to leave because of two evil men and must quickly find a new place to rest.

How did Brother Luke feel about staying at the White Hart?

What did Robin overhear the two men talking about while he was supposed to be sleeping?

Chapter Seven

SUMMARY: Robin, Brother Luke, and John pause their journey for Robin to experience a fair. After a quick stay at an old cottage in the woods, they reach their destination. Robin meets Sir Peter and begins his duties as a page.

How does Robin feel about meeting Sir Peter?

What kind of things will Robin do for Sir Peter?

Chapter Eight

SUMMARY: Robin gets stronger and stronger as the days pass. A thick fog threatens the castle and they are attacked.

Robin has learned many new subjects and skills since he became ill. What are they?

Why is the fog putting the castle in danger?

What do the people inside the castle do while they are under attack?

Chapter Nine

SUMMARY: The people in the castle are running out of supplies while they are under attack. Someone must sneak out to get help. Robin volunteers and heads to John’s Mother’s cottage. John sends a message to get help for the castle.

Why do the people in the castle need help?

Why does Robin think he can be the one to get help?

What was Robin’s journey like?

What is John’s plan for getting back into the castle?

Chapter Ten

SUMMARY: Sir Hugh arrives to help defeat the Welsh. Robin is a hero! However, he still desires to see his family. Soon enough, he sees them and makes plans to travel back home to be with them.

How did Robin play such an important role in this defeat?

Who arrives at the castle on Christmas Eve?

What kind of blessing and reward did Robin receive from the king?

Where will Robin go to live now?

Unit Schedule

The following is a brief outline of what I hope to accomplish each day of this unit with my child. For more details on each piece, be sure to read my explanation post.

In this post I will share the passages we studied and how we broke them down each day in case you’d like to try the same sort of method.

For a VERY brief overview of how our time is used for language arts – I read aloud the novel to all of my kids, usually in the evening before bed. For daily grammar practice, my daughter uses Fix it Grammar. I love that it can be done independently and takes about 5 minutes to complete. Copy work is also completed independently (5 minutes). I set a timer for our actual language arts lesson for 20 minutes.

When you read through the lists for each day, think of it as a checklist. As you can see in the way we split our time, this is getting accomplished all throughout the day at different times. It’s spaced out in a way that works for us.

DAY 1

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on grammar [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 2

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on spelling and vocabulary [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 3

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Written Narration [language arts lesson with parent]
  • **Option – review passage/spelling words if necessary

DAY 4

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family.]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Dictation [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 5 (OPTION)

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Silent Reading (15-20 minutes) [independent work]
  • Narration [language arts lesson with parent, about 5 minutes]
1 1

Passage Selection – Week One

I selected two passages to use for our copy work because it took us two weeks to read the book. Each week, we studied one passage during our language arts lesson time. I will share with you how we study these passages throughout the week.

Now, if you wanted to simplify this even more, you could only focus on what connects to your grammar workbook. Point out what you’ve studied so far, and that’s it. That way it’s consistent between the two. However, I enjoy looking a little deeper than that. There are times when I don’t really know why a comma is there, and I just look it up online right there with her. That’s what it’s all about – learning together!

The following is our passage for week one:

“Always remember that,” said the friar. “Thou has only to follow the wall far enough and there will be a door in it.”(The Door in the Wall, Chapter One, Marguerite de Angeli)

An important thing to keep in mind here is I am not trying to have her reach mastery with these discussions we have about the passages. The mastery will come from her grammar workbook practice. However, I do want her to observe the grammar usage in a way that is meaningful to her, through our family novel. Our lesson is more of an opportunity to have a conversation about why this passage is written the way it is.

I picked this passage because it’s the first time the book mentions the door in the wall. I felt it would be an important part of the story, and it really was. By studying this passage, it allowed my daughter to really think about what the door in the wall means.

On the first day of our schedule, we focus on grammar and punctuation. The following is what we discussed for this passage:

  • Capitalization and end marks
  • Quotation rules
  • The comma after “that” goes at the end of the quote, before the actual quotation mark.
  • “Thou hast” is another way of saying “You have to…”
  • For the word “there” we made sure to discuss why it was spelled that way.

As we study these topics we might practice different examples on the board or practice them orally, if possible. This might seem brief, but as you discuss each one with your child and provide alternate examples or even just look for more examples in the book, the time will go quickly.

Spelling and Vocabulary

For our second day of lessons, we are still using the same passage. This time we focus on spelling and vocabulary. I first ask my daughter if she knows what certain words mean based on the context. If we need to, we look them up in the dictionary.

The vocabulary words we looked at for this passage: friar, and we reviewed “thou hast”

For spelling, I quiz her with many of the words from the passage and see which ones are mastered and which ones need practice. I have her write them on a board. You can make this list based on your child’s needs, but our list looked something like this: always, remember, friar, thou, hast, only, follow, enough, there, door.

Any word spelled incorrectly we practice a few times. I will also try to quiz her the following day as well to see if she can remember the word(s) she missed.

Passage Selection – Week Two

Week two follows the exact same schedule, just with a different passage. So for this section, I will list the passage as well as what we studied to go along with it.

“They knelt in the woods, as if it had been a cathedral, as indeed it looked to be. For the trees, bare of leaves, arched overhead in the very same way that the groined arches of stone swept up high overhead in the Gothic churches.” (The Door in the Wall, Chapter Seven, Marguerite de Angeli)

I loved the image that this passage created, and I liked that it mentioned Gothic churches, something we plan to look at while we study the middle ages. Once we started looking at it together, I regretted my choice because the commas in the first sentence were difficult for me to explain (or even understand myself). BUT! We kept on…this is a learning experience for the both of us and my goal is not mastery here, but instead it’s exposure with meaning.

The following is what we discussed for this passage:

  • Capitalization and end marks
  • The commas in the first sentence – This was the confusing part I mentioned. Based on my research, those commas are there because “as” is a subordinate conjunction. Now, I am no expert, but this is what we went with! Honestly, I’m not stressing about it. I’m 35 and have to google it so I feel like this is one I can let slide. 😉
  • The commas around “bare of leaves” are there because the clause is not essential to the sentence.

Later in the week, I realized I could have also looked at similes. I believe the first sentence contains one. So, if that is something you are interested in, it’s another option. We will save similes for another day.

Spelling and Vocabulary

On the second day of our week we look at spelling and vocabulary from the passage. The spelling words we practiced were as follows: knelt, cathedral, indeed, looked, bare, leaves, arched, overhead, groined, swept, Gothic, churches

The vocabulary words we studied were cathedral, bare, arched, groined, and Gothic. Don’t forget to use context clues first, and then try the dictionary.

2 1

Optional Activity – Connecting the Grammar Book to the Passage

Our spelling and vocabulary lesson goes pretty quick, so I like to use this day to connect her grammar book to our passage. She is using Fix it Grammar and marks up a sentence each day with certain symbols and letters. I write out the passage from our book for her on a piece of paper with no capitalization or punctuation and have her practice editing the sentence using the same marks she has learned from her Fix it Grammar. You can see a preview of this in the image above.

Honestly, you could do this with any grammar workbook. If you are practicing adjectives, find the adjectives. If you’re underlining the subject once and the verb twice, do the same here. See if you can combine your grammar book with your novel one day – It makes the workbook feel relevant!

Final Thoughts

If you want to check out another novel we have done before, click here. We are studying the middle ages for the rest of our school year, so our next couple of novels will most likely fall in that category.

Do you use a similar method to this? Does it help to share all of this info? Let me know if you feel like this is something you might like to see more of!

NEW Novel Guides Available!

