November school things

Maybe these posts about school are somewhat interesting to someone other than me? Hope so. But if not, at least I have a record of our everyday life.

November 1st is Day of the Dead, which is a major holiday celebrated primarily in Mexico. We had a really fun cultural studies day learning about traditions and beliefs.

One of our neighbors gave the girls a pack of Peeps for Halloween that had Day of the Dead-looking skulls, and since children traditionally eat sugar/candy skulls for Day of the Dead, we thought it was perfect!

We read a really helpful and informative picture book about Day of the Dead called Funny Bones by Duncan Tonatiuh (we've read several books by him and have come to really like his work). It laid a great foundation for understanding the holiday and the elements that seem really macabre to those of us unfamiliar with the traditions.

We used Q-tips to make calaveras/calacas artwork

We will definitely be back to Day of the Dead next November, as well. We all thoroughly enjoyed our study of it.

We study a lot of maps! We regularly pause to locate countries that we read about or run across in our textbooks. I've always loved studying maps, so it's really fun to pass that along to my kids. Lily, particularly, seems to love it.

I follow an account on Instagram (@dayswithgrey) that offers lots of really great activities for littles to engage them in learning but leaving it open to a transition to free play. I have used many of her ideas with Brynnie, and they are almost always a hit. This Rainbow Bears activity is a Brynnie favorite.

Lily regularly asks to join Brynnie in these activities, so I usually try to make sure there are enough supplies/room for two. This activity involves sorting animal stickers by habitat. They did great with it! But, perhaps more importantly, it led them into creating stories for their animals and playing independently for about half an hour afterwards.

I learned about Sarah Mackenzie years ago, via her podcast "Read-Aloud Revival." Through the intervening years, especially as we became a homeschool family, I've just become more and more Sarah involved. I've read her books (and purchased...I started by getting them from the library. Then, I found them so helpful that I just bought them.), utilized her website, and more recently, I joined her paid subscription service for homeschool families. It is worth every penny I pay for it. 

She hosts Family Book Clubs every month, where she selects a book for Read Aloud Revival (RAR) families to read at home. Her team then offers discussion prompts, activity and snack ideas, and often a live interview with the author or illustrator via Zoom. Last year, one of the book club books was Kate Albus's A Place to Hang the Moon. I had recently read it by myself for fun and LOVED IT. I was genuinely sad when I finished it. So when I saw that it was the book club pick AND that there was going to be a Zoom interview with the author, I jumped at the opportunity and added it to our read-aloud list for school. Claire and Lily also LOVED it! And when they found out we were going to watch an interview with Kate Albus, they were thrilled.

Watching Sarah interview Kate

We made hot chocolate and toast as our book-themed snack. It was so fun!

At Christmas, RAR Premium put together a "Christmas School" pack, using Tomie DePaola Christmas books as the building blocks. Each week, we read a different Tomie Christmas book and then did crafts, made snacks, read extra books that correlated to Tomie's books, focused on a Christmas carol, and generally had the most Christmas-y time. I got very few pictures, though, as we were having so much fun. We absolutely loved it! Even if you don't homeschool, I cannot recommend Sarah's podcast (Read Aloud Revival) and her book (The Read Aloud Family) enough. They are wonderful. Note: she has written other things, but this book, in particular, is a gem.

One week of Christmas school included an art class led by a children's book illustrator. He walked us through the steps of drawing a nativity.

Most of our school days are very ordinary, but we do find a number of things to liven us up on a regular basis.