Home Education Lately – December 2020

I am posting this a little earlier than usual. Our month has finished, education-wise, so it seemed like a good time to write and publish this post so I can say goodbye to 2020 and get to thinking about 2021!

Unsurprisingly, December has been a Christmas themed month! We have eased off the formal work and instead been looking at things through a Christmas lens. The final week of December has been completely education free; one of the few times in the year when I don’t do anything at all education-related. The simple act of ‘being’ is all that we have achieved!

Core Subjects

We have eased off in the core areas; we have been working on maths a little but nothing too much; we haven’t really moved into anything new just consolidating some bits and pieces. The children did do some Christmas themed maths such as the Twinkl Maths Mysteries and some activity sheets from Teaching Packs.

H has been working a lot on initial sounds and is now really confident on these and has been working on CVC words. We have been practising reading with him, and this is something we will be doing a lot of from January. He is keen to read and I think he is probably ready to develop this a little more. It also helps his overall speech too.

The older two have been really busy typing up stories that they have been writing. I’ve been really impressed with their use of language and will be encouraging them to finish these stories in the new year.

Project Work

Project work during December was mostly looking at The Nutcracker and Tchaikovsky. We used our Post from the Past to learn more and have enjoyed working on a small Tchaikovsky project. We looked at Russia, how the different music of The Nutcracker Suite made us feel as well as reading some different versions of the story. We have watched performances, made Nutcrackers from toilet roll inners and just generally really enjoyed the story and the music.

Regular Groups

Spanish continued during December with a short break for Christmas and New Year. Em’s Beaver group held a virtual sleepover which she really enjoyed taking part in. D also had his cubs group and collected his first set of badges.

We have had a few zoom sessions with friends including:

• Christmas crafting
• Christmas talent show
• Christmas poetry tea
• Christmas around the world
• Wright Brothers’ Day
• Secret Santa Exchange
• Christingle
• Christmas party

Our Christingle service in particular was beautiful with each family taking it in turn to read or sing. I really enjoyed this and it was lovely to see how much the children have grown in getting used to zoom.

Days Out

We have enjoyed a few evening walks to see the Christmas lights round where we live; it’s been lovely watching the children’s excitement build as more and more homes became decorated.

We have also had a trip to Quarry Bank Mill which was a nice day out as well as a visit to the lights at Dunham Massey. It was a little busier in places than we’d have liked but the children loved the lights and we did well to get such a lovely evening to do the walk. We also had a trip to Lyme Park so have made use of our National Trust Membership this month.

We were also lucky to get tickets to a drive-in cinema locally which the children loved. We saw Frozen and The Polar Express. I wasn’t keen on The Polar Express – it felt a bit dark for a children’s film and I’m no a Tom Hanks fan. We did however love Frozen and the children loved having the music turned up loud to sing along to. We also had food delivered to the car which they thought was magic!

Perhaps the children’s most exciting trip out was to the library! Rather excitingly, the local libraries are allowing browsing to take place again now so they were thrilled to be able to stock up on new books. It was lovely to see their excitement.

Other Bits and Pieces

Other than the above it’s been quite quiet. We have done plenty of baking, mostly mince pies and hot chocolate stirrers! We have also been busy crafting. Again Christmas themed with decorations for the tree and the such.

We have also covered Christmas as well as touching on Hanukkah and we looked at Stonehenge when it was the Winter Solstice. I find December to be a month with so much going on that it can be hard to cover all the things that you might want to.

Whilst it’s not been the most productive month, it’s been a fun month and one in which we have been able to relax and follow their Christmas excitement. It will soon be the New Year, and with it, new schedules to work through.