For the last few years, my children and I have used this novel-based language arts program that is family-style and enriched with great literature each week. I’m so excited to share a NEW guide with you on how we do this in our home. If you’re tired of an all-in-one language arts workbook or if you’re itching for a great novel to read aloud to your kids, you’ve got to try this method! Below are two of the newest guides available now:

James and the Giant Peach

The Secret Garden

You can watch multiple videos about this method of Language Arts on my YouTube Channel HERE

More Learning with BOOKS

I love using literature in our homeschool. Although this method of language arts is newer to us, we have used books to learn in our homeschool since the beginning. I will link that below for you if you would like to check it out:

The Secret Garden

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

The Boxcar Children

The Courage of Sarah Noble

Caddie Woodlawn

The Adventures of Reddy Fox

Posted on by

A Simple Approach to Learning the Calendar in our Homeschool

Untitled design 53

As a new month arrives, it’s a reminder for me to practice using the calendar with my kids in our homeschool.

When we first started homeschooling, I thought it was necessary to have daily calendar practice. So, of course, I bought the cutest set I could find for a good deal, made precious binders, and encouraged my children each morning to complete it. The set included things like tracing days of the week, filling in the numbers for the calendar, and recording the temperature and weather.

Well, the truth is – it got really boring after a while, and it just felt like busy work. So over time we’ve made some adjustments, and I’ll be sharing our super simple approach to learning the calendar. The best part – it works!

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Daily Calendar

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with practicing the calendar daily. I know there are children that truly enjoy working in a notebook or something similar and filling out their pages each day.

In our home, I soon realized, that learning the calendar comes quite naturally, and a daily calendar wasn’t needed for us. So, we got rid of the daily practice and to keep it simple, I use each new month to practice calendar skills.

New Month = Calendar Time

We have a calendar in our school room to display the month. This is a great visual that we can refer to often. Each month I have to change out the little cards so that it displays the correct order of days and month.

When I do this, I gather the kids and we practice a few simple things to get acclimated with the calendar. So this means we practice about 12 times in the year (as long as I remember each month!) That’s it! Easy peasy.

Months of the Year

You’re about to see that we love using songs to memorize. We sing a months of the year song a few times in a row to start memorizing the names of the months. All of my kids participate, including my two year old. He tries to follow along with us – it’s adorable!

Sometimes I like to write the names of the months on the board so that my child that is learning to read can start practicing to recognize the months in print. Next month I’m thinking I’ll have my oldest write the months out for us. Then, I can see how she spells the months – great practice!

If I feel like we need to mix it up we can sing loud and soft or fast and slow. The link I shared with you for the song actually repeats the song about 3 times. So, even just listening to it one time through works!

Days of the Week

Once we finish the months, we move on to the days of the week. This is when my childhood Barney episodes come into play. The song we sing is one I remember from my own childhood! It’s still in my head – proof that songs stick! (Be sure to check out the link to that song for a trip back to the late 80s, early 90s)

I have my kids take turns pointing to the days on the big calendar as we sing them. Everyone likes a turn doing this, so we end up singing it 3-4 times. It’s also fun with a silly pointer, which we have used in the past.

Calendar Questions

Finally, I’ll ask questions about the calendar that are relevant to us and the kids will take turns answering. Below are some questions I might ask:

  • Today is Tuesday. What is tomorrow? What was yesterday?
  • We have a field trip on the second Friday of the month. What day is that?
  • What day of the week is the 15th?
  • What day is Stella’s birthday on?
  • We meet with Adventure Club on Fridays. How many times will we go this month?

It Works and It’s Fun!

We have been doing this for a little over two years now, and I can see how it has worked with my littlest ones. For example, my current four year old has the songs memorized! So she knows her days of the week and months of the year already just by singing along with us each month.

My older two have known the songs for a while, so each month I challenge them with the calendar questions. It really doesn’t take much effort because I just ask questions about our own calendar.

The rest of the calendar practice comes up naturally in conversation. If the days of the week get brought up, we can sing the song quick to answer a question. For example, a question I get all the time is “Mom, how many days until my gymnastics class?” This is the perfect opportunity to put our songs to use!

This is something that has worked well for our family, and it’s been so nice not to have to worry about a sheet to fill out or print out. Every family will be different. It might be helpful to have your children sit and work on something like a calendar each day. If that’s true for you, I encourage you to keep on with it! I only share our experiences as a way to share ideas – I hope it can be helpful or inspiring to you!

What’s your favorite way to learn the calendar? Do you do something similar or do you prefer daily calendar work? I’m curious what other songs might be sung in your homes!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Winnie the Pooh Novel Unit – Homeschool Language Arts

winnie the pooh novel unit

This Winnie-the-Pooh novel unit has really brightened up our language arts. The way it is set up has given us a sense of freedom and fun in our homeschool routine.

This method of language arts is new to us, but we love it so much. I actually break down the entire process in another blog post that I will link here. I highly suggest you read through that first as it will help the rest of this post make more sense.

In this post, my goal will be to give you specifics about our studies and schedules for this particular book, Winnie-the-Pooh.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Winnie-the-Pooh

When I first heard that this was a great family read aloud, I ignored it. I thought it was going to be baby-ish and that my kids wouldn’t be interested. However, I was gifted the series from my husband’s grandmother and needed a good, living book to try this new method of novel unit out. Since we had it on our shelf, I went for it.

WOW! Was I wrong! This book was one of the most adorable books we’ve read together. We giggled in every chapter and didn’t want it to end. It’s the sweetest, and it made this unit all the more special!

The goal in reading this book was to try to get through a chapter a day. There are 10 chapters total, so we were able to finish the book in two weeks. I didn’t always read a whole chapter in one sitting. Sometimes I broke it up and read some at night and the rest in the morning. I have a couple little ones and longer chapters are harder to sit through. Breaking it up helped some days!

Unit Schedule

The following is a brief outline of what I hope to accomplish each day with my child. For more details on each piece, be sure to read my explanation post.

In this post, I am going to focus on Winnie-the-Pooh and will share the passages we studied and how we broke them down each day in case you’d like to try the same sort of method.

For a VERY brief overview – We read aloud as a family at different times in the day. For daily grammar, my daughter uses Fix it Grammar. I love that it can be done independently and takes about 5 minutes to complete. Copy work is also completed independently (5 minutes). I set a timer for our actual language arts lesson for 20 minutes.

DAY 1

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on grammar [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 2

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on spelling and vocabulary [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 3

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Written Narration [language arts lesson with parent]
  • **Option – review passage/spelling words if necessary

DAY 4

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family.]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Dictation [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 5 (OPTION)

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Silent Reading (15-20 minutes) [independent work]
  • Narration [language arts lesson with parent, about 5 minutes]
4 3

Passage Selection – Week One

I selected two passages to use for our copy work because it took us two weeks to read the book. Each week, we studied one passage during our language arts lesson time. Next, I will share with you how we study these passages throughout the week.

“He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that branch…Crack!” (Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A.Milne)

On the first day of our schedule, we focus on grammar and punctuation. The following is what we discussed for this passage:

  • Capitalize the first letter in a sentence and choose the correct end mark.
  • A comma and a conjunction can join two sentences together. (Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? — Are you singing yet?)
  • Complaining Song is capitalized by the author – Why? It’s possible he wanted to make it more official or to make it a title of a song. (Poetic License/Author’s Choice)
  • The “…” is called an ellipses. It encourages the reader to pause.
  • “Crack!” is italicized for emphasis, an exclamation point adds volume in this case. For fun, we also discussed what onomatopoeia was.

As we study these topics we might practice different examples on the board or practice them orally, if possible. This might seem brief, but as you discuss each one with your child and provide alternate examples or even just look for more examples in the book, the time will go quickly.

Spelling and Vocabulary

For our second day of lessons, we are still using the same passage. This time we focus on spelling and vocabulary. I first ask my daughter if she knows what certain words mean based on the context. If we need to, we look them up in the dictionary.

The vocabulary words we looked at for this passage: rather, nearly, complaining

For spelling, I quiz her with many of the words from the passage and see which ones are mastered and which ones need practice. I have her write them on a board. You can make this list based on your child’s needs, but our list looked something like this: getting, rather, tired, why, complaining, nearly, there, stood, branch, crack

Any word spelled incorrectly we practice a few times. I will also try to quiz her the following day as well to see if she can remember the word(s) she missed.

