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Episode Transcript:
Hello, friend.
How are you?
I am doing fantastic.
Let's talk about this really quick.
I get to be the keynote speaker coming up at a home school conference and I am ridiculously excited about it.
0:58
It is.
I wanted to make sure I get the information correctly.
So it is the home school summit of Northern Utah and this summit is going to be April 27th from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM and it is going to be in Provo, UT and I am going to be the keynote speaker and then you will have three breakout sessions and lunch will be included.
1:20
So they have, let's see the early bird pricing through February.
So I will make sure to add a link into the show notes for this so that you can grab yours.
Come and meet me.
I'm going to have some fun stuff there that you can grab.
I always do all my stuff at a discounted price at when I'm a vendor and different things like that.
1:39
So come meet me, let's hang out.
You can come and hear me talk, get super excited about what I'm talking.
So I would love to have you come and join me there.
So make sure to click on that link and come and check it out, all right?
When I'm looking through my podcast stats and all those good things, I noticed a trend that when I was talking about lesson plans.
2:01
Tons and tons of listens.
And so I thought, OK, I was worried that maybe people are like, we get it, mag, we don't want to hear it.
But those episodes are some of my higher episodes.
And so I thought, great, if this is something that is super helpful to you, I'm going to keep doing it.
So I do create a full Lesson plan.
2:18
But what I talk about here is maybe some ideas with homeschooling and how to implement it, but also the idea with it.
So I don't go through all the books and all the activities or everything like that, but if you're like, I just want an idea of where to get started, then this is super duper helpful.
And then if you do want the full lesson planned, come and grab it on my website, go to coachmegthomas.com, You'll see shop and you can grab it.
2:40
It's actually even on my homepage of grabbing the next month.
So let's keep doing this because I've noticed it's super helpful for a lot of people.
So let's keep it going.
All right.
So the last two months, January and February have been the American Revolutionary War is kind of the premise.
2:56
History is one of my favorites.
And so I get super excited about it and I actually do history and then I make everything else support what I'm doing with history.
And so if like, if you want to keep going with those, you totally can't.
Isn't this the beautiful thing about homeschooling?
If you're like Meg, you go a little bit fast for me, slow it down.
3:13
And you don't have to do this in March.
You can do it in April, you can do it in June, you can do it next year, Right.
So, but just kind of this fun context.
So if you haven't finished all the American revolutionary stuff, it doesn't matter.
You can just go to this, right?
Because we revisit different things and we come back to it and maybe kids weren't really excited about it and so kind of fun that you can always mix things up.
3:37
So for the March lesson plans, kind of the big thing we're going to be doing is the Constitution and how fun that because we just like the whole reason we went to war in the 1st place, right?
And really understanding that and and how the odds are really against the Americans and and everything about that and how they came out and won, but now they have a new nation and they have to figure it out.
3:57
So it's not like it was a current nation with current laws, current ruling system, anything like that fighting another current one.
This is a brand new nation and how exciting and so how fun that we are going to dive in and talk about the Constitution.
4:17
I thought it would be so fun for science to do spring, not spring buttoning gardening because of spring.
Right.
And so we're going to do a lot of that.
I'm going to talk a little bit more in depth of some of the things for art we're going to do Robert Louis Stevenson, and he has a lovely poetry book, a children's garden of verses and that'll be fun.
4:38
And Claude Monet, I know we talked about him before, but I tell up, this is what's so fun is that you can talk about it again because his pictures are so beautiful and they're flowers and the different things with that.
So we're going to do Monet again, and then we're composer.
How fun is this?
We're going to do Vivaldi because he has The Four Seasons, but we're going to do spring, and a lot of music focused on that.
4:59
And we also do habits.
And each month I have each lesson plans, I divide it up into different habits.
And so like January, I got to think of this.
I'm going to go backwards.
I'm gonna say it right.
Mental was January, physical was February, and now we are to March and we're going to be talking about social.
5:22
I could get on a soapbox and do a whole podcast about social homeschoolers getting taught actual social skills.
And so I'm really excited to teach about some social skills and just really taking initiative and like instead of being a complainer or a whiner or a victim, like oh what was me, Nothing goes, ever goes my way.
