If you’re taking the leap into homeschooling your little one this fall, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with all the moving parts. 

Supplies. Schedules. Curriculum. Socialization. Homeschool laws. 

In particular, you’re probably wondering about how to plan your days and months for learning - how much, how little - and what a typical day will look like.

Breathe, mama. You got this.

Today’s post is about giving you a checklist and roadmap to make planning a breeze, to lighten your load, and to reassure you that homeschooling in the Early Years can be light, playful and fun {for ALL of you!}, vs. stressful, overwhelming and burdensome.

Once you’ve chosen your curriculum, you’re ready to start planning your days.

In considering curriculum, look for a balanced approach - one that blends structure and important academics WITH playful learning and creative exploration. Artful Teaching. Joyful Learning.® Is a true hybrid curriculum...

Driftwood has to be one of my favourite art materials. It’s free, beautifully organic, and involves getting out into nature to collect it.

Every spring, I take the girls on a driftwood hunt on the banks of Winnipeg’s Red River. On these nature walks, we usually end up discovering much more than driftwood, which always leads to other investigations and learning.

In my work with children and families in classrooms and child care centres, I have used driftwood on several occasions. Here are a few examples.

Planted Texture Trees

The child care centre I was working with was looking to have more colour in their space, but were limited with what they could hang or affix to the walls. Thinking outside the box, we decided to bring colour and visual interest in a unique way.

We also use our texture tree as a puppet-tree - storage for our puppets! I use puppets for storytelling, to engage children in my InspirEd at Home classes, and, when the girls were younger, as a prop for...

Curious about what’s under the hood inside this best selling curriculum?

Today I’m sharing some of my community’s FAVORITE projects - unique projects you won’t find on Pinterest -  projects that are the perfect mix of art, play and academics

1. Family Talking Stick

A beautiful way to work as a family on peaceful and collaborative problem-solving, turn-taking, dialogue and story-telling which provides fodder for writing!

2. Plasticine paintings

An artful way to weave in storytelling, reading and writing! Using a story-sequencing graphic organizer, children retell a story, and then take their "favorite part" to recreate it into a plasticine painting.

3. Epic Portraits

 These show-stopper, LARGER THAN LIFE, one-of-a-kind pieces are keepsake self-portraits you’ll want to hang in your living room! They are SO dramatic and fun, and I show you exactly how - step-by-step inside one of the BONUSES for this program!

These are...

Ever been in a traffic jam? Congestion, irritation, frustration.

If we had only listened to Google Maps, the highway would have been a much better route. Smooth, easy-going and enjoyable.

Teaching our children can have many "roadblocks" and traffic jams, especially if we're not in tune with our child's learning style. We may feel like they're not grasping certain concepts, unable to pay attention or just generally checked out and not enjoying learning.

It's not WHAT, it's HOW.

If your child has struggled with learning in the past, it may have had more to do with the way the material was presented - the HOW - rather than the material itself.

In other words, it's not so much the skills and content of utmost importance, but the route we take to get there.

Unlocking our child's learning style helps us to determine that route. 

Everyone has a preferred learning style that highlights how we best process, store and recall information. 

...

Systems. Streamlining. De-Cluttering. De-Stressing. 

Nothing makes me happier {or more productive} than a well-curated, organized space for living and learning.

Today's blog post is dedicated to helping you streamline, declutter and organize your homeschool in order to optimize learning and deepen play for your little ones, AND so you can finally stop stressing about where to put things, store things or find things.

All humans appreciate good design, and children are no exception. A thoughtfully curated and intentionally designed learning space goes a long way on impacting our attitude, behaviour and learning. When we have a clutter-free, streamlined space that surrounds us, we are calmer, happier and are likely to feel more productive.

But just how DO we organize it all? 

First, we need to categorize our stuff.

Let’s talk name and talk about each of these categories.

Teacher Resources

• Subject specific
• ...

What do you think of when you hear the word assessment? 

Measuring achievement? Evaluation of learning? Benchmarks and comparing our kids to where they should be?

What if assessment were used less as a means for reporting achievement, and more as a means of looking at children’s growth and for the purpose of teacher planning, and children's goal setting?

In the olden days, assessment used to mean we were evaluating our children’s work according to certain standards or benchmarks. But today, assessment means a whole lot more. 

Assessment for learning is the process of gathering and making sense of our child's learning - to help us determine where children are at in their learning, and where they need to go.  

Assessment as learning is the child’s responsibility, and is the process of self-reflection on learning. We call this meta-cognition. 

Assessment of learning measures learning at a given point in time - a snapshot that can be...

Ready to watch your child's writing EXPLODE?

Try bookmaking!

Writing comes in all shapes, forms and sizes. It's not limited to journal writing or stories.

In fact, sometimes those exercises can feel most intimidating to kids, turning them off for good.

Handmade books offer wonderful structures to be filled with all kinds of writing:

•  recipes
• joke books
• math stories
• all-about-me books
• counting books
• biographies
• ABC books
• life cycle books (think frogs, butterflies...)
• circle books (think stories like If you give a Mouse a Cookie or Something from Nothing)
• fairy tale retellings

The list goes on and on.

And there are SO many styles of books waiting to be filled with your child's ideas.

All you need is a bit of inspiration! I've got the perfect invitation to explore this hidden gem of an art form!

Join me for my LIVE bookmaking workshop as we explore beautiful handmade books you can make with children from ages 5-105 (that means...

Do your kids cringe at the sound of copywork?

Copywork is a traditional practice amongst many homeschool families - especially those who follow a Charlotte Mason approach - where children copy pre-selected passages in their best handwriting. Usually, a piece of copywork is a short passage from a book, poem, verse that represents high quality literature.

But is this best practice for children when it comes to teaching the art of writing?

Research in the field would say no.

In the olden days, children learned to write using an apprenticeship model, copying master's works. They learned trough the process of imitation.

Today, there is a great deal of evidence to support children learning to write in much more meaningful and authentic ways.

According to Cynthia Puranik of Georgia State University, there are two emerging theories about how children learn to write.

The first is cognitive-linguistic theory - teaching of discrete skills needed to write. The second...

Writing can be a daunting task - particularly for our youngest learners, and especially for our "perfectionist" non-risk takers. 

If the idea of writing has your kids resisting or butting heads with you, try these simple strategies to go from writing reluctance to writing receptiveness. Even if your child is just beginning to learn letters and sounds, they too can experience what it means to be an author!

1. Talk first. Write later.

"Writing floats on a sea of talk." - James Britton

The spoken word precedes the written word.  Before a child is capable of writing, they must have stories to tell. Providing opportunities to share orally is some of the best work we can do as parents to prepare fertile ground to plant the seeds for creative writing.

Small world play is one of the best sources for storytelling, because children are narrating their playscapes with characters - little people, dinosaurs, animals - which later...

 Bringing bookmaking into the your homeschool is where ART and LITERACY intersect.

The writing process can often be a daunting process, especially for reluctant writers.

Handmade books give children a structure, "architecture for the imagination," and entice them to fill their books with original ideas and stories. 

Handmade books excite and engage children of all ages, because they are not only beautiful in form, but an extension of themselves. 

A finished handmade book is something to celebrate and cherish forever. 

Handmade books are a wonderful way to bring the worlds of ART + LITERACY home to your child.

Not only will your child have more ownership of their learning once they've created and published their own book, but you'll have a concrete piece of learning for their portfolio. 

Bookmaking is an art form that can be explored even with very young children, and can take on...