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Homeschool

Enriched At Home in Your Homeschool

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Homeschooling can be overwhelming! How do you know you are not only covering all the subjects that you need to cover, but what about everything else that they need for life? What about your child’s social emotional health? Enriched at Home is here to help with their monthly kits.

Enriched At Home In Your Homeschool

I received digital access to this product as well as reimbursement for the time spent writing this review in exchange for my honest thoughts. This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.

What is Enriched at Home?

The Enriched at Home curriculum is a monthly digital download for parents and educators to use for creating connection, and fostering a learning atmosphere at home. Each month is based around a new character trait as the general theme, and is supported by literature, discussion, nature experiences, physical wellness and nutrition guidance.

It is meant to take learning beyond academic learning. It’s for creating quality family time, it’s meant to be done as a family, not just something for your kids to do.

What you get each month:

Each month’s Enrichment Kit has three different modules: S.E.L.F (Social and Emotional Learning for Families), Nature, and Nutrient.

Each month there is a different theme for each module each month, which is something I really enjoy, I like themes to follow because it allows you to add to that theme in other areas of your homeschool. The nutrient module includes a recipe is perfect for getting your kids in the kitchen with you.

February’s S.E.L.F (Social and Emotional Learning for Families) is a spot light on love, perfect for leading up to Valentine’s Day.

February’s nature theme will be Sky & Weather, yet another open ended theme. The nutrient module is shifting perspective on sugar.

Valentine’s Day Missing Number Clip Cards

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Using Enriched at Home in Your Homeschool

Practically everything you need in included in the enrichment kit. We added in craft supplies and ingredients for the cooking activities, plus the books we borrowed from our library, but the “meat” of the program was already planned out.

This has been a wonderful addition to our homeschool, giving us some quality time together without just sitting down to do worksheets. The S.E.L.F module includes six different activities to do together as a family.

Enriched At Home In Your Homeschool

We’re really looking forward to the Nature module next month, revisiting learning about clouds. I swear the only thing my kids took away from our lessons in the past about clouds where airplane contrails. At least they learned something thought, right?

The nutrient module will be learning about good food chooses or bad in terms to sugar content and making guacamole, FUN!

Everything in the Enriched at Home Enrichment Kits is promoting a healthier family life. It’s quality family time spent together that you can relax while doing together without feeling any pressure from a curriculum or feeling like you may have missed over something that you should be doing with your children.

Enriched at Home Giveaway

Want to use it with your kids this year? Here is your chance to win an annual membership to Enriched at Home!

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool help, Sponsored Post

Homeschool Binder Printables

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Organization somedays, could be the end of me. Trying to keep track of everything, where it is and making sure it is updated, it can be overwhelming. Then I started keeping everything in a binder one year. And then my homeschool binder was born and had become my homeschool center in a binder. These are some homeschool binder printables to get you started.

Homeschool Binder Printables

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

What is a Homeschool Binder?

A homeschool binder is where you keep everything related to your homeschool. I love having a planner, but it doesn’t hold all the things I want and need to keep track of in our homeschool which is why I have been using a binder for the last few years to keep track of everything.

Here are the possibilities:

  • goals and plans for the year — outcomes to reach
  • schedule — what you work on each day
  • attendance
  • reading list
  • field trips
  • extra-curricular activities
  • lesson plans
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Reasons to Keep a Homeschool Binder

The best reason to put together your own homeschool binder is to keep everything together in one spot. I do not have to meet with a teacher or advisor but I know some homeschooling laws state that you must, this binder would be a blessing for that. Everything is always together.

I do have to report at the end of the year what we have covered so having my goals and periodic log in one place makes it easier when the time comes.

Homeschool Binder Pages Organization

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Getting Started with Your Homeschool Binder Printables

Think about what you want in your binder.

  • What are you required to keep track of?
  • What do you use everyday?
  • What do you find yourself searching for repeatedly?

I have created a set of pages to help you get started with your binder organization.

I have included different curriculum planning pages – one set includes common subjects you may be planning for, the other is blank for you to fill in your own subjects.

There is an attendance tracker, we don’t all need this, but you might want to keep track just to see how many days you are getting in.

Planning pages – Daily (hourly), weekly, and monthly. I like to know see what we are doing each week at a glance, especially if I need to move somethings around.

Goal pages. What do you want to complete for the year? Then there are monthly goal pages so you can break a big goal down into actionable tasks.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Homeschool Binder Organization

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool Organization

First Year Homeschool Tips

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

The first year of homeschooling, under normal circumstances, can be very stressful. I want to help you make it a better year than my first year. Yes, our first year was so hard, but we stuck it out and here we are six years later. I want to share our first year homeschool tips, let’s all be successful together.

5 First Year Homeschool Tips

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

The most common thing you will hear, especially from newer moms, is that they don’t think they are doing enough, they don’t think they are a good enough teacher. But let me tell you something, you are enough. You know your children better than anyone!

There are so many resources available now, more than ever before. You can find everything you might need if you search online. Whether you are shopping for full curriculum, or looking for something to add to your curriculum or plans.

First Year Homeschool Tips

Teachers aren’t perfect either. You don’t need to be perfect.

You are going to make mistakes and you’re going to think you are failing. But in the end, happy, well adjusted kids are what matters. Not finishing a read aloud that is on the curriculum reading list.

You don’t want to overschedule yourself.

Joining a homeschool co-op or homeschool meet up is a great way to meet other homeschoolers and have people who are going through the same things.

You might want to have your child enrolled in every extracurricular activity so you feel like they are with other kids, and being socialized. Guess what? You don’t need to. Between hanging out with friends and a homeschool meet ups you might find yourself already socializing a lot and not needing the extra stress of more activities to rush off too.

