I am not a perfect homeschooler. I am not a perfect Montessorian. While I excel at planning, for most of my motherhood I’ve felt overwhelmed. For this reason, I have struggled to find a homeschooling routine that works as well as a method to keep me a prepared adult, so I can create a prepared environment.
So now you know me and you can decide if I’m the right gal for you to Montessori alongside. In the past 7 weeks we have slowly developed a routine that is working and we are constantly tweaking it. Because we have gotten to this point in routine, I have had more time to prepare lessons, presentations and materials.
Last week I was working extra in my business to make up for some bumps the week before. As such I had less time for homeschool prep. So on Friday at 12:20, I realized I was starting school without a plan for a group lesson.
Fortunately, I had started preparing materials for a series on The Sun. Since I had printables on sun benefits, dangers and sun safety at the ready I ran with that idea.
If you don’t already know this, I am pretty far on the “natural” end of the lifestyle spectrum. I am very picky about the products we use in our house and ESPECIALLY on our bodies. I am also a little passionate about what we put IN our bodies. So I decided to let Montessori, our need to make more sunscreen and our need for more vitamin D in our diets take the day where it may. We are currently wintering in Arizona so while sunshine is plentiful, we are all generally pretty low in Vitamin D.
So here is how I whipped teogether a FABULOUS group lesson and two projects in ten minutes.
2) I pulled up a quick YouTube Video on sun dangers.
3) I grabbed a Paleo Ice Cream Recipe from my Paleo Hacks desert book (I think you can still get this for free, I am not an affiliate) because it calls for THREE yolks and one yolk is about 5% of the RDA based on the current nutrition standards.
4) I raided my cabinets for our sunscreen ingredients.
I began with the video, because I keep it real around here. Videos allow me to have FAR LESS resistance from my kids.
After the video, I pulled out the first set of presentation cards and we discussed the sun benefits. My kids already knew many of these, but review is always supportive to internalization.
Next, we looked at the sun dangers cards and discussed those.
Finally, we looked at Sun Safety. I had my big kids alternate reading the descriptions while my kindergartener read the labeled cards.
Next, I gave them the choice of “help make sunscreen” or “help make ice cream”
I didn’t actually have my sunscreen recipe book at the ready, so we kinda winged it. I am still looking for my book, so if you would like my recipe, please use the contact button below so I can email it to you! just put “sunscreen” in the message!
I hope this post was inspiring to those of you who also, don’t always have an Instagram Pinterest worthy lesson ready for you kids.
Done is better than perfect. Presence over perfection, these are my mantras that free up my motherhood so much!
Birth is a very special time in your life, but it's one day out of the entire childbearing year. As a parent, I have always wanted to cultivate independence in practical life skills. I want my children to go into the world with the ability to make a repertoire of healthy meals, the ability to care for the basic maintenance of an apartment or home as well as the ability to manage their money well.
Cooking is really important to me, probably because I LOVE COOKING. Just like I know how to read, but I had to learn how to teach my children to read, I have found I need a little help teaching my kids how to cook.
My children, I think like all children, want to do what I am doing. They don’t want a play kitchen and play food, they want to work in a real kitchen with real food. This led to lots of frustration for all of us. They felt stifled in their desire to learn and grow, and I felt like I didn’t know how to be patient in a real-time meal making scenario.
Several years ago I learned for Katie Kimball’s course “Kids Cook Real Food” and I FINALLY took the plunge and enrolled us when it was on sale last year.
It’s a game changer, Katie takes you through what you need to know (and buy) to take your kids through different levels of cooking skills (beginner, intermediate and advanced). She takes the time to isolate each skill and practice it.
She also has a course that we have access to called “Kids Cook Solo” designed for kids 8 and up to basically take the course which includes videos, recipe making as well as quizzes. Since Katie was an elementary school teacher, she also has the kids present their learned skills to their parents. She takes the time to teach kids presentation skills! She is amazing. I highly recommend this course, which is about a $50 value.
If you are interested in getting this course for LESS THAN $50, I want you to go over to this website and catch the recording of this webinar by Katie Wired for Wisdom: How to Train Your Child’s Brain For a Lifetime of Natural Living It’s 1 hour and 22 minutes, so plan to play this while you do a mindless task (if you are like me that means prepping school materials or doing dishes)
I find her course to be so helpful and it’s brought so much peace and fun to our home to have a weekly cooking lesson for each kid. How I am running things right now is my 7 and 5 year old are working on the Kids Cook Real Food beginner level with their dull knife skills and my 8 year old is working through the first module of Kids Cook Solo. On Wednesday night we used the spice blend she made in our meatballs for dinner.
That’s what so great about her system is they children practice skills that build up to a healthy snack, or reduce the adults cooking time!
Birth is a very special time in your life, but it's one day out of the entire childbearing year. 
