Always moving forward. A great time to shake off 2020 and move onward into 2021.
Has being in lock-down affected the way you learn together at home?
Were you hit by the stress of lockdown?
Have you decided to home educate because of the pandemic?
If you answered 'yes' to these questions, then you are not alone. But what can you do to move forward?
Well everyone is different, and each one of us faces different problems and hurdles that have been made worse by the year of the pandemic.
It's the start of a new year, and hopefully a better one.
We are going to welcome in the New Year by looking back at the last.
The plan for Friday 1st January is going to be a nice gentle start.
We will start by looking back at our lap-book we made earlier in the year all about Covid 19. (who would have thought then that this would go on so long). Then we will talk about what needs adding to the lap-book, and work on that for the day. This time I want to encourage Tiny to add some 'looking forward' things in the lap-book. Then, we will put that lap-book away.
We might need to start another one - who knows.
I want to keep the year as positive as I can. I am going to include as many hands-on activities as possible. Tiny still has trouble with making and doing, but we're getting there. The more he does crafts, the better he will get.
Here are some of the things we are hoping to add.
A poem about 'What I Am Looking Forward To'
A list of the places we would like to visit when lockdown is over
Some photos taken during the year of 2020
Family photos of all the people we want to see again soon
A mind-map of all the adventures we could have even though we're still stuck inside (living room camp-outs - movie nights - cooking more - getting the garden ready for Spring - more arts and crafts - Minecraft with Nanny - making more animation films - writing letters to people we love and miss) and anything else we can think of.
From Monday 4th, we will slowly begin to get back into a daily routine. The routine has slipped over the last few months, and our learning day is very miss and match at the moment.
We will talk about this and discuss what we can do to help us.
I will print out his new 'I Can' statements and we will discuss how we are going to meet the targets.
You can find 'I Can' statements on the website, along with national curriculum targets for the different year groups. (Yes I know as home educators we do not have to follow the curriculum, but I find these help both Tiny and me)
I know for a while now he has wanted to design and create his own timetable cards. That would be a great way for him to learn some more features on Power Point. he can customise them to the topics we are doing at the moment.
We will be taking some of our fun ideas from the January calendar. this helps to break up the week and inject some different ideas - but for our work these are the main things we will be concentrating on.
For our topics in January we are looking at the Ancient Greeks and tying this in with Myths during Literacy. Some of the Greek myths should be right up his street.
First we will look at where Greece is on a map - and then look at history and the areas on the map the Greeks invaded. We will explore a brief outline of who the ancient Greeks were and famous people of that time. (we will explore more later in the topic).
Then hopefully during the week we will look at the major Greek gods (to tie in with Literacy)
For Science we are still looking at Space - now we're going to start to look at space travel. Making rockets will be great fun.
Numeracy we're looking at Year 3/4 fractions next week. He still struggles with maths so this too will have to be a practical as we can.
I will post how the week went next week and hopefully add some ideas for you to try at home.
The January calendar is still on the resources page. Don't forget to print out your copy.
This year has been strange. A lot of good habits have gone out of the window.
But now is the time to start afresh.