5:44
But to be the person that says I can be the difference instead of somebody should take care of that.
Why can't it be me?
Why can't I be the person to do this?
So as always, oh, I got lots of there we go.
6:00
So as always, when you get your daily plans printed out and what not, I always have chores at the very beginning and you can mix it up in any way.
But I love when it's on a schedule.
Then it's like, oh, we need to do this.
You don't have to do it this way.
If you're like, you guess what, make night time works better for us.
6:17
Fantastic.
Do it.
This is just an idea, a suggestion works for my home for us to like get things ready to go before we start school.
I don't want to do school in a really gross, messy house.
To each their own.
So do what works best for you.
But like I love having that be part of our school of cleaning up.
6:36
So the scripture.
Oh, I don't have the scripture.
Yes.
Nope.
I didn't print that off.
So the scripture is going to be along with spring.
I don't remember what the actual scripture is.
And then we're going to do some poetry that also has to go along with Spring and some fun things for our memorization.
So this is fun.
6:52
I will share with you what the read aloud there.
I always give two suggestions for Read Alouds, and one of them was a book I found from the Good and the Beautiful and it's Mystery on Constitution Island by Maggie Felch and Jenny Phillips.
And this one was really fun.
7:08
I just read this one on my own.
It might be better for an older kid because I think there's a lot of fun conversations that could come through this, just probably not your really young kids.
It doesn't have to be an older teen, it's not adult or anything like that, but it just might make more sense.
But a kid would like the adventure part of it, they would probably think is really fun as well.
7:26
And so you have that one as a choice.
Or you have The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett.
And what you could also do if you have older kids and you're like, I think an older kid would like this, do one as a read aloud, like The Secret Garden and then have The Mystery on Constitution Island just being independent reading or other way around, right?
7:46
Just like so fun.
How to mix all these things in So let's see.
So we do like a bunch of different things on I have four days a week, right.
On Sunday one we do our social skills and I added in warm up activities.
And it's so funny because these are things I have always done with my home school and just it gives so much variety and so much spice.
8:07
And so that school is not this big horrid, long monotonous thing where we have to talk about one subject for a really long time.
But we do a lot of critical thinking things.
And this is my Briggy.
He's 12 and he loves to do the critical thing actually everyday.
And he does it while I do read aloud because he thinks it's so fun and trying to figure these clues out and different things like that.
8:27
And it gives him something to do with his hands and he can read and do this at the same time and he really likes that.
So lessons and artwork and different videos.
I found so many great videos about kids and social skills and different fun things.
And then we always do an activity.
8:43
And so here's the thing and I I don't think I talked about this on the podcast, but I think I've talked about this in my membership before is I am giving you a a lot of things you can do right.
And you may look at the schedule and you're like, holy macaroni Meg like we're going to do a warm activity.
8:59
We're going to actually do scripture and memorization, read aloud, a warm up activity, maybe a song, a lesson.
There might be music, there could be artwork, there could be video, there could be an activity and you could be like wow, Meg, that is a lot.
So I added in some kind of instructions of how to use a lesson plans and in there I talk about the concept of floors and ceilings.
9:18
And So what I'm giving you for lesson plans is a ceiling.
If you're like we are all in, we have a ton of energy.
We want to do all of this.
This is every we want to do everything on your list.
Then go ahead and do the ceiling.
But we also want a floor, So when we have days where you're not feeling well, or a baby was up all night, or there's chaos in the house for some reason, you want a bare minimum of something you could do in a minute or less.
9:45
So something really simple for school you could do for a minute.
Less is something that you could do.
You can read for a minute of your read aloud.
You can recite a poem.
You can do something that's like we're just going to keep the habit of school going.
And so we are going to do one basic thing to keep the habit.
10:02
Because what happens a lot of times is we aren't always hitting a floor and we aren't always hitting a ceiling.
But a lot of times we're in between.
So if we can keep the consistency going with school, we're going to get better and better and better, even if we aren't always doing a ceiling.
10:18
So for a floor, not a floor in between, for me, a lot of times we're always doing our chores, we're doing scripture memorization, read aloud.
My kids love the warm up, warm up activity and then we're pretty good at the lesson and then sometimes that's it for us.