Passage Selection – Week 2

Week two follows the exact same schedule, just with a different passage. So for this section, I will list the passage as well as what we studied to go along with it.

“Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn’t quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.

“Eeyore,” he said solemnly, “I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for you.” (Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne)

On the first day we discussed the following:

  • Capitalize the first letter in a sentence and choose the correct end mark.
  • Didn’t is a contraction – did not. We practiced writing other contractions.
  • A new speaker starts a new paragraph, indent.
  • A comma is placed after “Eeyore” to separate the quote, but we also discussed direct address.
  • Always capitalize “I”.
  • Winnie-the-Pooh is surrounded by commas because it is information that is not essential to the sentence.
  • Quotes go around what the character is saying.

Now, if you wanted to simplify this even more, you could only focus on what connects to your grammar workbook. Point out what you’ve studied so far, and that’s it. That way it’s consistent between the two. However, I enjoy looking a little deeper than that. There are times when I don’t really know why a comma is there, and I just look it up online right there with her. That’s what it’s all about – learning together!

vocabulary photo

Spelling and Vocabulary

On the second day of our week we look at spelling and vocabulary from the passage. The spelling words we practiced were as follows: ought, something, helpful, about, didn’t, quite, know, decided, instead, solemnly, tail.

The vocabulary words we studied were “ought” and “solemnly”. Don’t forget to use context clues first, and then try the dictionary.

optional grammar activity

Optional Grammar Activity

Usually on our spelling and vocabulary day we have extra time. I like to switch out her Fix it Grammar page with a little something different. We use the exact same methods she is practicing in her workbook but we apply it to our passage instead.

Here’s an example. In her Fix it Grammar book she is currently marking words that need to be capitalized, end marks, nouns, articles, and pronouns. So, I wrote the sentence on the board and had her do the same thing to our passage. It worked out great! I’ve snapped a picture (above) of an example for you to see.

Honestly, you could do this with any grammar workbook. If you are practicing adjectives, find the adjectives. If you’re underlining the subject once and the verb twice, do the same here. See if you can combine your grammar book with your novel one day – It makes the workbook feel relevant!

I’ll admit, there were a couple words I wasn’t sure about (yay for learning together!). The dictionary was very helpful. Find the word that matches the context of what you’re looking for and the dictionary lists the part of speech. So, if you see something off in my photo, blame Webster 😉

Ready to try it?

Does this sound like something you would enjoy? Sometimes it’s hard to explain what goes on in this crazy head of mine, but I hope that this explanation simplified the process for you. Isn’t it freeing to just read and chat about a book with your children? That’s what I love the most about this. Besides our daily grammar practice, there’s no workbooks, no busy work, just beautiful book discussion.

Want to see more novel units like this? We are starting another soon, and if this is helpful, I’m happy to break it down like I did with this one. Let me know in the comments or reach out to me on social media (Instagram: @simply.learning.together)

When I first started learning about the Charlotte Mason method, which is what inspired this study, I was nervous about the no-workbook-factor. Having a consistent plan like this with certain goals has really given me the confidence that a typical curriculum workbook doesn’t have to be necessary if it doesn’t bring you joy! It’s been so freeing to be able to study language arts through the books that we love!

NEW Novel Guide Available

For the last few years, my children and I have used this novel-based language arts program that is family-style and enriched with great literature each week. I’m so excited to share a NEW guide with you on how we do this in our home. If you’re tired of an all-in-one language arts workbook or if you’re itching for a great novel to read aloud to your kids, you’ve got to try this method! Below are two of the newest guides available now:

James and the Giant Peach

The Secret Garden

You can watch multiple videos about this method of Language Arts on my YouTube Channel HERE

Posted on by — 3 Comments

NEW (Mostly) Workbook Free Language Arts Method

winnie the pooh

(Mostly) Workbook Free! Did that reel you in? 😉 Well, this whole method was inspired by my research but also a desire to get rid of the workbooks! They were making me crazy…and bored! However, I have found it important to continue daily grammar practice. That’s where the workbook comes in. Even still, this new method has been such a breath of fresh air for us! I’m so excited to share. Let me tell you a bit about how we got here.

After Christmas, we kicked off the year with a fantastic history unit on the Vikings. We were having so much fun learning, but it would come time to sit down for language arts, and I dreaded it! I finally said to my husband – I can’t stand language arts workbooks. I’ve tried multiple workbooks over the years, and it never fits our family quite right. I just want to study language arts through what we are already learning in history or science.

Well, it wasn’t long after that, I was led (by prayer I’m sure of it!) to a post or a quote that mentioned Charlotte Mason, which I was pretty unfamiliar with at the time. Well, one thing led to another and suddenly I was listening to every Charlotte Mason podcast I could and reading all the info I could find online. I was fascinated by the methods, but nervous to commit.

Then, I came across a brand new book called “Modern Miss Mason” by Leah Boden, and it inspired me in the most beautiful way – WOW! I can’t recommend it enough. Her book encouraged me to learn the philosophies of Charlotte Mason but then to apply it to our homeschool in a way that suits are family well.

My point in all of this intro is to let you know that this novel unit is inspired by what I learned from studying Charlotte Mason’s methods. (I still have so much to learn!) It may not follow her philosophy exactly, but the whole process has brought my family (especially me) such a sense of joy, and I am certain that is what matters most. This unit has given me a freedom that makes language arts interesting for us again, and I hope if you try it that it may do the same for you.

Now, before I continue, I should mention that you could probably adapt this unit a little bit to use for any grade you’d like. My child (that I created this for) is in third grade, but I planned all of the lessons according to what she has already learned and what she is learning in her grammar book (More on that later). You can do this too, and I hope my breakdown of this method helps you see the simplicity that I see in that. I encourage you to continue reading no matter the grade level.

This post breaks down the actual process of putting this unit together. Definitely look through the detailed descriptions of each piece below first, but if you want to see a unit in action, check out our first novel unit like this, “Winnie the Pooh” (the book is so adorable!)

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Language Arts

From all of my research, I came up with the following list of what I wanted to include on a regular basis for my daughter’s language arts.

  • Good (living) book
  • Narration
  • Daily Grammar
  • Copy work (to practice Handwriting, Grammar, Spelling, and Vocabulary)
  • Written Narration
  • Dictation

As I go through this unit, you will see these pieces incorporated throughout. If you’re interested on where I’m learning about all this, I’ll leave a couple links for you here. (I listened and read so much! But these two sources stick out to me the most) Simply Charlotte Mason, and the Charlotte Mason Show Podcast.

Novel Unit Schedule

I’m going to outline the schedule of this unit, because I want you to see the simplicity of it – at least, I think it’s simple, and I hope you do too! Think of the lists you see as a checklist for the day. Each day of language arts requires about 5-10 minutes of independent work from your child and a 20 minute lesson with you, the parent. You’ll also be reading aloud at some point in your homeschool day, but I don’t really count that. Reading great books together as a family doesn’t feel like school for us. (We’ve read at bedtime and/or our morning time for the last couple years, and it’s been wonderful)

It probably won’t make any sense at first, but if you read further, I explain each piece of this schedule in my post.

I will put in the schedule to read each day. You can time it as you please. We read every day, whether it’s a school night or not. Our normal homeschool schedule is four days a week, but on the occasion that we are home on Fridays, I will mention my plan for that day as well.

