The last month of 2021 and as usual we fit in plenty of activities! December is often our busiest month as the children have an activity advent calendar, with plenty of different activities to do in the run-up to Christmas. But we also managed to do other home education things aside Christmas build-up!
Table of Contents
Science – Home Education
For once science probably wasn’t our top subject for a month. We didn’t do nearly as many STEM activities as normal. Mostly as we were busy with other things in the lead up to Christmas.
However, science did include our usual podcasts. Both WOW In The World and Tumble podcasts were well listened to. Particular favourites were the jousting giraffe weevil episode on WOW In The World and The James Webb Space Telescope on Tumble.
One of the kids advent activities was a treasure hunt. I decided to include quite a few science activities (alongside other things!) for the kids to gain their clues. These included revealing a hidden clue on a seemingly blank piece of paper and working out which powder caused a chemical reaction. They absolutely loved these activities. I must remember to try and do some more fun science activities like this. They have also loved doing a wizarding potion activity in the past, maybe we’ll do something like that again!
The eldest was given an electronics inventor kit for Christmas. Although initially the Lego and K’nex were given his full attention at Christmas, he has had fun making some circuits to power a fan with this. I hope that over this year he will come back to it every so often to attempt making other things.
History
I tried including a question on Greek mythology as part of the treasure hunt, but it was way to easy and the kids knew the answer before they even looked at the choices! Ha ha! Teach me to try and find something challenging for them about Greek mythology! They’ve been enjoying the new episodes of the National Geographic’s Greeking Out kids podcast. It’s brilliant for getting kids interested in Greek mythology.
The other history podcast we love to listen to is History Storytime for Kids. They always have great stories about history from around the world.
We do love visiting castles and despite being busy in December we did manage to fit in a visit to Blackness Castle. The kids love exploring castles, even those that they have visited many, many times before! We still find out new things we didn’t know, even if we visited plenty of times previously.
The kids always have stories at bedtime, although recently they have often asked for different factual history books instead of fictional stories. I love that they like to choose non-fiction books to read as much as stories!
Geography – Home Education
We haven’t really looked at many geographical books or anything in particular. However the children know quite a bit about the world’s geography, habitats and ecology. Most of this is from television documentaries and from the maps and globes we have in the house.
The magnetic map above the dinner table often brings questions at dinner time. We’ve discussed countries, continents, capital cities, ecology and most recently when discussing who has Christmas first, the International Date Line. Of course all discussions at the dinner table seem to lead to us googling one question or another. As we rarely know all the answers to the children’s questions ourselves! Finding out which islands were on which side of the date line and why they moved was particularly interesting. I do think everyone should have a decent sized map on the wall to discuss regularly!
We also have place mats that include a world map and world flags. Both children love to look at them, all the eldest always pinches the flag one for himself!!
English
It’s great to see how fluent a reader our 10 year old is and how happily he will sit and read books himself. He’s read through 3 of the treehouse story books this month. I think there’s only 2 more left to read! We have some other books left for him to read from the library yet, before we go to the library again. I try not to buy too many books for him to read as he often reads them too quickly (only a few hours at most for the Treehouse books), so it’s almost wasting cash buying it when the library has them free!
As mentioned previously we read to the children every evening. They have various books that we’re working through. At Christmas the littlest got some more mature chapter books that he’s enjoying. We are working on both ‘The Girl Who Stole An Elephant’ and ‘Rooftoppers’. He can’t read them himself, but he certainly does love the stories and guessing what will happen next.
Littlest is also working on Reading Eggs again, he definitely seems to be improving. Although he doesn’t often attempt to read things away from the app yet, it’s clearly easier just to ask us what things say!
Of course both kids wrote letters to Santa, which covers their writing! They also wrote some cards to family and friends as well as labelling pictures. Neither are keen to write at length.
Maths – Home Education
Maths in December has included a lot of baking, from gingerbread house, biscuits and sweets! The kids have had fun making different recipes and weighing ingredients is great for math skills.
The eldest has also been completing Mathseeds again, he finished Reading Eggs a while ago now. Which has been great as he could do with some more repetition on maths topics. I’ve definitely noticed certain math skills getting better. Particularly counting coins, which we don’t get much practice with these days!
Our other main source of maths activities is via board games. Various board games we have include logic, but also a lot have math skills included, whether it’s counting scores to win or math sums during the game to play it.
Music and Arts
So many crafts this month! Snowflakes were a huge hit, various Baker Ross crafts and salt dough ornaments. The kids really enjoy their Christmas crafting, although it’s the eldest that spends most time making everything possible!
The kids also had fun making presents for friends, with littlest making yarn dolls. Really easy, but cute to make.
And the eldest made pom pom shooters in a Christmas theme. You pull back the balloon hat to shoot pom poms out at your opponent!
The youngest has also been doing his Panto show this year. He absolutely loved it, signing, dancing and acting. It’s definitely his favourite thing to do. He lives for being on stage I think!
It was also fun to visit the Perth Christmas Light Trail. It wasn’t a very long trail, but it was fun to see the different lights and people acting!
Exercise – Home Education
The kids were gifted stunt scooters which they have had fun testing out at various skate parks and trying out tricks with them. The park above has a great view to Stirling Castle behind.
We’ve also been on plenty of walks, both in the woods nearby and further afield. We attempted a New Years Eve walk in the rain with friends and despite being soaked after 6.5 miles of rain, we all had fun!
We often meet other home educators at parks or for walks, so there were plenty of times to get out and exercise. Although some of our usual walks have been blocked by trees after Storm Arwen.
Can you spot the littlest and his friend carrying the log in the picture below? They had abandoned the park to build a den in the woods instead!
I’m not sure it technically counts as exercise, although it’s still a fair bit of walking, a visit to Edinburgh Christmas market. We spent lots of time at Santaland as well as walking around the market itself. It’s definitely been better in previous years, but we still all enjoyed the few hours walking around anyway!
The kids have also attended a weekly indoor climbing group, which they love. Plus their usual dodgeball and littlest’s swimming, gymnastics and dance groups.
Clubs and Groups
As usual we have lots of groups going on, as well as ad-hoc meet-ups with friends during the week.
The youngest attends Beavers, drama, gymnastics, dodgeball, swimming and dancing. Whilst the eldest enjoys Cubs and dodgeball (he’s not as keen on other after school groups). Both choose what they would like to do, which is great. We also do indoor climbing most weeks and forest group, although we haven’t managed to get to the forest group in December.
All Of Our Monthly Diaries For 2021
- January 2021
- February 2021
- March 2021
- April 2021
- May 2021
- June 2021
- July 2021
- August 2021
- September 2021
- October 2021
- November 2021
- December 2021
More Home Education Posts To Read
Pin Home Education Diaries December 2021
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