Homeschooling...with Littles!

We started school last week and my hubby returned to work.  School was a bust.  My oldest daughter got sick and my littles were needy and fussy.  In three days, all we accomplished was morning bible reading each day and one daughter's language arts lesson for one day...yikes!

I learned a few important lessons at least:

1.  The infant is the scheduling coordinator.

2.  I need to lower my expectations of what I can accomplish in a given day. 
(too many projects equals a cluttered house because they didn't get finished)

3.  Make a more generic lesson plan that can be used for both preschool and middle school...ha!

Talking to God at 3:00am this morning, He gave me an idea and memory verses to work on!
During breakfast I introduced our memory verses.  Genesis 1:1 for my three year old, and John 1:1-3 for my middle schoolers.  Both sets of verses dwell on creation.  Then we all worked together to clean up the table and get ready for a morning walk.

On our little walk around the block, we collected items that God has made (rocks, grass, dirt, a few ants, a flowering weed, and a dead weed).  Once we got home we looked at our little collection and talked about how God made them all.  We talked about how beautiful the flower was and how the bible tells us that God cares to dress even the lilies of the field in beauty, how much more would He take care of us?  We also discussed how each thing we collected was beautifully colored and designed, but the dead weed was ugly and plain.  Death isn't God's plan for us and even the earth itself was effected by sin.

Then each of my older girls designed a poster for a memory verse and everyone helped to decorate them.  As they worked we listened to Sunday School songs.  ...Hurray!  We finally had a successful learning experience for all my schooling kiddos, and little mister napped through most of it.

So, for my preschooler's education, he got:

Language Arts: discussion about creation and songs
Fine Motor Skills: coloring, putting marker lids on and off, picking up small rocks
Large Motor Skills & Sensory Experience: walking around the block, pushing the stroller and steering it down the sidewalk
Science: collecting nature items on our walk and learning what God has made
Math: counting the ants

My middle schooler's got:

Physical Education
Faith & Character
Art & Music
and more that I count as a bonus, because they still had to do their Language Arts curriculum...and if we're able, a math lesson too!