Clearly a little late with this considering it’s halfway through January already! But it’s the beginning of the New Year and we’re been away for a week. So I’m not going to feel guilty about writing this late!
December was busy, with all the usual activities, plus extra Christmas things. It definitely passed very quickly. Here is what the kids have been learning about this month.
Table of Contents
Science
Science has mostly been listening to Podcasts, including Wow In The World, Tumble, Flip and Mozi’s Guide To The Galaxy, Mysteries of Science and Earth Rangers. It’s surprising how much kids learn from podcasts.
Of course there is also the usual ‘how thing’s work’ questions and everyday googling of answers! Science is such a great topic to fit into everyday life, it’s everywhere and easy to explore.
History – Homeschooling UK Blog
History podcasts are always enjoyed here. Favourites are Who, When Wow and Greeking Out. We’re waiting for new episodes to come out, so keep listening to the old ones!
We visited Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway for a Christmas Day out and meet Santa on the steam train. It was also good to see the model railway and all the old carriages, locomotives, station paraphernalia and more in the museum.
We’ve visited a couple of castles this month, with Stirling Castle being the most recent. The kids love to visit and always learn something interesting. Littlest loves dressing up in the children’s corridor, whereas the eldest prefers to play in the gardens and explore outside.
Geography
Geography has mostly been chatting about places the kids would like to visit and looking at maps. The eldest has also been using our Smart Globe to practice finding countries, he’s quite good at country location and knows quite a few of the capitals too.
The kids were given the Nordic Countries Ticket To Ride game for Christmas, which is great for learning locations of Scandinavian cities. It can also be played as a 2 player easily, which is great too. Another game we’ve been playing recently is Wing It, fun to play and useful for learning locations of UK and Irish cities and islands. Finally Trekking The World has been played a few times too, excellent for finding not only cities, but major landmarks across the world.
English – Homeschooling UK Blog
The children always listen to stories at bedtime and often during the day too. Whether it’s me reading it or on Audible sometimes if their dad is driving them somewhere. The youngest particularly enjoys animal or magic books and we’ve just finished reading the Nizrana Farook series of 3 books set in Sri Lanka, including The Girl Who Lost A Leopard.
The eldest has finished reading the Adventures on Trains book 6 – The Arctic Railway Assassin. And has started reading the Harry Potter book series again, currently halfway through book 2.
The youngest is still learning to read, I read to him instead, so he still gets to hear exciting stories. It’s taking him a bit longer than his brother to learn to read, but he’ll get there. I’m wondering if we get some copies of musical scripts that it might be more fun for him to practice reading? He loves being on stage and musicales, so that could be an idea.
Maths
Both children go to a local chess club and an online Minecraft Education Coding class. The chess club is great for logic and our 11 year old often beats the others in the class at chess, his little brother is getting better, but he hasn’t been playing for long. He does have a few useful tricks up his sleeve though! They are both quite good at understanding Minecraft Education Coding now, although it can be a bit tricky when extra loops and more are added in!
The eldest decided to make the Yule Log for our Christmas feast this year. As usual he made a great tasting cake! It’s definitely something he loves to do and of course it involves a lot of math skills too.
And of course maths also comes from plenty of card and board games. I noticed that littlest is getting much quicker at adding and subtracting recently. All thanks to board games and Prodigy maths game.
Art and Crafts
It may not look like they are crafting in the photos above, but they are actually whittling (and playing with) wooden wands. I took my whittling knife with us on a walk and they chose sticks to be new wands. They did quite a good job and now have their own wooden wands to play with.
We also visited several Christmas light experience, including Beecraigs and the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. It’s interesting to see how people create art with lights and what works or doesn’t.
The children also created a variety of Christmas crafts, including tree decorations, cards and Christmas crackers. Our tree is covered in the kids homemade decorations from over the years. It might just look messy to some people, but it is homely and Christmas’y to us! We have plenty of time for more ‘perfect’ looking trees when the kids are older!
1000 Hours Outside – Homeschooling UK Blog
We did manage to get outside quite a lot in December, even though it has been pretty miserable! Not so many frosty blue sky days!
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts we didn’t quite get 1000 hours outside this year. Which does surprise me, as we’re outside a lot. I think we’ll just need to try harder in 2023! I’ll let you know how it goes next year, this year the kids were outside for around 950 hours according to their trackers. It may not be quite correct as we did forget sometime and try to work it out a few days later!
The temperature did get down to -10 a few times in December, so it was cold. However, the kids were well wrapped up and seemed happy enough playing outside in the freezing weather. It’s the wet weather that is more difficult to get out in!
Clubs and Groups
We had a few weeks of kids clubs and groups before they finished for the holidays. Littlest was Danny for a few scenes in his theatre group show and had a few lines at a panto show he was in too. So he was quite happy with all the time dancing and singing!
The children also had their usual groups and classes, including Scouts and Cubs, gymnastics, dancing, dodgeball, chess club and a new Lego animation class.
All Our Monthly Home Education Blog Diaries 2022
- January 2022
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- March 2022
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- December 2022
Other Great Home Education Posts To Read
Pin December Home Education Diary 2022- Homeschooling UK Blog