DAY 1

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on grammar [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 2

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Study passage – focus on spelling and vocabulary [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 3

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – complete 2-3 lines of selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Written Narration [language arts lesson with parent]
  • **Option – review passage/spelling words if necessary

DAY 4

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family.]
  • Grammar Workbook [independent work]
  • Copy work – finish copying selected passage from novel [independent work]
  • Dictation [language arts lesson with parent]

DAY 5 (OPTION)

  • Read novel and narrate [whole family]
  • Silent Reading (15-20 minutes) [independent work]
  • Narration [language arts lesson with parent, about 5 minutes]

Read Novel – A Good (Living) Book

Give me all the books! I love reading to my kids, and I especially love coming home with a bag full of books devoted to a unit study. This whole year, we have done all of our science and history using books from the library, and it has been the most wonderful time.

I tend to just get what the library has available, which I think is fine! Lately, I’ve been trying to be a little bit better about thinking ahead and finding good, quality literature. I might put a few books on hold or visit my local used bookstore. The effort has been worth it. Having good literature makes our studies come alive and become more enjoyable.

What is a living book? Well, that’s a good question. It’s a hot term in the Charlotte Mason world, and it honestly intimidates me a bit! So, here’s the method I use when choosing a book. Do I enjoy reading it? Is it helpful to our studies? Does it add something positive to what we are learning? Will my kids find it fun/interesting?

These are just a few questions I’m thinking about. This article breaks down the definition of a living book in an easy-to-read list. I find it very helpful, but I’ll be honest, my kids and I enjoy a good Magic Treehouse book here and there…is that “twaddle”? Maybe…but remember…my hope here is to do what’s best for my family, and we like it sometimes! So I encourage you to find books that your family enjoys too!

I mentioned this earlier, but we read our novels at bed time usually. We also have a time to read aloud during our morning time. When we read, it’s with all my kids, and it’s not part of our lesson time. What’s great about this is each child is benefiting from the literature, and my little ones are even practicing narrating as we do it. Whole family learning is my favorite!

Narration

I am new to narration, and I don’t know if I do it the “right” way, but I do it in a way that feels right for my family. (Are you catching a pattern here? Every family is so different, but what a blessing it is to have the freedom to adjust as needed, according to our family interests) Every time we read something we talk about the book together. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a chapter, sometimes it’s at the beginning, sometimes it’s at the end of our reading.

For this new language arts method, I made sure to encourage my children to talk more than we usually do. I wanted to be intentional about our book conversations. If I just say “tell me back what happened”, they look at me confused. So I usually start them off with a question or two to get them going.

So, what happened at the beginning of the chapter? What was your favorite part? What problem did they run into? How did they solve it? How do you feel about that character’s choices? I don’t ask every question every time, but this is just an example of what gets us started talking. Both of my school age girls participate in this daily book discussion.

There’s a lot more to narration than this, so if this is new for you as well, I encourage you to look into it further. (Check out this site)

2 4

Daily Grammar

We recently added Fix it Grammar to our homeschool day for my third grader, and I love it. I will link the product for you (not affiliated) if you want to learn more about it. It takes my daughter about 5 minutes a day to do this, and she can complete most of it independently.

She does this work daily, which gives me a boost of confidence knowing she is getting consistent practice. If you are looking into doing a unit like this, any grammar workbook can be used! Earlier this year, we used an Evan-Moor fundamentals workbook, and I feel like that could’ve been used just as well. The point is regular practice and connecting it with what you’re reading.

One of the days of the week, I like to do an alternate grammar activity instead of the grammar workbook. This usually happens on Day 2, because it doesn’t take us the whole 20 minutes to do spelling and vocabulary. We basically apply the rules of her Fix it Grammar sentences to our passage. Let me give you a concrete example.

Currently, in the Fix it Grammar books, she is labeling captalization, end marks, nouns, articles, and pronouns. She knows how to do this because it’s practiced daily. Well, one of the days during the week, we look at the novel passage and label it in the same way. This has been a great way to apply the same steps to a relevant passage from our novel. I love linking the two (grammar and novel) together.

You can see an example of this in our Winnie-the-Pooh unit.

copy work

Copy Work – Handwriting

The copy work is chosen by me using passages from our novel. My goal is to study one passage a week. This copy work will allow my child to practice handwriting, but we will also be working together to study grammar, spelling, and vocabulary through this passage.

Each week, I wrote the passage out onto lined paper, skipping every other line. (See photo) This gave her an example to follow. Each morning, during her independent work time, she would copy 2-3 lines. The goal is not to do a ton of copy work in one sitting. What does get finished must be done well, if that makes sense. This is another philosophy I am learning about from the Charlotte Mason method. Shorter lessons, better quality work. I’m finding it to be very true!

Copywork – Grammar, Spelling, and Vocabulary

This part of our lesson will vary depending on the passage, but you can see it in action by checking out one of our units.

On the first day we look at the grammar and punctuation. We go through each sentence and figure out together – Why is something capitalized? What is the punctuation at the end? Why is that comma there? When do we add quotes or indent? And so on…

I am very intentional about the passage I choose for this reason. I’m not going to pick something that has incorrect/odd grammar. I’m choosing passages I know will enhance what she’s already learning in her grammar book.

I also spend a day focusing on spelling and vocabulary. (See outline) If there are any words she is unfamiliar with, I try to have her guess the definition using the context. Then, we look the word up in the dictionary.

Next, for spelling, I quiz her on a variety of words in the passage. If she gets it right, we move on. If it’s wrong, we focus on that word for a bit and I try to remember to quiz her on that word a time or two during the rest of the week. There is no spelling test as she will be writing the words by memory during the dictation portion of our week.

3 4

Written Narration

Depending on the child’s age, your lessons may or may not include written narration. Based on my daughter’s abilities, I felt she was ready to start with my help.

One day a week, I require written narration from her. My goal here is for her to write about what we are reading. I like to help her brainstorm and figure out how to write a good narration. Eventually, I hope she will use these brainstorming techniques to write on her own.

I ask her the following questions and we jot down quick notes as our answers (see photo):

  • Who is involved?
  • Where did it take place?
  • What happened?
  • Any other important pieces to mention?
  • How did it end?

I just made these questions up. This is not an official strategy, but we used it for both passages, and it went really well.

Once she has short notes, she begins making sentences to form a paragraph about what we read that day. The first couple times I asked her to do written narration, it was rough. However, with consistency and my help, she is starting to get the hang of it. I was so proud of the last one she did! She’s made awesome improvement.

If you check out the picture below, you’ll see something else we add in for fun. As a reward for her hard work in writing, she likes to draw with Art for Kids Hub. We add it to her notebook, and it’s a cute addition to her work. (You’ll also get a peek at how she took my notes from the board in the last picture to her completed paragraph.)

I’ll admit, the hardest part of this lesson in written narration is for me to just be quiet. I always want to say things like, “Wouldn’t it sound better if…” Or, “Well, don’t you want to add…” I have to bite my tongue – a lot! It’s worth it though. I just LOVE hearing her voice in her writing.

written narration

Dictation

We’ve had practice with dictation from a couple different places. I first learned about it when we completed a Dart Guide from Brave Writer. We were also already doing it at the beginning of this year through the language arts program I chose, Learning Language Arts through Literature. I love it because it’s an easy way to assess that doesn’t feel like a test. Plus, it’s meaningful because it comes from what you are reading.

This article gives fantastic instruction, including a video, on how to do dictation. Like some of the other pieces of this unit, dictation gets easier with practice. The way we set all of this up, we study the passage Monday-Wednesday and dictation is on Thursday. By working on the passage a little bit each day, I feel like it’s a great way to set her up for success during dictation.

I was explaining to my daughter today during her dictation what a wonderful skill it was. Being able to write something and know how to add punctuation and edit it is a life skill that will be necessary her whole life – writing emails and letters, for example.

After I finish dictating the passage to her, we correct it together.

Freedom and Fun

I feel like that’s what it really boils down to here. By doing this method in our language arts, we’ve had more freedom to apply books we are already using to learn, making it more fun and interesting to actually work with.

A lot of things have inspired me to get here, as you may have read throughout this post, but I’m so thankful for what I’ve learned and how we can now find a way to do something that works so well for our family.

