Since I’m not posting on Instagram, I thought it would be fun to instead show you a behind the scenes peek at some of the things we got up to in our home school this week.

We’re slowly dipping our toes back into our home ed rhythms after two weeks off. Peter’s skating lessons and our weekly science club are still on their winter break, so it was a nice opportunity to start picking the threads of our rhythms back up without very many demands on our time.

We use Pinwheels Level 1 and Kindergarten Math with Confidence as our core curriculums for literacy and maths. We spent time each morning reviewing what we’ve been learning in them so far, as well as reading The Frost Fair and Peter worked on memorizing The Wolf.

We’ll keep layering in our other subjects over the next couple of weeks until we’re fully back in the swing of things. I find this the most sustainable way to get back into our rhythms after holidays or illness. It’s also the process I teach for coming back to self-care habits in the Totally Doable Self-Care for Busy Parents process.

We started off the week with a long visit with friends at the local children’s museum. Because the schools are still on holidays, there were a lot of extra activities set out. So the kids were able to make beaded bracelets and try STEM experiments as well as dig for fossils, explore space, play in the mini city, and learn about life in the Arctic.

P and I also spent time filling out Leonie Dawson’s free My Shining Year printable kids’ goals workbook. It was a lovely way to chat about the year that's just past and get insights into what's most important to him right now. I scribed for P and he coloured in the pages.

We joined Kids’ Moon Club at the last minute and I’m so glad we took the leap. It will be such a lovely way for P to more deeply explore his own cyclic experience and for us to move through the rhythms of the year more intentionally as a family.

Our artist study from Blossom and Root this month is focused on Ruth Asawa. We made pipe cleaner sculptures inspired by her wire ones while listening to our composer of the month, Scott Joplin.

As part of the Wolf Moon cycle in Kids’ Moon Club we watched Rise of the Black Wolf on YouTube. P and I both found it really interesting (and so did our kitten Figaro 🤣).

One component of Kids’ Moon Club are the monthly phenology walks where you notice and document the changes happening in the world around you. Our first one involved pretending to be bog monsters, examining animal tracks, finding a fallen bird nest, collecting rocks and acorn caps, and getting very wet feet.

For the full moon we made “wolf print cookies” (I’ll share the recipe below) and made tin can lanterns to take on our full moon walk while we howled at the moon.

It’s been a lovely, cozy week with many books read, many dance parties danced, many board games played, many creations made, and many difficult moments traversed.

I’ve been in my inner spring (pre-ovulatory phase), which is when playfulness comes most naturally to me and I’m intentional about bringing that energy into our home school.

It’s also the phase of my cycle where I’m best at planning. It’s easy for me to see the big picture here and then break it down into small, doable tasks. I don’t plan out our home school for a month at a time because life inevitably in the way and we won’t get to everything each week. I use a paper planner so it’s not easy to move things around.

However, I do harness this spring energy with a big planning and organization session. I’ll make a master list of the units we’ll likely cover in our core subjects, list out activities related to the season, topics being studied, and current areas of interest that we might want to do, make a list of anything we would need to buy or borrow for said activities, and pull out books and resources that we’ll likely use so that they’re easy to access. Then I just spend a short time each week plugging in “what comes next” in our core curriculums and jotting down the activities that best fit the current phase of my cycle + work with the other things we have planned.

Do you plan your schedule around your menstrual cycle? What helps balance your energy levels with everyone else’s needs? Leave a comment and let me know!

Wolf Print Cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup dates soaked in hot water for 5 minutes

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup natural peanut butter

chocolate chips

Directions

Strain the dates.
Add everything but the chocolate chips to a food processor and process into a dough.
Roll the dough to about a quarter inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper.
Put dough in fridge for 30-60 minutes.
Cut out circles using a cookie cutter.
Make thumbprints in cookies.
Add mini chocolate chips for toe print (or I sliced large chips into quarters, as that's what we had).
Melt chocolate in a double boiler and use a small spoon to put a small amount in each thumbprint.
Leave in the fridge for the chocolate to harden.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge when set (I think they'll last about a week).

Note: If you don’t want to make the wolf prints, you can mix 1/4 cup chocolate chips into the dough after everything else has been blitzed in the food processor. Roll into balls with about one tablespoon of dough each and skip the melted chocolate.

Enjoy!