Homeschooling: The Mid-Year Blahs

I have yet to talk to a homeschooling family that hasn’t suffered from the mid-year blahs. You know what I mean. When you walk into the ‘schoolroom’ and stare at a pile of papers, text books, schedules, lesson plans and feel BLAH. Blah, blah blah.

The days of opening boxes filled with unknown treasures are gone. No more fresh book scent, no more crayons with their perfect tips, no more notebooks with blank first pages. The doldrums have set up camp, made a fire, and started roasting marshmallows.

You walk through your bedroom in the morning and your 12 year old daughter that never ever ever ever snuggles anymore is cuddled in your bed and asks if you want to sleep in. Well of course you do. You are in a funk, a mid-year-melancholy, a curriculum rut, a dismal ruin of your back to school self, a dingy impostor of the imparter of knowledge.

Well folks, even if it’s only half that bad, it’s time to switch gears. Keep reading, I’m not suggestion you chunk a years worth of learning you ordered from Rainbow Resource way back in June. Just switch gears. Add some spice, a little extra, something that feels more like playing hooky than ‘doing school’.

I have a few grade appropriate ideas to get your gears turning in another direction. Spend a moment to get used to the idea. I know many a homeschooler that will fall into eighty-two pieces at even the suggestion of a schedule change. So adjust to a fork in your school year and pick a path to lift you and the kiddos out of the blahs.

And if you are free-schooling, un-schooling, de-schooling, and the like this may already be up your alley.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Take a few afternoons out of a few weeks, or even a full week of a unit study, or a few days, just get excited and light the flames of enthusiasm and let it spread like wildfire. (Okay, wildfires aren’t necessarily good so let it spread like a well contained controlled burn.)

The Winter Scavenger Hunt has a list of things that your student can search for while taking a winter nature hike. I like it because it has 20 items that are not all specific. They include moving water (stream, waterfall, or melted snow trickling off a rock) and bird flying or perched on a branch. It suggest a nature journal for older students and I think that a camera could be used to capture the items. You could even go further and post a list of scavenger finds on Instagram or text photos to Grand-Parents so they can be involved.

Volcano Unit Study includes a list to get from the library list and questions to answer. Did you know there were 2 different kinds of lava? I didn’t until right now. Best of all is the volcano experiment. Who doesn’t love a good spewing lump of paper mache?

The Wilderness Study has lesson plans for 9 days of study. It has an outline so you know exactly what your objectives are. How to build a fire is one of the 6 task cards. This little unit study may take a bit of planning but it sounds fun but also helpful life skills. It might even be better as a Dad taught study, giving mom a little break and kids a break from Mom. (I am in no way suggesting that only a man can teach outdoor subjects. I am suggesting that men will only teach with enthusiasm things they are interested in. winkie face)

MIDDLE SCHOOL

Middle schoolers are a little more difficult to go off track with. The reason I say this is not because of my own children but because of the middle school bus I drive in the afternoon. Those kids run the gambit of profuse immaturity to adult-like adolescents who seem socially and emotionally well adjusted.

Here’s where homeschool has one of its perks. You know your child better than anyone else and you can decide what is age and grade appropriate. You– not a chart, not a teacher handbook, not an administrator- but you.

Let me just start by saying, I cannot juggle. It’s not that I haven’t tried because I have. Then this instructional video solved the mystery of why I personally can’t juggle. ‘As a rule of thumb, if you can tie your own shoe, you can juggle.’ I did not learn how to tie my own shoe until I was in 3rd grade. You read that right. If you are doing the math I was at least 8 but maybe even 9. But it does look like fun. (Juggling, not tying your shoes. I still wear slip on shoes when possible.) For a funny lighthearted diversion from the blahs that also improve hand eye coordination and helps connect more of those synapses that make us smart. (Please, no comments on my neuroscientific knowledge.) There are gobs of instructional videos on YouTube including the history of juggling and the mathematics of juggling.

In 1935, 36 men voluntarily participated in a starvation experiment in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These men joined a study so that doctors and researchers could record the effects of starvation and the best way to help people recover from the widespread starvation in Europe during WWII. This is not a subject for all middle schoolers, in fact it could possibly be a high school unit study.

I suggest orally discussing and writing a report covering the following questions:

Who were the 36 men that volunteered for the experiment? What did they get in return for their participation? Why was it an important study for its time? What were the results of the experiment? Why does history use the word experiment instead of ‘study’? What is the difference in this human experiment and human studies done today? What is the differences between this experiment in the mid-1900’s and the experiments in Willowbrook or Tuskegee? Why do you think the other two experiments are taught more in history than the starvation experiment?

As you can see there are moral and ethical issues. It is not a lighthearted diversion but a little known episode in history that seems to create more questions than it answers. There is a book about it if students are more interested and also a few videos you can search. Again, the maturity level needs to be considered.

The beginner’s guide to cleaning is a must at some point. I suppose if you are one of those homeschool moms whose children have been washing dishes, making beds, and carrying out the garbage since they could walk you might skip this little lesson plan. I applaud you, and am amazed by you. I thought my children would be those kids too but I’m on child number three and it hasn’t worked out. You may love this 8 week lesson plan though because it covers some things I didn’t even think of like WHY clean to start with and seasonal cleaning and maintenance. Each weekly lesson has an assignment and free printables and checklist. It’s actually pretty great.

HIGH SCHOOL

Explore Teach With Movies website. There are too many ideas and movies to digest in one scroll-through. So I whittled it down to one. Now you can inspect the lesson plan for Midnight In Paris. This lesson incorporates Literature, American History, and World History. It will aquatint students with Paris and famous writers and authors of the 1920’s. There are discussion questions and assignments as well as supplemental materials.

Slavery by Another Name is a documentary I recently watched with my 12 year old daughter. She might be a little young for this, I’m not sure, but the topic of racism doesn’t really have an age limit. Like the starvation experiment this movie is also a telling of history that we do not always hear. It puts a lot of background information into the way racial divides formed and were perpetuated after the Emancipation Proclamation. If you click on classroom /communities you can choose to study this topic from different angles such as the history of forced labor. There are also lesson printables for each lesson.

Board Games. Not bored game, but games to keep you from being bored. I have two children who have successfully completed high school. The amount of ‘face-time’, teacher/student talking time decreases as they get older and move on to independent work. This is where a weekly board game afternoon comes in. There are several list with board game suggestions. My favorites (which doesn’t include the ever popular scrabble) are

Balderdash– a game that teaches you to lie. Okay, that just occurred to me as I was thinking of a description. In this game you have to write a convincing definition to a word to fool others into thinking your definition is the correct one. It does use logic and language skills. Apples to Apples– a getting to know you kind of game. It encourages creative thinking. A student has to form comparisons and analogies. I personally have discovered wit and humor in my children that I otherwise might not have. It’s also fun to play on a co-op day.

So there you have it. If you didn’t find a blah busting lesson above at least you will have some ideas to play off of. Then before we know it this year will start to wrap up and we will be back online looking for next year’s curriculum.

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