Have you tried something similar to this? Are you interested in seeing more units like this in the future? Let me know in the comments and be sure to sign up for my email list where I send all our updates, posts, and resources that we are using in our homeschool.

You can also catch me on Instagram @simply.learning.together If you try this out, take a photo and tag me. I love seeing your families enjoy learning together!

NEW Novel Guide Available!

For the last few years, my children and I have used this novel-based language arts program that is family-style and enriched with great literature each week. I’m so excited to share a NEW guide with you on how we do this in our home. If you’re tired of an all-in-one language arts workbook or if you’re itching for a great novel to read aloud to your kids, you’ve got to try this method! Below are two of the newest guides available now:

James and the Giant Peach

The Secret Garden

You can watch multiple videos about this method of Language Arts on my YouTube Channel HERE

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Homeschool Day in the Life – Timed Lessons

homeshool room

We recently adjusted our homeschool schedule so that we have timed lessons. Prior to this, I began researching a few Charlotte Mason methods and read a book, Modern Miss Mason by Leah Boden. From what I learned, I really loved the reasoning behind doing short, timed lessons. Short is key!

I’ve never been much of a fan of a tight schedule when it comes to our homeschool day, so this was weird for me to start. I always expressed our day as a “rhythm”, starting and finishing as we pleased. I have to remind myself that technically we can still do that, but once the lesson starts we are on a timer.

Want to know what’s crazy – we have LOVED it! This may sound weird, but we actually sit down for a lesson for a shorter amount of time, yet I’m able to get MORE done in our school day than before! Isn’t that crazy?

One day last week, I took some notes about what we did during the day, and I’ll be sharing that with you here. I am going to put start times, but I don’t every feel bound to that. I aim for it, but if I’m early or later than what my plan suggests, I just start when I can. The key is that the lesson is always the same amount of time.

Here’s a link to Charlotte Mason’s timetable, if you’re interested in learning more about the “why” of shorter lessons.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

morning checklist

Breakfast and Chores

I get up between 6 and 6:30. I like a few minutes to myself to read the bible and drink coffee. Getting up isn’t easy to do, because I still get woken up multiple times during the night by litle ones. My secret is having my coffee pot on a timer! It’s like a Folger’s commercial from the 90s…”The best part of waking up…” (are you singing it?) Seriously though, I can smell it and I love that it’s ready for me. Morning motivation.

I am currently reading the One Year Bible. I also use my study bible alongside it to help me dig deeper into what I’m reading for the day.

My kids start getting up between 6:30 and 7:30. They all wake up at different times, and I’m usually making breakfast by then. If someone isn’t up by 7:30, I’ll let them know breakfast is ready. I like to get our day going, so I do wake someone up if it gets pass a certain time.

After breakfast (8:00ish) my kids immediately start their morning checklist. You can read more about this in my morning routine post, but it’s one of the things in our homeschool that has stuck around through the years. It’s a list to get my kids ready for the day and to do a couple chores around the house before we begin.

Independent Work

Once the checklist is done, my two older girls have independent work. They each do something different, and they don’t always start at the same time together. It’s just whenever they’re done with their checklist.

For First Grade: Handwriting (5 mins). We set a timer when she starts, and I tell her she has to complete two lines. She is using a Reason For Level A right now. if she finishes before, great. If not, she stops and finishes it the next day. I used to have her do a lot more independent work than this – it was not successful. Every since we cut it to just writing for 5 min, it’s been so nice. She works hard and does the work well.

Third Grade: Handwriting (5 mins) Same as my first grader – she completes 2-3 lines in that time. We are not using a program for this. I create her copywork based on the literature we are reading. She also does her math independently. I shorten her math lessons so that she is able to complete it in 20 minutes or less. The last thing she completes is her Fix it Grammar lesson which takes about 5 minutes.

Morning Time and Outside

I aim to start our Morning Time at 9:00. Right now we are using Foundations of the Bible from Driven by Grace. We read poetry from “Poems to Learn by Heart” and we read aloud. Usually the book(s) we read is something we are learning in history/science.

At 9:40 We head outside to play, soak in the sun, and the kids usually have a snack. I also get outside for a minute during this time. It makes such a difference in my mood if I get out throughout the day. In the past we have also used this time to go on a short walk.

christian light education math

Lessons Begin

We start lessons at 10:00, and I do math with my first grader. We set a timer for 20 minutes to get the lesson done. I do my best to pick what is the most important and helpful in her lesson. We do not do every single review problem. At the end of the timer, we stop…even when I don’t want to!

I didn’t mention this, but I have four children. While I have lessons with one of my big girls (8yo and 6yo) the other one is playing with my youngest two (4yo and 2yo).

At 10:20 I switch my big girls and start lessons with my oldest. The first thing we do is like a math meeting. Her lesson is usually complete or almost finished because she does it during independent work time. I help her with anything she couldn’t do on her own and we check her work together. I don’t set a timer for this because it only takes about 5 minutes or less.

Next we immediately start our language arts lesson. I recently wrote a post on what we do for this, but I set a timer for 20 minutes to get it done.

I start my next lesson by 11:00. This is language arts with my first grader. We are using Logic of English Foundations B. For this lesson, I set the timer for 15 minutes. I can usually complete 2-4 sections of a lesson during this time. The lessons in this Foundations B book are very long. Even before I started using a timer, we were not completing a full lesson.

preschool fun

Preschool Fun

At this point we are done with our formal lessons! It’s 11:15, and I have a minute to regroup and think about the afternoon ahead. This is also a great time to play with my little two, and that’s exactly what we did.

My big kids were outside, and my little two came in together looking for some time with mommy. We might read books, do a puzzle, or color. I keep it very simple. On this day we did some counting. It was as simple as rolling a dice and counting math cubes into a cup. They loved it!

After 15-20 minutes of preschool fun, I prep our lunch. I don’t always use this time for preschool. I do try to set aside time to play with my little ones, but it’s more about when it fits best in the day. This just so happened to be the time it worked out on this day.

Movie Lunch

About once a week, I let my kids watch a movie during lunch. The movie has something to do with what we are studying. We are working through Foundations of the Bible from Driven by Grace and she lists certain Superbook shows that match the topic.

At 11:40 we watched an episode while eating a picnic lunch. This is always a fun treat!

Mom’s Chores and Outside Time

Between lunch and my son’s nap (12:00-1:00) is just a free time. My kids played outside which gave me an opportunity to work on my personal checklist. I’ve been doing this for about 3 months now, and it’s amazing.

At the start of every day, I write down three things I want to accomplish. It can be as simple as “sweep the kitchen”. My goal is to get those three things done by the end of the day. I feel more productive and it feels like I’m able to keep up with my house better.

At 1:00, I put my son down for a nap.

Afternoon Activity

At 1:15, I designate something I want to do with my older girls that is a little bit harder to do with a little one around. Now that he’s napping, it’s easier to get it done. This usually has something to do with the current unit study we are in.

Today we studied art during the the time of the Vikings. We sat at the table, researched the information with our library books, and looked at examples. We also read about runes and tried creating some on Play-Doh with a toothpick.

Reverse Planning

We finish up our afternoon activity by 2:00. During this time, I can clean up and fill out my planner. I use the reverse planning method and love it! I simply write down the things we accomplished for the day and shut down the school room for the afternoon.

Quiet Time/ Jog

At 2:30 we started quiet time. My son is still sleeping and my two big girls go into separate rooms to enjoy some quiet. Our days flow much better when we all have this quiet time to ourselves. My girls entertain themselves by reading, drawing, or listening to a book. They have come to really love and appreciate this time.

While they are in quiet time, I go for a jog. I look forward to this every day because I can get outside and I can listen to a book or a podcast that I love. It also gives me an energy boost for the rest of the afternoon/evening. My husband works from home so he is able to be the present adult while I’m gone.

