Julie Soul 0:00
Welcome back to how to reset your homeschool part three. So the first two parts that we talked about were go on a mystery ride. That was the first one and the second one is adding some movement into your day effortlessly. So these are great ways to reset homeschools when the kids are feeling a little squirrely, maybe you're feeling a little squirrely, you're feeling a little bit like you just need something different. So today, I'm going to talk about a third idea that will help you reset your homeschool and that is having the equivalent of a Spirit Day. So if you went to public school like I did you know about the spirit days, I remember being in junior high, we had junior high and not Middle School. And one of our spirit days was college appreciation. Frankly, at you know, some of the grade I had no clue what college I wanted to go to. But I live in Michigan, so everyone had to choose between U of M and Michigan State pretty much. That's the big rivalry here. I remember wanting to fit in and my mom having to run out to the store and see if she could find a sweatshirt. So that was that was a lot of fun. And you know what, spoiler alert, I didn't go to either of those universities. But there was something about some of the kids who did really enjoy that particular Spirit Day, they had a lot of fun because they had college themed activities, it wasn't just dress up. And as homeschoolers were often encouraged to you know, dive deeper, not encouraged. Maybe that's the wrong word. We love diving deep into a topic, we have the flexibility to do so. So today, we're gonna be talking about having the equivalent of a Spirit Day or a theme day. Now I'm recording out here on my three seasons room, you're gonna hear some different noises today, we have garbage trucks, we have pros, we have planes that are flying overhead. But the biggest reason I've chosen to be out here is the reason why I started this series. And it's because I needed a little bit of a reset myself. So just remember, as we're talking about this, the reset isn't just for kids, the reset is for you too. That means that whatever you're doing has to actually help you also. So I'm hoping to provide three different ideas in this series, with the hopes that one of these will really land on you. So today we're talking about spirits and themes. So I have come up with a few ideas for you six ideas for a theme or a spirit day that you can implement in your own homeschool. So number one outer space, I don't know many children, or adults who are not fascinated by outer space. I know that when I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. And I'm pretty sure that was some of the training that I've seen that astronauts have to go to. And the idea of you know, having to be comfortable with my toothbrush flying away and even eating my toothpaste. Thanks to some of these videos that some of the astronauts have given us I'm pretty sure I've given up on that dream. But a lot of kids love space. I'm still angry about Pluto not being a full time planet anymore. But when we have an outer space day, so what is the theme day look like? Now you can encourage kids to drag everything out of their closet that fits the theme. I know my girls have outerspace leggings. I know a lot of kids have stars, planted shirts, etc. So you can encourage some dressing up, you can also think about having food that is relating to that particular theme. So maybe everything that you eat that day has to be in the shape of a circle for a planet. You can also head to the planetarium if you have one near you. And another huge favorite and fun thing for kids to do on an outerspace theme day is to try astronaut ice cream. Now, this is if you don't have anything like this, it's basically freeze dried ice cream. And every single time I go to our Air and Space Museum, my kids want some, but freeze dried anything. And it's a really fun way to kind of explore texture with food to think about what it would be like to pretty much eat, freeze dried food for a really really long time. But those are some really fun ideas that you could watch A Space Odyssey in fact, I don't honestly have one clue how appropriate that is for what ages because it's been a very, very long time. But there are definitely some outerspace movies that are really fun for kids. Follow it up with a movie as well. Another great theme that you could do is superheroes. So superheroes you
Unknown Speaker 5:00
You could visit a comic bookstore, you could write your own comics. But another one for superheroes is thinking about, you know, designing your own costume. But for older kids who might not be into designing their own costume, you can look at strength and agility training. I know a lot of superheroes are superheroes because they can do really cool things. So you're gonna have fun visiting or creating an obstacle course, or having them just learn about basic weightlifting, you can just go that way if that's a little bit easier, but focus on strength and agility. Again, like comic books are really really great way to start, whether you have a comic bookstore near you, or kids can create their own and create their own superhero. The third one is an underwater or an ocean theme. And you can visit an aquarium, you could go to a beach, you could go to a waterpark, you could design your own ocean art, you could even visit a store where they sell fish, just sort of about the different kinds of fish. So there's lots of different ways to kind of make it easy and educational even for older kids who you know, might not want as the magic of a day. I know even older kids might appreciate the joy of visiting an aquarium learning about different fish. We have a fish hatchery here, near