Embracing a Wintery Homeschool
We are back at it! Historically, January tends to be a harder month for us to homeschool in - the cool darker days and cloudy weather casts a bit of a gloomy feel around here. But, earlier this year when we were studying Sweden and came across Jonna Jinton’s video on Living with Dark Winters and what she said about this time of year has stayed with me every since…
“I think the winter and darkness can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering when we are trying to force ourselves to feel the same as we do in the summer. It’s okay to feel tired. It’s okay to feel a lack of inspiration. It’s okay to need more sleep and to let things slow down. A flower would never force itself to bloom in the cold winter, so why would we?”
So, that is what we’re doing over here — sleeping in a little later than we normally would, building cozy fires, reading more, doing puzzles and embracing slow and steady. And on that note, it seems appropriate to give you an update on our yearlong nature study. First off, if you haven’t read 2023-2024 Curriculum Picks: Family Style Science + Art you may like that post for a little bit of background. We’re primarily using Seasons Afield from Beautiful Feet Books to guide our study and so far we are LOVING it. We’re about 2/3 of the way through the curriculum and I can’t recommend it enough!
A lot of people have asked me if they can start this curriculum now and the answer is yes, yes, yes! It is SO easy to modify the lessons, combine them, and/or switch them around. The guide begins with autumn, then works into winter, and finally spring so if you’re wanting to start now I’d just skip the autumn section and move right into the winter sections. Then, you can still do the spring study and save the rest of the guide for next fall.
Over the last few weeks we have been learning about all things winter. We started with hibernation...the book Winter Sleep is an absolute fantastic resource on this topic. As part of the Seasons Afield curriculum we have also been pulling from Slow Down. (If you get the full curriculum, I’d definitely recommend ordering the required books as part as the BFB package instead of purchasing separately since it’s cheaper.) We’ve been learning about all sorts of wild life like field mice, snowy owls, winter foxes and bunnies, bears, and their winter coats. The kids made an ice wreath for the winter birds and left out a bowl of seeds for them. We’ve been doing experiments to see what kind of food they like best in the winter. Some chick-a-dees found us and the kids have spent a long time observing them…many of our bird books are back off the shelf. And it’s reminded me of one of our favorite studies we did last year which you can read more about here: Bird Unit Study.
We’ve also added a few new resources to our studies. We started utilizing the TGTB’s Wind and Waves materials. Even though technically this is for early elementary, my older girls are still really enjoying the stories from the Big Book of Science Stories. We’ve been reading about meteorologists, weather forecasting, and temperature - we made our own Benjamin Franklin thermometers (a project out of Seasons Afield) And also the water cycle, clouds, wind, rain, ice, and snow. This is a fun pop-up book all about how the world works and it includes the water cycle.
Another fun resource I’ve added to our collection is a monthly subscription from Deep Space Sparkle for some additional art projects. Originally, I bought this to go along with our Middle Ages study which we will be pulling from more in February, but there was a cute weather bundle that has been fun to use right now as well. Unfortunately this subscription is only open to join in early January (it’s closed now), but it’ll open again in August so keep your eyes on it if you like some of the art projects we’re doing. We made some cute cumulous cloud art and snowy mittens to go along with the classic…The Mitten…definitly a must-have. If you’re looking for a great art option you can purchase anytime though, we love anything and everything from Lily & Thistle too.
It isn’t uncommon for us to do some fun winter-themed activities this time of year. A few years a go I set up a cute instasnow sensory activity and we’ll be doing something similar again next week. We’ve done the classic blubber experiment a few times — you know with ice and crisco. And, one of my all time favorites are some cute penguins the girls made with this tutorial. But, this year we tried something completely new out of Seasons Afield…in fact I’d never even heard of it! We did a science activity and made snowflake prints with sun art paper and it was SO cool! We used some of the snowflake cutouts I had left over from our school room decor (you can get them here) and they turned out so neat. Since I’d never done this before I was a little worried, but thanks to the guide it was a super easy experiment and now we have more snowflakes than we know what to do with! It was THE perfect activity to go along with the story of Snowflake Bentley. The story of Wilson Bentley is one we read every year, but this activity was the cherry on top!
We also just got a bunch of new Yoto cards so we’ve been listening to The Frozen World which has been perfect. My 4 year old is obsessed with the On The Farm card from this Ladybird bundle (volume 2). Next week we’ll be wrapping up our study of winter and weather, but before we do another book we will be pulling from for some winter activities is 1000 Hours Outside. Originally I got this for last summer, but there is a whole section on winter so I’m excited to pull it back off the shelf for this time of year. I put together a collective list of everything I’ve mentioned plus some of our other winter favorites and more great books for this time of year below.
Last of all, I thought I’d post an updated picture of our current routine. I love having our rhythm posted - mostly because it helps me to take the time to sit down and think through our days. I have a whole blog post on tips for creating a rhythm and you can grab the editable rhythm templates here. Over the holidays we were kind of all over the place, but I knew when we settled back down we’d need to make a few more tweaks to our schedule. All I did was switch a few things around in our morning routine and it made all the difference. Our days are running much smoother. Has that ever happened to you? I am sure it’ll work well for the rest of the school year.
Do you have any other winter favs? I’d love to hear!
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