On Fresh Air & Journals

Welcome back to day four of Tips For Homeschooling Parents. Did you have a read through some of the tips from the other bloggers yesterday? You can find their links at the end of this post.

I hope you will continue to join us every day this week for more great Tips For Homeschooling Parents.

Fresh air, we all know and understand that our bodies and minds simply can't function without lots and lots of fresh air.

Generally, this is never an issue when our children are young. Their minds and bodies crave and beg for the outdoors, if they aren't outside playing, they are often at the park with siblings or other homeschooling friends.

As our children age, their book work increases and generally the amount of technology they have access to also tends to increase, heading outdoors often becomes much less of a priority to them.

However, I feel that being outdoors during these tween/teen years is crucially important for both our kids physical and mental health.

In fact a recent survey showed quite alarming results in regards to how much time our kids actually spend outdoors!

We must not allow ourselves to become part of the ever growing 'nation of the great indoors'.

Homeschool Tip #7

Make it a priority, in each and every day, to spend as much time outside as you possibly can. Take the books out with a blanket and enjoy reading in the sunshine.

If you're anything like me, record keeping is just another one of those pesky chores that you'd ditch if you really could.

Throughout the years I've always jotted down the things the kids needed to get through in a day, but we don't have a calendar of must do's laid out for us for the remainder of the year.

Exactly how I have done this has varied from a few notes on a single sheet of paper that is discarded at the end of the day, to a typed up weekly spreadsheet that we printed on a Monday and checked off the tasks as they were completed.

All of these methods have been quite fickle, simple yes and simple is what I need and although they served a purpose at the time there was no long term value in them. I needed a way to not only set out the required tasks for the day but a way to keep records on that, without double handling.

Some time ago I saw a post mentioning the use of spiral notebooks but my first thought was of lost notebooks, never to be seen again and therefore needing to be continually purchased new. Which again puts us back at square one with the fickle system.

That is, until I saw a standard A4 lined notebook, simply bound with staples but that is also hole punched and can fit neatly and securely inside the kids ring binder folders which we use to hold their daily and weekly work.

Perfect! I bought a pile of them.

These notebooks, without a doubt have been one of the best organisational tools that I've added into our homeschool in a very long time.

The secret to these though is to ensure you are using the K.I.S.S system with them. Don't make things any harder or more involved than what it needs to be.

I simply date the page, list what needs to be done and we tick things off as they are completed. I also aim to record other things that we do, excursions, co-op days and the classes covered, household chores, all right there on the same page.

This makes for a simple record of structured learning, free range times and out and about activities and excursions.

I love that I can easily look back and find what we were doing on any given day or week. If wanted or needed I can also easily add in our outcome codes for certain activities right there on the page.

Homeschool Tip #8

Introduce daily work journals to set tasks and keep records all at the same time.

More Tips For Homeschool Parents

Each day this week I am sharing links right here to the other bloggers that are joining in with the Tips For Homeschool Parents blog hop.

The blogs I link to will also be different each day so you will find heaps of variety and you never know, you may just find your new favourite blog!


Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break  ~ Latonya @ Joy in the Ordinary  ~ Laura @ Day by Day in Our World  ~ Leah @ As We Walk Along the Road  ~ Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures  ~ Lori @ At Home: where life happens  ~ Meg @ Adventures with Jude  ~ Megan @ My Full Heart  ~ Melanie (Wren) @ finchnwren  ~ Melissa @ Mom's Plans




Happy Homeschooling Friends,
Kylie

Come on over and join me at

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Google + 


Have you looked at my Pinterest Boards lately?


Visit Our Worldwide Classroom's profile on Pinterest.