us that's a really great one for doing an ocean or an underwater theme or fish hatchery isn't for ocean, it's for like Michigan, it's for a great lake system. But you could definitely dive into looking at freshwater versus saltwater fish. Number four robotics, there are robotics kits out there that you can get if you don't want to go out and purchase something like that. You could also look at going on a factory tour. factory tours are a great way for kids to learn robotics, they can actually see the giant robots in action, it doesn't have to be a factory for something that is a machine. So it doesn't have to be a factory for you know something where it makes cars, this can be a chocolate factory, too, because they get to watch how these things are made. Now, if you don't have access to something like that, or that's too expensive, then get out YouTube or get out whatever your subscription are to something like how it's made and have fun watching how things are actually made. I think adults and kids alike are fascinated, just even how crayons are made. But just something basic, like how do they do that. So I watched one the other day on how they actually use recycled soap scraps at hotels and how that all works. And I was just fascinated. So humans are always wondering about, again, how things are made. And that's just a really great way to get in robotics. You can also drag all of your boxes out of your recycle bins, boxes or other recycled materials and create recycled robots, especially for younger kids. They can design things they can think about and learn about how robots are used around the world for other things. So there are some robots that are used for undersea exploration. There, this is a great time to take a look at Japan and take a look at all the ways that robots are used even in restaurants and cafes, as servers and to connect with people who can't go into the cafe, so people who have mobility disabilities and Japan uses robots for things like that, too. So it's a great way to explore all the different ways that robots can be used in programs. Okay, number five is music. So music, you can level it up and go somewhere like a symphony or a concert, but you don't have to go that far. You can have fun doing music exploration, show kids the different styles of music and dress, have them dress up like an 80s rocker. Listen to that 80s music, teach them some of those silly songs. There's a lot of a lot of older songs, kids are going to find pretty fun. My kids over her love potion number nine in a restaurant and they thought that was the funniest song ever. You just really never know what's going to land on kids. But just doing music appreciation and teaching them but make sure you played in contrast. So if you play a lot of music of one genre, make sure you play something that's completely different right after that contrast really helps kids understand how different music genres work. You can also instead of listening to music for a music day you can have fun doing
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Dancing, you can teach kids about square dancing. This is something that I had to do in school, we all learn square dancing. But lots of different dances of not just America, but different cultures. You can watch videos on YouTube, you can go and watch a lot of different places put on different cultural days where you can go and watch different traditional dancing, and have kids understand and talk about and ask questions. A lot of these different days involve kids being able to come up there and learn the dances to and that's always really, really fun. So doing a music day can be learning an instrument can be watching a symphony can also be music appreciation, or dancing. And the final one is when you want to keep it really simple, just choose a color, and you have an all blue, all yellow, all red day, the foods you eat, what you choose to do, everything has to match up with that particular color in some way. Now, you'll be really, really surprised with how creative you can get in order to make it match a color. But that's the fun of it. So that encourages kids to be able to kind of do the things that they want to do. But wearing that color also makes you really easy to spot when you're all wearing blue, make sure that you join in wearing that color for that day too. But that's a really, really simple one. It goes all the way back to preschool where you had to find something purple and bring it in for show and tell. And this is kind of along those lines, but a little bit bigger scale. So let's go over again, we have space, we have superheroes, we have underwater ocean theme, we have robotics, music, and then all of a color. And then make sure you're thinking about what kids wear during that day, what you're going to eat, what you're going to do, you can always watch movies, listen to music around those themes, go on field trips, you can also go to the library and grab those books. Or you can keep it simple too. It doesn't have to be an all day affair. It can be that we're just going to have an old blue morning or we're going to have an underwater afternoon. So just remember, you're not stuck, you're not locked in for an entire day. You can do it for as much or as little as you want. But when you tell kids that there's a robotics Day coming up and you're gonna look into robots, most kids will be really excited. And for those kids who seem a little bit resistant, just remember they can be curious inside even if they look resistant on the outside, because they're probably just wondering, what do you have up your sleeve and that's always the fun of it. Okay, everyone till next time
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