This is my first official fall homeschooling and I am discovering how much I love, love, love being able to gear our lessons around seasonal fun, like ripe apples and changing fall leaves.

We just started incorporating an official “recess” time because Natalie insisted this was her favorite part of our Wednesday Co-Op day.
I have to say it’s a win-win. The weather is gorgeous and I get a few free minutes to myself to finish my coffee, which at this point has been reheated approximately 3.2 times.

We both share a love for leaves. This one was amazing.

Right now it is so easy to find additional resources to reinforce what we may cover during ‘usual school time’, although I am learning that our family doesn’t really  have a very clear cut school schedule. It really allows our week to flow pretty organically with so many great options, from fall-themed episodes of the kids’ favorites shows that wouldn’t normally get super educational, but I can be intentional to bring in some reminders from our lesson, to trips to the local fruit stand to check out the apples and pumpkins, to all the fall activities at the local churches. Love. (Side note:This is a new insight for me, that I like a more organic, unplanned approach.  I would have bet my life that I would have a very consistent, structured school week cut out for the kids. Turns out I avoid the same routine after about a week. What?! Who is this crazy free-spirit that would just rather see what the day leads to? I’m learning SO much about myself as we homeschool. It’s actually been pretty cool to see how God is really leading our homeschool – He always has, but sometimes when I’m in ‘super planner mode’ it’s easy to think that I’m the one pulling it together. But each day it becomes more and more clear that He’s got this and I’m learning to hand over the reins.)

Our current two curriculum choices have synced up beautifully, focusing on A for Apple (Unit 4 of My Father’s World-Kindergarten) and all the festive fun of “In the Orchard“(Mother Goose Time), which just so happens to be focusing on the letters A,O, and R this month along with the obvious overlaps of fall fruits.

I love that there are resources each month, like the banners and phonics cards, that we can reuse. It’s really helped this new homeschooling mama to collect some really great resources quickly.

We have spent this past week sampling different varieties of apples (Natalie choosing Fuji as her apple of choice, Peter voting for Granny Smith for the win), playing with seeds and ‘picking fruit.’

This activity had the kids “picking fruit” off the branch, and then sorting into pie tins.

These two actually worked together, after a little encouragement, to take turns picking their choice of fruit and sorting it into the correct pie tin.

They enjoyed it so much that they asked to do it again, and I have seen my daughter replicate the exercise on her own time later (although this time choosing to not include her brother).

We also added fruit to our tree (provided materials in Day 4’s bag).

This is Peter’s work. He tends to group stickers together a lot, especially similar ones, in order to “match them.” It will be interesting to watch this tendency, to see if he outgrows it or continues to like groupings.

This was Natalie’s page. She wanted a very realistic tree, with the fruit hanging from the branches, as well as a few falling apples. And of course, she had to feed the bird. I even think the caterpillar is trying to get a bite.

I then gave the kids an option of adding more fruit with our Dot-to-Dot markers. Following suit, Peter choose to group his fruit.

Natalie added a good bit of more fruit. Not Pictured: the final version that ended up having paper flowers glued on as well. She had a lot of fun developing this project.

We wrapped up the week this evening reading Johnny,

letting the kids free-play with the scene and characters,

and then digging into the seed collection, part of this month’s manipulatives pack.

Peter was not interested in the tweezers and Natalie decided they were not efficient enough for her sorting process and soon set them aside.

We are really looking forward to the rest of the month’s focus on fruit and fall critters, incorporating a fun field trip to the fruit stand (Nat’s fav)! As if the curriculum wasn’t great enough, the kiddos even love the box.

 

 

 

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