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COZY HOMESCHOOL: LESSON PLANS FOR OUR WINTER SESSION

You’ve heard me talk about cozy homeschool before and how amazing you can make your winter homeschool lesson plans. Because I wonder if you might be curious like I always am, I wrote out our winter homeschool lesson plans. Returning to homeschool after a long Christmas break can feel very blah. After the hype of the holidays, the normal routine can make me feel really unmotivated.

My kids were all feeling it too recently. So after dinner, a few nights before we went back to homeschool for the new year, I asked them to go around the table and share one thing they were really excited about.

They struggled to think of things.

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So I interjected with the things I was excited for. I purposefully said things pertaining to school–because I AM excited for school this session when I really think about it! There’s new art lessons I am so excited about! The Winter Olympics!! A new history unit study we’ll be starting! A new annual pass to the science museum!! Fresh, new read alouds to share together! So much goodness happening!

After my turn, everyone else had a much easier time coming up with things to be excited about:

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  • homeschool band!
  • learning new guitar chords!
  • new books from Christmas!
  • sledding + skating days! (aka: homeschool PE!)

Returning to homeschool after a long Christmas break can feel very blah. Here's a rundown of all our winter homeschool lesson plans to inspire your winter session!

All the enthusiasm made it easy for me to sit down and make plans for our winter session. I realize this might be a harder session to get excited about and plan for. Below you’ll find all the things we’re planning on doing together to maybe give you some good ideas to incorporate too.

Our Winter Homeschool Lesson Plans

We all do school together, sitting at the same table, but at this point in our homeschool life, the majority of my “teaching” is directed at my 4th and 6th graders. My preschooler is very wiggly and happy to play and imagine and sit with us here and there for letter practice. Noah, almost 16-year-old, sits with me on Mondays, we talk about his week and what he needs to finish, but my “instruction” time for him has really adjusted. His and my homeschool relationship has really shifted to bouncing ideas and thoughts on what he’s studying to each other. It’s really wonderful actually.

All that to say, the following plans, subject-by-subject, are for my middles–now 4th and 6th grade. They are so much fun. 🙂

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MATH

LANGUAGE ARTS

For language this session, we’re going to do my very favorite thing: focus our lessons around our current read aloud. 

Books we’ll be reading

HISTORY

We just finished up a Colonial Life unit study last month and we’re moving on to the American Revolution. I plan to complete the bulk of this study this session, but we may still have some projects to finish in spring, and that’s fine.

We’ll be using Homeschool in the Woods American Revolution study for our main spine.

Homeschool in the Woods unit study we completed last year.

We love their studies because they include a daily text to read, amazing lapbooks, recipes, hands-on projects, and so much more. It comes in an easy download, so I just print out what I want to use, leave the rest and go! There’s book and movie suggestions as well, so I feel like we always get a well-rounded study with these!

ART

Really really excited for art this session. I just joined Deep Space Sparkle’s membership site, so we’ll be doing some really fun projects from here.

Also, Chalk Pastel Art always.

For art, I plan to focus on three themes:

  1. Winter art–some really gorgeous project ideas from Deep Space Sparkle.
  2. Valentine art–because it’s so fun! We’ll just do one project here, I think.
  3. Olympic art–I am beyond excited about the upcoming winter Olympics and Chalk Pastel Art just came out with a course on the Winter Games! We’ll be doing several of these projects.
  4. Art from India–we’ll be reading The Little Princess and I found some amazing projects inside the DSS membership site. We’ll camp here for a while I would guess!

SCIENCE/NATURE

If you’ve read my blog for long, you know that I’m a bit challenged in the science department and I take all the help I can get. This session, we’re pouring on a good dose of winter nature study and calling it science too. We’ll be using our very own Nature Kids: Winter Edition course for all the ideas in our nature study.

We’ll choose a few of the following to create/do/cover together:

  • Birds in the winter
  • Winter weather
  • Snow and ice
  • Animal Hibernation
  • Maple Sugaring
  • Nature poetry
  • Art projects from nature
  • Tips on nature journaling
  • Making a photography book of your own nature photos
  • How to study nature when you can’t go outdoors
  • Creating a winter nature table

Embracing the Season You’re In

Our tendency in winter is typically to curl up, hide from the outdoors and wait till it’s over. A few years ago, I decided I was done wishing away a whole 25% of the year!

I decided to embrace it.

Embrace the cold, the book reading by the fire, the endless cups of tea, the cocoa station in the kitchen. I decided to embrace the puzzles and games stacked by the fireplace, the twinkle lights on the timer to turn on as it started to get dark (at 4:30 pm!). We embraced quiet, snowy days, long walks all bundled up, seeing the wildlife burrowing away more leaves for bedding. Winter became so beautiful to me.

We moved to Minnesota 3 years ago and I can honestly say I look forward to winter now.

If you struggle in winter–I SO understand! I did for years! Here’s a few practical mama tips to help you enjoy more, endure less.

  • You’re probably low on Vitamin D. Talk to your doc about upping your dosage for winter. It helps me SO much!
  • Schedule a pedicure every few weeks for dry, scale-y feet.
  • Simmer water on the stove with essential oils in citrus scents for a mood booster plus adding moisture to dry air.
  • Use good lotion after each shower. It feels so good on dry skin!
  • Invest in good clothing for the outdoors. Hat, gloves, warm coat, snow pants. You’ll enjoy being out there so much more if you’re outfitted for it!
  • I don’t personally use one yet, but I have friends that swear by Happy Lights.
  • Dive into your reading list and read something fun!
  • Make candles! This is my favorite thing to do in cold months, plus the scents and light add so much happy to my day.

Organizing all the Winter Homeschool Lesson Plans

It’s great to come up with all the fun plans for your homeschool, but quite another to actually DO the plans, right!? Recently, I’ve started using a tool that I am in love with: Monthly Lesson Planning Pages. 

These pages are divided by week and subject. This way, as I’m planning, I have a hugely messy notebook full of notes of things I want to do. Then I break down all the things into weeks and guesstimate how long each idea will take. When I get the general idea in my mind, I’ll use a pencil to fill in my Monthly Lesson Planning Page, week-by-week.

I am loving this because as I look at the list, it’s not this massive list of things I have to finish in a day–it’s by week, so we have a whole five days to finish. And if we don’t finish in five days, it’s probably that I’ve planned too much and I can remove something or move it to the next week.

Plan, adjust, follow the plan, repeat. 

You’ve got this, mama! I hope your homeschool this winter is just amazing! I know it will be.

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