My third daughter comes with me in the stroller. She needs a nap, but a full one is too long, if you know what I mean. So, she rides in the stroller and takes a catnap while I run.

Afternoon Snack

Quiet time is usually an hour. At 3:30 everyone comes out for a snack. I’ve learned to do this snack right away otherwise they get to playing and get hungry too close to dinner, snack late, and ruin their appetite. We’ve been using it as a time to just sit and chat together. Some days we even make tea for fun. I also enjoy an iced coffee while we talk 😉

Once we finish our snack time, my kids head outside for the afternoon. I usually spend this time picking up or prepping for dinner.

Evening Routine

At 6:00 we have dinner. My husband and I clean up at the end while the kids play. Right now it gets dark pretty early. We all look forward to when we can spend some more time outside after dinner.

At 6:45, we visit together in our living room. I wish I could say it was peaceful family time, but the energy level is usually quite high. We are together as a family, but it’s quite loud! Even still, I am grateful.

At 7:00 my kids get ready for bed. They don’t GO to bed. I’ve just learned to start our bedtime routine early. It helps me not to get frazzled in the rush to get to bed. By starting early I have more patience and better self control. Once they are ready for bed, we read aloud together.

It’s just me and the girls that read while my son plays with my husband. We have been reading our novels before bed for a couple years now, and it has been so nice. We read so much together! And it is a time that I cherish with them.

By 8:00 we finish up our reading and I put my son to bed. During this time, my girls read silently in their beds.

By 8:30 it’s lights out and time for bed.

Routine

Routine is so important in our home! Not only does it help our kids, but I’ve realized how much it helps me to follow a routine also. On days where we aren’t in routine, I feel pretty funky!

Our schedule has shifted and adjusted over the years, but this is the first time we’ve tried timing our lessons. It used to be where I’d be teaching all the way to lunch and then I’d have to catch up with someone when my son took a nap.

Now, with timed lessons, I’m able to be more efficient and complete our lessons quicker. This allows me extra time in the afternoon to add in some fun!

Does your routine look similar to this? Have you ever tried timed lessons? I was against it for quite sometime, but I’m glad I finally tried it. We have loved it so far!

Posted on by — 5 Comments

Vikings – Homeschool Unit Study

2 2

It’s time to learn about Vikings in our homeschool! I’m so pumped because I don’t know much about them (HA!) That doesn’t scare me! It makes it all the more exciting doing it with the kids. We will be learning so much together, and I’m thrilled! So, as we go through our unit, I’ll be writing this blog post. I hope to share the books we are reading for our unit study as well as the different activities we do.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Library Haul

My first step in any unit study is to collect books from the library. I’ve shared this before, but my main strategy is to just head to the non-fiction section and start putting books in my bag.

This time around I did have a few books I put on hold just in case. So, I grabbed those first and the rest were a surprise.

I’m so excited! For this unit I had some time to make a YouTube video sharing all the books we used. Check that video out here.

Below are just a few of the books that we got and loved for our unit. The first three were great to read front to back as a fun read aloud. The rest are good reference books that we used to research other topics, like geography, art, clothing, and more.

planning a unit

Planning

Next, it’s my turn to do the studying. I like to just flip through the library books and skim through the pages. The pictures and text inspire me before I start hunting for different activities on Pinterest. This also helps me know which books will be easy to read to my kids and which ones might just be a good reference book on our shelf.

As I looked through each book, I made a note of some focus topics that the book discussed: ships, food, Viking men and women, recipes, clothing…anything.

Next, I headed to Pinterest and looked for some inspiration of any topics that I knew would interest me or my kids. I’ve saved all of my pins in one board called “Vikings” if you’d like to take a look.

Read Alouds

We always do our read aloud novels before bed time. This has been so great for us. We read so much more, my kids can wind down, and most of the time it’s quieter than our morning time.

For this unit, I’m trying something new and reading TWO books at bedtime. One is nonfiction – “Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Vikings”. The other is a fictional novel – “Imagination Station: Voyage with the Vikings”

In addition to that, each of my bigger kids (8 yrs and 6 yrs) listened to an audio book separately during their quiet time. Through our library app (Libby) we checked out “Magic Treehouse: Viking Ships at Sunrise” The book is only about 40 minutes long so they were each able to listen to it in one day and had a chance to exchange what their favorite part was.

These three books alone will teach my kids and I so much. Having this as the backbone to our unit will help us learn all sorts of information, but it also gives me confidence that I don’t need a ton of extras. We will be soaking in facts and fun through books!

Extra Activities

Now is the part where I get to share the fun, “extra” things we did for our unit. I personally think reading together is great and the following things aren’t necessary to learn. However, it brings me joy planning them and my children LOVE them. So, we continue to add a few fun things here and there in our units. I hope sharing them with you may inspire your family, as well!

geography activity

Geography

The Vikings lived mostly in Scandinavia, but they sailed to many different countries. I felt like this was a great opportunity to talk about our seven continents.

First, I found a free printable online that was blank, black and white, and would allow us to label the continents. Once we did that we colored each continent a different color.

I also shared a couple of videos online that talked about the different continents and what you may find there. One is shorter, animated, and silly. The other is a little longer, has real pictures, and LOTS of facts. Both were great to watch!

We were also able to use a few of our library books. Almost every book has some sort of map in them, but a few had maps that showed different routes the Vikings traveled.

5 1

During our second week of study, I printed out a Viking Map that I found online for free. We were able to mark where the Vikings lived, where they raided, and where they settled. It was super simple and easy to do together. The website where I found this gave an example of the finished product so there was no guessing or researching for me.

baking Birka bread

Baking Bread

I planned to make a bread recipe that we found in one of our books from the library, “Viking Longships”. The recipe was for something called Birka bread. I’m not sure what happened, but it smelled bad, and it looked like slop. It did not have a dough consistency, so I was unsure how it would turn out.

I quickly found another recipe I saved on Pinterest and threw it together so that we could try both breads. It was really easy, and I happened to have all of the ingredients already in my pantry.

The Birka bread was sort of like a pancake consistency and had a sweet flavor. It definitely tasted better than it smelled. A couple of my kids actually preferred it over the other. The other bread was very dense and pretty dry. It was good with butter and honey.

Either way, it was fun to make and eat what the Vikings may have eaten long ago!

Viking lunch

Viking Lunch

This was probably the easiest themed lunch I’ve ever done. I had everything already at home and decided to throw it together last minute. I found the idea from a blog post that suggested to read “Leif the Lucky” along with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that one at the library OR a good quality read aloud on Youtube. So, we just ate the lunch!

All it took was a PBJ sandwhich, pretzels, raisins and bananas. My kids were so surprised and thought it was so cute. Now, if you see the picture, the bananas act like horns on the helmet. However, from what we’ve been reading, that’s actually a false representation of a Viking helmet. Real viking helmets did NOT have horns. Fun fact of the day!

viking runes

Art/ Runes

The Vikings art was really in their craftsmanship. The carvings, and weapons, and jewelry were all really neat to see in our library books. We were also able to see runes, which are kind of like a Viking alphabet. We used one of our books that had a chart of all the runes to do a simple and fun activity.

Using a toothpick, we carved words into Play Doh to make it look like runes on stone. It was neat to see our names written that way.

My oldest and I enjoyed cracking the code a little bit. Her and I would come up with a 3-4 letter word and use the chart to try and decode the message. This can get tricky because some symbols represent multiple letters.

drinking horn snack

Snack – Drinking Horns

When I saw that the Vikings used drinking horns, I was certain there was a craft for that, but didn’t find anything! So, I came up with my own simple little snack to pretend we were Vikings.

You’ll need the triangular shaped waffle cones to be your horn. We filled ours with yogurt and granola to make a simple parfait, but you could definitely fill it with ice cream or something else.

That’s it! It was so silly and fun, and the kids loved saying “Cheers” before eating it.

