Day In The Life Of A Home Educator - April 2022

 

April seemed to fly by and I'm a little later than I wanted to publish this but better late than never as the old adage goes! 

                     

    

                       April 2022

Lapbooks:

Still finishing the oceans and coral reefs that were started last month. We have also been adding in the occasional maths pages from the Canadian Curriculum books that we have.

What I'm reading this month:

The Self Driven Child - William R. Stixrud

I'd really recommend this book if you're interested in self-directed education it has plenty of ideas and tips on helping to motivate young learners, I found this very useful and informative.

How To Be Everything - Emilie Wapnick

I loved this book, I feel like it describes me to a 'T'! I'm easily bored, love discovering new things and tend to shallow dive on many, many, many things. It was a breath of fresh air to read that I'm not weird/lazy/a quitter and that perhaps this is just 'me'! 

Habit Changers - M. J. Ryan

I'm always up for a book that can usefully help me improve without making me feel like a failure, this was one of those books you can dip into, it's not 'waffly' and gives lots of practical advice that you can actually use.

Weather

In true British fashion, everyone has been complaining about the weather as it has been unseasonably cold. Luckily the rain has been semi-consistent and not constant so we've been able to make the most of the dry days. 

Weekly Activities

These things happened every week!

• Swimming
• Cleaning the house
• Lapbook work
• Park play with the local group
• Meeting friends online to play Minecraft

'Field Trips'

For the days where we weren't cleaning, loafing around, playing games, meeting friends or swimming we tried to regularly head out and explore the area, finding either a new park, fun place to visit or somewhere amazing to eat, as we all appreciate some good food!

This month we headed to:

Seattle For A Mini Trip

I've already written a nice, detailed post on our jaunt to Seattle so for a bit more depth on that click over to my Mini Seattle Trip post here

The short version of this trip is that due to needing to get some of our paperwork urgently sorted we needed to head over the border, this was a great excuse to tie this in with our first exploration of The States. Seattle, being the closest city, looked like a great starting place. A very eclectic city it was fun to see the quirky art and architecture and, of course experiencing The US is always going to be interesting. 

The Peace Arch at the border

It's always a great learning experience being somewhere new and especially so when it's a different country. The level of homelessness and drugs is a lot more apparent in Seattle compared to Vancouver and it was interesting to see how this differed. The kids enjoyed packing their own bags, using the maps to navigate the city and being a part of organising the trip such as where we should stay and prioritising the places we visited due to it only being a 3-day trip. 

We didn't want to be too exhausted as it's already quite a lot of stimulus just getting over the border and staying in a hotel, so we kept our schedule relaxed as we've discovered this suits us, our style and energy levels.

This meant we got to the Museum of Pop culture (MoPop) which I'd highly recommend. The Artists' playground, the monorail, Pike Place Market, The Great Wheel, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop as well as trying to find the best places to eat.  

It was very tiring but a great experience and as always we've learnt tricks to make it go more smoothly next time. 

Getting to sample indie games at the Museum of Pop Culture

Enjoyed an epic thunderstorm

Watching the snow clouds roll in

There's nothing more exciting than being sat watching a disaster film (The Day After Tomorrow if anyone is interested!) and a huge storm rolls in. The room went dark, the clouds descended over the mountain and then the thunder hit. It was an epic storm! The picture above shows the clouds just before they dumped rain, huge hail, then snow. Next the thunder and lightning hit and it was superb! 

Easter egg hunts galore

Our seasonal tree!

We don't really celebrate Easter but the kids do always get some chocolate eggs. We see it more as a celebration of Spring. It was a great opportunity to have an egg hunt with our neighbours and enjoy lots of yummy chocolate goodies. We also made some cute chicks and lambs for our seasonal tree. 

This is what we've renamed our Christmas tree which we've neglected to take down as we like the twinkly lights at night, it has been re-purposed as a seasonal tree and we're trying to decorate it depending on the events at the time.  

Birthday parties

We were invited to a fellow home educator's kid's Birthday party, I don't think it needs to be said that the kids had the best time and we got lucky with a beautifully sunny day so we could enjoy their garden too. 

Maplewood Farm visit

This had been on my 'to do' list for a while so I excitedly booked tickets and we headed off. Once again the rain/hail held off and we got some lovely sun to enjoy the farm. It was beautifully kept and all the pens looked clean which always makes me happy to see. It was nice to see that lots of the animals also had enrichment toys and looked very chilled. It's not a huge place, easily done in an hour; it's probably somewhere I would have visited regularly when the kids were still pre-schoolers, but I love getting closer to animals so I'm always content heading to places like this. We loved the goats in particular who were happy to get their ears scratched! 

Beautiful American style barn

Chilling watching the goats and pony

Spotting spring flowers 

It was so nice to see the spring flowers emerging and whenever we walked the dogs we tried to spot the spring flowers and birds.

Spring Crocus

Exploring our new rec centre

The community rec centre below our building, which has been in construction since we arrived, finally opened and it's very swish! There's a full basketball court, mini library, beautiful, bright art rooms and a comfy seating area. To be able to wander around and see how they'd designed the building was interesting, we particularly love the light installation that resembles a water drop.   

The water drop light feature

The Library

This is always going to appear on the list as we tend to visit once a month if not more! This month the kids have been enjoying Harry Potter, Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles, Babysitters Club and Garfield.

Thoughts on this month

This month has really flown by, the Seattle trip took up a lot of headspace and organising and switched up our routine a bit which is always a relief from the humdrum schedule that we can find ourselves unconsciously falling into. It was unexpected the sense of comfort that enveloped me when we got back over the border to Vancouver, it felt like home and that was a nice feeling after all our moving over the last year. 

The kids have been working steadily through their lapbooks which has made me feel happier that they're being exposed to different ideas and topics. The completion of the rec centre is also an exciting proposition for us as I envisage there will be some classes that the kids can have a try at.