Our Cozy House

Simple Ideas and Encouragement for a Peace-Filled Life

5 Resources We Love for Relaxed Homeschooling

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So, it’s the end of winter.  We are desperately seeking spring over here.  I’m beyond tired of ugly winter weather.   I’m also a little tired of our homeschool routine.   As we wait for the ground to thaw and winter coats to be packed away, we are officially changing up some of our school routine.

We need a breath of fresh air to get us through the next couple of weeks. Today I thought I’d share the top five resources for relaxed homeschooling that we big puffy heart love right now, just in case you need some new ideas to get you through until spring.

relaxed homeschool resources

(Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and I will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through my links.)

Signing Time DVD’s

Our kids received two of these DVD’s (both volume one and volume two) for Christmas.  I would just like to state for the record that these simple DVD’s have blown me out of the water.  My kids picked up SO MANY SIGNS after watching them just once.  They’ve watched them numerous times now, and the kids are trying to communicate with me using American Sign Language on a regular basis.  I haven’t picked up the signs nearly as fast as they have, so I usually have NO cotton-picking idea what they’re trying to say…but it’s so awesome to see them learning and using it.  My 5 year old niece is deaf; the kids were completely able to communicate with her using some of the signs they learned from these DVDs when we saw her last weekend.  Super cool.

Chalkpastel.com

I’m not super good at doing art lessons with the kids on a regular basis, but lately we’re using this website quite a bit.  My kids love using chalk pastels.   I love being able to pull up their tutorials on YouTube and learn alongside them as we all bumble through the lesson together.
Last week we did drawings from “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel” and “Pete the Cat.” My oldest has a bit of a perfectionist streak  that pops up when she doesn’t get things JUST RIGHT.  But the more we do these, the more she’s loosening up and realizing that it doesn’t have to be perfect.  So in addition to having some cool artwork to put in their art binders, she’s learning some character traits as well.  Bonus.

Math games

I’ve ordered a few games from Amazon and we are using them for math practice a LOT lately.  I pull them out whenever my first grader is having an “anti-math” day.  The two games getting the most use right now are Sum Swamp and Qwixx…both fun, STEALTHY ways to get some practice in with math facts.  We also love logic games – Balance Beans and Little Red Riding Hood keep both my five and almost seven year old entertained.

Cooking/baking 

Both of my kids love all things kitchen related.  While this is exhausting to me as a mom, it’s super important to my kids so I’ve been making myself suck it up and let them go to town.  This week Abby baked banana bread and made egg salad for sandwiches all by herself and she did so great.  And lately, Riley is content to simply be in the kitchen and smell all the spices and ingredients in the pantry.  So I’m letting him.  It’s fabulous.  I’m tossing around the idea of trying out a subscription to Raddish.com, a monthly subscription cooking club for kids. They would looooooooove it.  We’ll see.

Nature Anatomy

Forget the kids… I AM OBSESSED with this book.  It’s been on my homeschool wishlist forever and I finally broke down and ordered it last week.  It’s ridiculously wonderful.  My hunting-trapping-farming husband is in full on beaver trapping mode, so I read the pages on beavers this afternoon and my little city girl mind was blown.  Loads of good information and the drawings are amazing.  It’s a complete joy to look at and I know we are going to get a ton of use from it.

What homeschool resources are getting lots of use at your house right now?

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