Music

The DK find out! series had a page on the music that might have been played during Viking times. Over lunch one day I read through this page as we observed the different types of instruments and read about how they were used.

I found this GREAT selection of videos from YouTube that shared more about the same instruments and the guy hosting the video even played them. It was really neat, and it brought the instruments to life for us. The videos are short and sweet and made the instruments very memorable!

viking language arts

Language Arts

During this unit, I was re-evaluating our language arts program and trying some new things for my oldest daughter. While doing that, we were able to use the history books we read for a few language arts lessons, which was really a lot of fun.

I would read a story about the Vikings from the library. Then, my daughter would write 2-3 sentences about what we read. I’d sit down with her and help her edit her sentences or add to them if we needed to.

As a treat, I’d let her add a picture from an online drawing video. I’ll link the two videos we used below:

This was really a great way for us to incorporate our studies into language arts and it really inspired me to do it more.

Notebook/Portfolio

At the end of each unit we do, I like to have the kids draw a little keepsake for our study. It’s very simple. I have them tell me about something they learned and write it down on the paper (Sometimes my oldest will write it on her own) Next, they draw a picture.

While we did this, we listened to an audio book about vikings, “How to be a Viking” by Cressida Cowell. This book was written by the author of the “How to Train Your Dragon” series. We learned that this picture book was the one that started it all!

We keep all of these drawings in a binder, and it’s so neat to go back and look at all of the things we’ve learned together over the year. This is my first year doing a portfolio like this, and I will definitely continue!

We loved studying the Vikings!

This was such a fun study for us. A couple random things to add in…We did watch How to Train Your Dragon 2 during our study because it’s technically about Vikings. I was actually kind of disappointed with it. The movie itself was fine, but the Vikings didn’t look like what we studied and they didn’t even ride in longships! So, that ended up being kind of a bummer for me. Maybe the first one is better about that? I haven’t seen it in a while.

This next thing is not really kid-friendly…but I’ll share anyway. During our unit study, my husband and I started watching the series called “Vikings”. It was originally produced by the History Channel but eventually it moved to the Prime app. We started it about a week before our unit kicked off, and it got me really pumped up to begin our study. JUST A HEADS UP – this show is very gory, creepy/disturbing at times (I’m talkin’ human sacrifices and such…yikes!), and there are some love scenes as well. Like I said, NOT child friendly at all. However, it was very fun to connect with my husband in a way that related to our homeschool studies! So, watch at your own risk…everyone has their preferences.

Well, that about does it for our history unit! I always hated history as a child, but I am loving it as I study with my children. I feel so blessed to have these days with them. Have you studied the Vikings yet? I’d love to know if you do any of these activities! Comment below or tag me on Instagram @simply.learning.together. I love hearing from you guys!

More Unit Studies

NEW – American History

Ancient Egypt

Ancient China

Space

Weather

Knights and Castles

Novel Units

The Secret Garden

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

The Boxcar Children

The Courage of Sarah Noble

Posted on by

The Boxcar Children – Novel Unit

3 3

The Boxcar Children is an adorable, classic novel to add to your homeschool routine. This novel unit will provide you with optional activities, crafts, and library topics to enrich the novel topics and themes.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

2 3

Experience it in the Home

The focus for this unit is “Experience it in the home…” The unit is designed so that you can add simple discussions, recipes, meals, and outdoor play to your day-to-day life while reading this book. These are related to the events in each chapter and provide a way for you to live out the book and experience it as a family…simply and easily.

science experiment

Experience it Across Multiple Subjects

There are also additional activities that you can choose to add on as you please. This would be for you to “Experience it across multiple subjects…” This may include crafts, science experiments, math activities or writing. These are all optional and can be completed at ANY time. (We know deep down the memory of a book never leaves us…save these for when it best suits your family)

Organized by Chapter

The novel unit is broken down by each chapter. Every chapter guide includes the following:

  • Summary
  • Discussion Questions
  • Crafts/Activities/Discussions
  • Library topics to add optional books to your study
tin can bell

Super Flexible

Everything is OPTIONAL! No required book list. No required supplies. This unit is so flexible. Pick and choose what works for your family. Most importantly have fun with it. Learn together from the character experiences. Enjoy digging deeper into a novel.

***DOWNLOAD THE BOXCAR CHILDREN UNIT***

More Read Aloud Experience Units

You can read more about the Read Aloud Experience in this post where I explain our very first one that our family completed for The Secret Garden. To download the free units, click the links below:

secret garden read aloud

More Book Activities

The Courage of Sarah Noble

Adventures of Reddy Fox

Caddie Woodlawn

Posted on by

My All-Time-Favorite Laundry Hack

laundry basket

I feel like I’ve tried all the laundry tricks in the book – one load a week, complete it all on the weekend, every other day. Let’s be honest, I’ve even purged clothes throughout my whole house so I would possibly have less to wash! Even still, it feels like it never gets easier.

Well, over the last few months I’ve made one small change that has changed my laundry life for the better, and I’m so excited to share it with you.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

The Inspiration

My inspiration came from Kristi Clover, author of “M.O.M: Master Organizer of Mayhem“, who suggested that every person in the family have their own basket. I was so overwhelmed by laundry at the time that I couldn’t even think about doing that. Is there even enough space in the bedrooms? I have three girls in one room! Where am I going to get all these laundry baskets? These were all thoughts that were racing around in my head.

As a family of six, the laundry loads were always present, and I felt like it was impossible to keep up. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said – the benefits she listed seemed so wonderful, and I really wanted to find a way to make it work in my own home.

Laundry Baskets

Of course, I immediately searched Amazon to buy cute little narrow baskets so they wouldn’t take up so much space in the house. They were so expensive! I just couldn’t buy new baskets because I didn’t even know if I liked this method yet.

To save money, I started with the baskets I had and made it work. I made the decision that my husband and I would continue to share a basket. Then, I had enough for each of my three girls. That took care of everyone except my two year old son.

The solution – an Amazon box! I’m serious! I used an Amazon box to hold his dirty clothes. I didn’t want to spend the money on baskets because it’s possible this method wasn’t even going to work for me! So, I set the box in a corner in his room and threw his dirty clothes in there each day.

Well, spoiler alert – it worked, and I loved it! Want to know something funny? My son used that Amazon box for about 3 months before I bought him a basket! (ha!)

The basket I bought him was small and only cost $2.50 at Target. So, if you’re not into the box solution, make a quick trip to target for a great deal!

I do keep a basket in my utility room for towels. So, for example, if a towel is in someone’s basket, I’ll pull it out and put it in my towel basket. When that basket gets full, I wash it! That’s really the only separating I do. We wash everything in cold water and I wash all the colors in it. Is it the best for my clothes? Well, possibly not, but I (nor my children) are wearing anything fancy enough for all of that extra laundry care.

Sorting Before You Wash

The trick to all of this is that the sorting takes place BEFORE you actually wash the clothes. To do this, I had to change my picking up habits. Prior to this, anytime I picked up clothes, I just threw them in the nearest basket or just straight into the washer.

Now, I take the clothing item to the specific person’s basket. This may seem like a hassle, but it’s really not that bad. Most of their clothes are in their room anyway. Or they might be in the bathroom next to their room. So, it’s just a few steps here and there to get it done. The fact that I’m keeping up with laundry makes it all worth it!

I also had to teach my kids about putting their clothes in their own basket. I thought this would take time, but they really picked it up quick, even my three and a half year old.

Smaller Loads

I run a load of laundry almost every day. Because of this, when a child is ready to wash their basket, the load is actually not that big. It makes the folding process quick and easy. Everything in the basket belongs to the same person and it can go right to the drawers.

Each of my children get their basket washed about once a week, and so far it’s been great! The only basket that needs washing more than once a week is mine, but it holds clothes for two people.

My Older Children Wash Their Own Clothes

I’ve always wanted to train my kids to do this, but couldn’t quite find the method to keep it consistent. Most of the time I was wanting them to fold, but there would be so many different items in the baskets. I’d spend a ton of time sorting everything in piles before they could even fold.