5 First Year Homeschool Tips

Be flexible.

Know that you are not forced to use the curriculum or method you started with. You can change your mind as you go along because you are learning what works.

Keep the Learning Interesting

If you and your kids are falling asleep during that curriculum read aloud it might be time to put it down. You want everyone to enjoy learning, pick up a great book, like Charlotte’s Web. Then you can watch the movie afterwards to compare them.

What are your kids interested in learning about? Include that in your lessons. Head to the library and let them pick out books that interest them and include them in reading time.

Have Fun and Make Memories

Don’t worry about finished a curriculum so much that you turn into a drill sergeant. Try a different way to teach, be silly. Do your lessons under the table in a fort or outside on a blanket in the yard.

Spend the afternoon setting off bottle rockets in the backyard. Or spend the day at a museum or science center.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Google Classroom Alternatives

Keeping a Homeschool Reading Log

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Homeschool

What is a Secular Morning Basket

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

I have been intrigued by the idea of a having morning basket in our homeschool for awhile now without really looking into what it truly was, and what went into them. But a little research about a secular morning basket I realized that I have essentially been doing it for a few years now without realizing.

Secular Morning Basket

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

What is a morning basket?

A morning basket is when everyone in the family can come together and learn together about specific subjects. All ages can homeschool together doing activities like reading aloud, studying the arts, or even efficiently combining students for subjects like history and science.

Morning baskets can be the perfect opportunity for you to teach multiple grades at once.

Despite the name, it does not have to be in the morning, but morning seems most popular as its a time when everyone is most often together, just starting their day, before they go off into their individual courses or subjects.

What is in a secular morning basket?

Now that you know what a morning basket is, the question becomes what do you put in it. And how big of a basket do you need to hold everything.

The answer for the basket is that I don’t have have an actual basket, but a bin in our cube storage organizer. It keeps everything together and neat and tidy, which is the point of a basket.

What’s in your basket is really up to you. Some feel that there should only be books, and while I love books, I don’t think it should or needs to be limited in this way. My kids love trivia questions, and I think they are a fun way to se what they know or might need a refresher on.

Secular morning basket

Some general ideas of what you may want to have in your basket:

  • read aloud books
  • encyclopedia
  • board games
  • hands on games such as Traffic Jam
  • puzzles
  • flashcards
  • trivia games
  • playdoh
  • coloring books

In my experience younger children listen to read aloud better when their bodies are doing something, like coloring or playing with Playdoh. Build your basket around the needs of your children, and what you want them to learn. This week or month might be all things dinosaurs, and next week or month might be about art or music.

A secular morning basket is only different from a religious morning basket (typically just called a morning basket) in the fact that it does not content a bible or other religious material. A morning basket can be a great addition to any homeschool no matter the ages of your children. Or single child.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Homeschool, morning basket

5 Homeschool Bad Habits to Break

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Halfway through the school year, you might want to take a look back and evaluate how things went. Maybe things went great, Way to Go Momma! But maybe they didn’t. Maybe you need to make some changes, I know we do. Homeschool bad habits are often where our homeschool dreams go wrong.

5 Homeschool Bad Habits to Break

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Let’s look at what didn’t work. Maybe you didn’t do structured lessons as much as you would have liked. Or maybe you didn’t do as many hands on science experiments as you would have liked. It’s okay. I think of January as a fresh start for our school each year.

It is time to change what isn’t working.

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Homeschool Bad Habits to Break

No Set Homeschool Time

When do lessons start in your homeschool day? Does it change daily? Is it something you are putting off longer and longer.

Picking a time to start each day can be a game changer for consistency. Here, right after breakfast and the morning routine, my kids each jump into math. Getting it out of the way. One thing we’re going to try as winter break ends is tea time language arts after a morning break (outside chores).

No Homeschool Plan

We need a plan! Okay maybe you really don’t need to know every little thing you are doing, but it will really help your days run more smoothly if you have a general idea of what you want to get done each day.

Maybe Tuesday is science day. Thursday is history day. Something like this can take the pressure off of feeling like you need to do everything everyday.

Donut Writing & Art – Persuasive Writing

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Rushing

Do you feel like you are falling behind? Even though there really is no “behind”? A homeschool bad habit is to rush through lessons. One thing I would look at instead of trying to rush your kids through weeks of lessons is to look at what you can drop.

Slow and steady wins the race!

Look at your Schedule

If you are feeling burned out, maybe you are doing way too much. Too many subjects at one time, or in one day. Maybe you have to cut back on outside activities. Your kids don’t need to be signed up for every extra curricular activity.

Not Having Fun

One thing I learned in past years was that homeschooling doesn’t have to be this strict, sit down and get it done kind of thing. Yes, we have had bad years, bad days in good years, but it’s finding a balance. The best balance has been making sure were having fun here and there each week.

Have fun by including hands on learning. Have fun by getting out of the house even if it’s just for a walk or heading to the playground.

Science Experiment E-Book

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Screen-Time Balance

This is a hard one. We have lessons online. Does that count as screen time? It doesn’t for me.

Screen time before lessons get finished throws a wrench in our whole day, and nothing else is going to get done, so I drew a hard line there. Screen time is after school lessons are finished. But you need to find where the balance is for you.

5 Homeschool Bad Habits to Break

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Beating the Homeschooler’s February Funk

Homeschooling Stress: Avoiding Burnout

Valentine’s Day Heart Craft -Flap Book

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: Homeschool

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A Little About Me

I'm Ashley, a Canadian secular homeschool mom of 3, living in Nova Scotia.

I share our adventures in homeschooling and parenting.

You can usually find us at the library surrounded by books.
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