Sometimes I'm not in the mood for the activity where I'm like, I don't want to go get all the supplies or this seems really messy and I really don't want this mess.
10:41
Or like that was good enough.
Or maybe we're like, actually I don't want to do the lesson, but we can watch the movie, the video, that's like there's a link and it will just be like, this is what we're learning about.
We can just go do the video and we can learn a ton of fun stuff on YouTube right right there all together as a family.
10:57
And so I don't always do everything that's on this list, but what I'm giving you is the possibility if you were like, I want it all and then just know you don't have to do with all, you can do what feels best for you that day.
Same thing goes with a book you were reading to the kids.
11:15
If like your read aloud, let's say you don't get it done in a month, then go into the next month and you don't have to do the book that I picked for that month.
Same with one of my son.
My son, one of the books he was reading for January, he didn't finish, but he wanted to finish it, so he just kept going through February for it, right.
11:32
So being flexible with some of those things, I also give ideas of things to do for your teens.
And I love this because that's, I don't know, sometimes a lot of homeschool stuff is just really focused towards younger kids, which is awesome.
11:49
But like homeschooler is growing.
And I think that the last that I saw is now there are 5 million homeschoolers, right?
And a lot of homes, high school kids and older kids are pulling out and really wanting to know more and wanting to have this really awesome education.
So I do books for younger teens and books for older teens.
12:07
And I'll do like, social.
Let's see.
Yeah, so social, a book for maybe a younger teen.
And then social, a book for an older teen.
And The thing is, sometimes a book might be more mature of a concept that should just be for an older teen, and sometimes it can be switched, right?
12:23
So this month for Social for Teens, I have How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Fantastic book.
But my son loves this book, How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman.
Both fantastic books.
You could switch if you're like, well, I do have a younger teen.
12:40
They could actually do both of those books.
One of the scientists will be studying for the teen.
The younger teen is George Washington Carver and he has the book from Slave to scientist.
And he, I mean a really awesome, awesome human, but just he was a really cool scientist and did a lot of neat things with botany.
12:59
And so I thought, how fun did you study his life And somebody who loved botany and love different things like that and what he was able to do with it.
And plus all of his trials he went through with just slavery and everything like that.
So fantastic story.
So we have social a book they'll read for social, a book they'll read for science, for history, did a bonus history.
13:19
I'll tell you right now, it's just the Constitution.
So that every kid will have read the Constitution and then they each have a literature book and they're just super fun of different things you can do.
And then so if you want to download the lesson plans, it will give you links for everything, for songs, for the movies, for artwork, music, all those types of things and books to go with.
13:43
So it's funny because I wouldn't consider myself an unschooler because I'm like, this is what my home school is.
It's like all this intense stuff, but it's not curriculum based.
And so somebody said you're a little unschool and which made me kind of giggle, but it kind of is because it's just reading through books, reading, learning through literature.
14:01
Because textbooks can be boring.
But learning through literature and a Charlotte Mason term, living books, right, And really exciting books and engaging books to me helps them to actually learn it versus just dry facts.
Excuse me.
14:17
I've had the driest throat.
And so I love this.
And so we.
They're like optional little fun science books.
I've just even little things.
Like it's the cutest little picture book.
The Little Gardener by Emily Hughes.
Right.
That we can just do these fun little books that you can just set out that aren't totally optional but you'll get your group subjects.
14:38
It tells you all the books you'll need for history, for the arts, all of those good things.
Yeah, so you can totally just go grab that.
Like I said, Coach Mack, thomas.com, You can download it or you can just go and find stuff you love.
But like this gives you a really good direction of things we're going to be doing.
14:55
So go and grab that, go check it out and if you have any questions, make sure to come over on Instagram at coach Meg Thomas or send me an e-mail, anything like that and I hope you have an amazing week.
Talk to you next time.
Hello friend.
15:15
If you enjoy this podcast, I know you are going to love my curriculum.
Each month you will receive 16 lesson plans that cover habits, the art, science, history and so much more.
Head on over to www.coachmegthomas.com and click on Shop at the Top of my site.
15:35
Or you can check it out in my Instagram bio.
Have a great one.