This Homeschooling Life

As some of you may already know, myself and three other bloggers do a monthly roundup of what Home Schooling or Home Ed looks like to each of us and what we get up to and here are some of the highlights from the last month. It's been a bit slower than usual, with less outdoor adventures due to both the boys coming down with bad colds and coughs (as well as myself) but we are not back on form *well almost* and we have ramped up the Christmas crafting and getting into the festive season. 

One of our favourite things from the past month has to be the JacDo Christmas Craft session at Chapter in Cardiff with a few other local bloggers and their kids. The lovely people at JacDo had setup three tables each with a different craft, all perfect for young children to get stuck into and get creative with. First we made sock snowmen filled with rice then painted paper plate wreaths and a simple sowing craft which was Mr A's favourite. For those who don't know what or who JacDo are let me give you a quick rundown - basically they provide age appropriate monthly craft boxes which are both fun and educational and follow the national curriculum here in Wales and they offer them both in English and in Welsh and from the New Year will also be running crafternoon workshops.

We carried on with more crafting at home and with all this rain of late we thought we would focus on Weather systems as well as the change in the seasons and put together a little windsock out of toilet roll and tissue paper which helped illustrate how we can tell wind direction and wind speed. We also have a weather board which we do each morning that shows temperature, what the sky looks like, if it's raining, sunny, windy etc

As we have been stuck inside more than usual this month it's also seen us do a fair amount of baking which Mr A is starting to really enjoy as he has had a bit of a love hate relationship with cooking in the past but now it's a favourite pastime for both of us to do together. This also allows for some basic maths and measuring done in a fun way and we thought we would ramp up breakfast time with some delicious healthy fruit muffins from the Little Dish family cookbook which is a great book which focuses on nutritious, wholesome and low sugar family friendly dishes. 

Healthy breakfast fruit muffins

Healthy Fruit Muffins

125g white spelt flour

60g wholewheat spelt flour

60g rolled oats

40g brown sugar

3 tsp baking powder

2 tbs ground flaxseed

1 eating apple, chopped

200g fresh berries

2 medium free-range eggs

175ml Milk or Almond Milk

40g butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees or gas mark 5. 

2. Mix all the dry ingredients into a bowl and then stir in there fruit

3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and slowly add milk, melted butter and vanilla 

4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together, make sure to not over mix. Evenly distribute the mixture between a greased 12-hole muffin tin.

5. Place in oven and bake for around 20 mins

6. Removed from the oven and allow to cool. These muffins can also be frozen so you always have some on hand.

Our Dinosaur biscuits

Another fun things we have been enjoying the Science and Art based kids monthly magazine Okido which have a dinosaur edition which has been a huge hit with the little man and included these cute dinosaur fossil footprint biscuits, which were super simple to make and we yummy up very quickly. Mr A is completely fascinated with the past, archeology and dinosaurs so having a simple and fun twist made these biscuits extra special. This also lead onto another little dinosaur craft and some reading and writing on the subject.

There were a few mini outdoor adventures we managed to do despite being a bit under the weather, one of them being at our local community allotments which we visit and help out at once a month. This time is was the Christmas fair for which we made some bath bombs for two months ago and all the proceeds go back into the allotments. It's a very special place as Mr A gets to run around with friends, among the vegetable patches and fruit being grown, have a go at pond dipping, laying down compost, getting mucky while also sharing some wonderful homemade food and drink next to the clay fire.

We are also working on our Wild Explorers badges and this month we have been focusing on putting together a nature journal with flower pressings, leaf rubbings, Mr A's drawings and writings and in-depth facts into what is taking our fancy at the time which has recently included different types of spiders and learning about earthworms and earwigs and how useful bats are to our ecosystem.

This Homeschooling Life is a linky for you to share either a week, a day or just a moment from your life as a homeschooling family. We are hoping it will be a really nice way to discover new blogs and learn how we all do things differently.
The linky will open at 8am on the first Monday of every month and throughout the rest of the month the hosts will share your posts on their social media channels.

The Hosts:

Adele who blogs at Circus Queen
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Laura who blogs at Side Street Style
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Polly who blogs at Enchanted Pixie
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Jess (me) who blogs at Along Came Cherry and Let’s Do Something Crafty
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The Rules:

1. Link back to one of the hosts. You will find the code for the badge at the bottom or if you prefer you can use a text link.
2. Link up a post from your month, no more than 3.
3. Link directly to a specific post, not your main blog.
4. Follow the hosts on at least one of their social media platforms.
5. Visit and comment on some of the other blogs linking up.
6. If you share on social media then you can use the #thishomeschoolinglife so we can all find each other.

An InLinkz Link-up