With the multiple basket method, that whole step is eliminated. Their basket goes in the wash. (I usually switch it to the dryer when it’s ready) and then they fold it on their own and put it away. Back to the smaller load point – it’s really not too bad for them because the loads are small.

My oldest two girls are the ones that can do this. They are 8 and 6. Their folding is not perfection and many times it gets folded inside out, but I’m picking my battles. They are learning such great responsibility, and it’s saving me time to do something else if I need to.

Scheduling

This method might even work great to assign everyone a day, but I’m not very good about that. I try to put a load in every day, and I usually just pick the one that is the fullest. After doing it for so many weeks, a pattern has started to develop, but it’s not super strict.

I Love This Method

Since I’ve started doing this method, I can’t remember the last time I felt overwhelmed by the amount of laundry that had to get done. I think it’s because the folding and putting away just became easier! Plus, I was doing less thanks to the help of my big girls.

I have three girls, and the constant separating of girls underwear, and girls socks, and shirts that are just one size apart was exhausting! It took so much time to look at every. single. tag. Now, that rarely happens!

Give this a Try

So, what do you think? Want to try this out? Or, maybe you already to this too? I’m telling you this was a game changer for maintaining my home and it’s been an active practice in my home for about four months now.

I never thought there would be a day where laundry wouldn’t bother me, but this little hack has really changed my mindset. The loads are smaller and it feels like there’s a whole lot less. I’m so thankful for other moms out there sharing what works for them, because it inspired me to make one small change. I hope that sharing this here with you can be an inspiration as well.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Homeschool Morning Routine – Morning Checklist

morning checklist

Our morning checklist is the tried and true practice that has stuck around over the years. As homeschool moms, we are always adjusting routines and curriculum to better fit our needs, and although we have adjusted our checklist at times – the rules of it have stayed the same. It has been such a help for our mornings!

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

How it Started

I first thought of the idea a couple years ago when I was listening to a podcast from Durenda Wilson. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what the episode was, but she talked about how important it was for her main living spaces to be clean and clear before she started her homeschool day. At the time, I could feel the weight of the mess in my own home and new this strategy could be helpful.

She also talked about the fact that the key to doing this is to not take it on alone! Get the kids involved. Set up routines and chores so that the whole family is working together and the pressure is not on mom alone.

The Constant Questions

The other problem I was running into was the questions I had to keep asking every single day. “Did you brush your hair? Did you brush your teeth? Is your room picked up?” Times that by four for each of my children, while I was trying to cook and clean breakfast – I was exhausted doing it!

This really drove me to teach them how to be more responsible about getting ready and how to help me in the house more.

checklist

The Morning Checklist

Enter the morning checklist.

I thought carefully about the things I wanted the kids to do to get ready and added that to the list. I also followed the advice of Durenda Wilson and set a goal to have our main living space clean before we started. This means we would work together to get the kitchen and living room picked up each morning.

It’s tempting to put a large list of things on the checklist, because wouldn’t that be the most helpful? However, I found it best for us to smart very small and eventually work our way towards a good quality list.

Breakfast

One thing I wanted to do was put items on their that will be easy to accomplish. For example, “eat breakfast” is on the list. I plan to feed them every day, so I know for sure they will be able to check that off with ease. I want them to feel successful and not defeated as soon as they start.

At breakfast my kids make a “cup for the day“. This is the cup to be used for the whole day. It stays on the table (or the counter) for them to use as needed. I implemented this cup idea because every time my kids were thirsty, they’d just grab another cup.

Some of the fault was on me too – I’d see a cup and put it in the dishwasher. The cycle of always needing a cup continued. So our “cup of the day” rule helps with that.

Getting Ready for the Day

To avoid all of the questions I was having to ask, I added to the list our daily tasks for getting ready. This includes “get dressed“, “brush your hair“, “brush your teeth“.

Now, this doesn’t mean I never have to question them. I have some kids that are really good about the checklist and others that need reminders. However, it’s better than managing all four by myself. No matter what they’re learning to be more responsible.

Morning Chore

The last piece of the checklist was the chore to help me prepare our home for the day. Remember my focus was the kitchen and the living room. So, I chose two jobs that my older two girls would alternate each week.

One would unload the dishwasher for me and the other would pick up the living room. So, their checklist states, “morning chore: __________________” and I write one of those jobs each week. It’s super easy to manage and they help me remember who’s doing what.

Now, at the time we started this my third daughter was only two. She was just learning about chores, but I wanted her to be a part of our family clean-up team. So, I gave the her job of picking up couch pillows. She’s done that same job every day for the last couple years. She’s almost four now and she’s probably ready to do something more, so I’ll be thinking of that soon I’m sure.

Our First Checklist

Did you catch all of the items on the list? I will list it out for you so you can see how simple and small we started. It was so helpful to do it in this way because the kids could accomplish the list, and I didn’t feel pressure of making them do all kinds of tasks in the morning.

  • Eat Breakfast
  • Cup for the Day
  • Morning Chore: ________________
  • Get Dressed
  • Brush Hair
  • Brush Teeth
checklist with pictures

Adjust the List for Each Child

I do adjust the list for each child as needed. For example, I drew pictures on my preschooler’s list because she can’t read it. They aren’t fancy. I just took my pencil and made a quick drawing.

Some tasks may need to be done by one child but not the others. We started my youngest daughter’s list with “throw away pull-up” on there, and she took care of that on her own every morning.

I’m also able to write things on the list if I want something temporary. For example, if my child has to take medication or if their lips are really chapped, I might add “medicine” or “chapstick” with a wet erase marker. Then we can erase it the next week.

Storing and Displaying

We keep our lists in a dry erase pocket. I’ve learned that the best place for them to be displayed is somewhere near me so I can help make sure everyone is on track. For our home this is the utility room door near where I’m cleaning up in the kitchen in the morning. This makes it easy for me to check on the kids as they finish their items.

The dry erase pocket has been so nice. They erase really well, and if I want to write anything temporary for a few days I just use wet erase markers.

Adding Items When We are Ready

As we have gotten used to our checklists, it’s been easier to add more items to it. For example, The girls’ lists now say “tidy room” and “make bed“. I don’t require a perfectly made bed. I just ask them to pull up their blankets and make it look nice.

This would’ve been great to have from the beginning, but at the time it was overwhelming. Once we had mastered our first list, it felt easier to add more. I also feel like this is a big reason why it’s been so successful – starting small.

Final Thoughts

Things come and go with our homeschool, but this is one thing that has consistently worked for us the last couple years. It makes my mornings easier, and everyone knows what’s expected of them.

When we take breaks from our homeschool routine, we usually skip the checklist and have more relaxed mornings. However, it’s the perfect thing to bring back into our morning a week or two before we start up again to kick everyone back in gear for school.

One new thing I did before we started after Christmas this year was I asked the girls if there was anything they’d like me to add? It wasn’t much, but those one or two items they added really gave them ownership of the list and got them excited for routine again. (If you’re curious what they added, one was “deodorant”, another was “vitamin”, and I think one was “feed cat”…which we don’t really have. It’s a barn cat that all the neighbors feed, but my daughter wanted ownership of that. I gave it to her! She loves it!)

Although we’ve done this for a while, we still have our not-so-good days when it comes to getting it done. We’ve had phases where I had to set timers to motivate them. I also have a couple that need lots and lots of reminders, at times. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s one that has been so beneficial to us.

Last thing – I really try to do the same things for myself to set the example. I used to not make my bed, but once I asked them to, I realized I really needed to do it too! I’ve even said things like, “I’m going to do my checklist” when I get ready. I don’t really have one, but they get it! We all have our responsibilities in the home.

What would you add to the list? Do you use something similar? If you try this out let me know how it works for you! Comment here or find me on Instagram @simply.learning.together