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0:02
Hello, welcome back.
You are listening to episode #280 October's Lesson Plans.
Friends, you are here.
We're called to home school with Meg Thomas, your home school guru.
And I love talking all things homeschool and family related.
0:18
And I'm so excited that you were here.
These episodes of the lesson plans, they they do really well and I love that they just get to help so many people, even if it's just to help get the ball rolling.
But before I dive into today's lessons plans, I just wanted to give you some tips with homeschooling in general, but another way to even utilize any lesson plans.
0:38
So whether you use mine or whether you're just creating your own or you are purchasing lesson plans from anyone else, I want you to remember this concept that I learned from Brooke Snow and she was on the podcast years ago, but it is called Floors and Ceilings.
0:55
So, so often I will get a mom emailing me or a client that I'm working with and just like I'm drowning, this is so much, this is so hard.
And I will ask them to let me know what their day is and what they are trying to accomplish.
1:11
And it is interesting because it is such a lofty goal that it is darn near impossible to hit such a high goal every stinking day.
And so when a client reaches out to me and is asking me some of these questions, I like to remember remind them about this concept of floors and ceilings.
1:32
So a ceiling is the your what you are trying to do.
We're going to specify this with homeschool, obviously, but a ceiling is like this is the stars have aligned.
Everybody has slept well.
No toddlers throwing a fit, no teenagers grumpy.
I'm not grumpy, I'm not tired, right.
1:47
Like everything is perfect.
I remember to get all the supplies for all the subjects.
We are just loving school.
It's magical.
It's a dream and we're doing all the things and the giant To Do List that I want to do for school.
We get every single thing done.
What happens when we have such a lofty aim for every single day is that it is so hard to do that.
2:09
Then we feel inadequate.
We're not doing enough.
I'm failing my children and all the different thoughts that come up as you are worrying about trying to hit the ceiling every single day.
That is why you need a floor and a true floor can be done in one minute or less.
2:27
So you can even you can lump it together and saying K homeschool as a whole could be done in one minute or less.
What does that look like?
Maybe that is a poem, a prayer, looking at a picture, something really, really simple that could be done in a minute or less.
You could also do it per subject.
2:44
So if it is math, maybe that's some flash cards in a minute.
Maybe you read aloud, is reading for one minute any variation of what would feel best to you.
When you have these floors, they are obtainable and it is easy to do so.
3:00
Let's say your bare minimum of a floor for home school is to recite a poem together that you have memorized or even one that you were reading or something like that that you were working on.
It is so doable that if you are sick or toddlers having a meltdown or something crazy is going on in your house, you have one minute that you could say that poem.
3:23
So when you have such a low floor, anything above it starts to being amazing.
Like, OK, we did that one minute.
Maybe on an off day that's all I can do.
But usually I am somewhere in between a floor and a ceiling.
3:40
So even the other day we were doing school and it was first big fall storm and we're having major rain.
Even the mountains nearest got snow right.
So it was that really fun chilly fall morning and all the boys wanted to do was to play football outside and they were so excited, like we have got to go play football in this rain, in the storm and it's going to be amazing.
4:05
And so we didn't do our group stuff, but I did all of their minute with mom stuff.
So with my seven-year old, I did everything he would have done with me.
My 13 year old, I met with him and we did his minute with mom.
And then he does almost all his school work independently.
4:21
So even though we didn't do all of the things that I had planned, I had something we were going to paint and we were going to I was going to have them paint and I was going to read French fairy tales while we were listening to some French music, right.
And then doing all this fun stuff with arts.
We didn't do that part, but we did all this other awesome stuff.
4:40
And so if I had this idea of like, I have to hit the ceiling, I have to do all of the the French stuff that we were going to do, all of the art stuff we're going to do, plus all of these other things we're going to do.
I don't give myself the flexibility to live life because my boys were on cloud 9.
4:57
When we have a fun stormy day like that, like a big snowstorm and we take a break for it and like let's go play in the snow.
This one was rain.
Whatever it is, whatever the elements are, maybe it's on.
When spring comes and it's like it's finally warm, Let's go outside and play, right?
They are still learning so many things.
5:14
So maybe it wasn't the structured Lesson plan I had, but they were learning a lot about, I mean, so much.
They love sports and there's so much that I can tie into sports and working hard and pushing themselves and science.
Being out there in the rain and understanding that why does the snow have mountain?
5:32
Why do we have rain?
There's so many conversations that can come from that.
I've just allowing them to have some wiggle room now with every single day on repeat is a floor.
You probably need to look at something going on in your life, right?
But when we have a floor and we have a ceiling and we hit anywhere in between, we can then be consistent.
5:55
My school is so stinking consistent because I have a floor.
Even if we wanted to do something even less, we could have, I could have just done with them when I did the minute with mom with them, I could have just made that even shorter.
But we had enough time for that.
They'd come in, they were dry now, they'd showered, they were warm and they were ready to go.
6:16
So just a reminder, if school is feeling overwhelming, you need a floor.
So with saying all of this, my lesson plans are a ceiling.
This is the stars have aligned, you have everything ready, everybody is really ready to go.
6:34
And if you can do everything on there, that is a ceiling.
It is not always feasible.
So maybe with the lesson plans, a lot of my lesson plans are group stuff and then there's individual stuff for teens, younger teens and older teens.
But maybe you're just doing group stuff and we're like, we're not even doing individual stuff.
6:52
Fantastic.
That's great.
But you don't need to do everything that I have listed on these lesson plans.
Let them be your ceiling, but then give yourself some floors.
So and it also depends on kids personalities.
So for my boys, some of the they don't mind painting certain things, but anything that feels too girly to them, they're like, we're not going to do it.
7:13
So if it feels way too girly for them, maybe I'm not even in the mood to pull out all the arts and crafts and all the supplies, I can just skip it.
And I'm still like, we still did a lot of other amazing things and that's OK.
So I just want you to remember that as whatever lesson plans you're using.
7:31
But even if those of you who download mine, you're, if you're in the membership, there are free download, right?
So those of you who use those, just remember those are ceilings.
And if you can't do all the things on there, fantastic, come back, cut some things out.
What can you do?
So kind of just remembering that.
7:47
So I want to go through these lesson plans with you.
So I divide our school up into a four day school week.
We've done that for 17 years.
It is so easy for me to be consistent with that because it gives me that long weekend every every week.
8:03
I know there's some books I've read years ago.
I think it's called the Brainy Bunch and they did school six days a week.
That doesn't work for us.
My kids love to play and be involved in different things.
We'd like to spend a lot of time with the family and so I don't like that.
8:18
And I maybe they were able to stay consistent with that.
I don't know if they lived in more rural area so it's not like they had a lot of other things competing for their time, but you need to find what works best for you and I have found this four day schedule works phenomenal with me.
If you were like no, I really think we should do five days.
8:36
Break some of this stuff up and just do it.
Give yourself another day.
Usually I do find other people like we do Right now we are back in a Co-op on Friday mornings we've been in.
We were in a Co-op for years, but we did take a little break from a Co-op and even on Friday mornings we just slept in and we had a lot of fun with that, just kind of connecting and just having a good time.
8:57
So I love the four day week schedule.
So with that I do Mondays are always life skills, Tuesdays are the arts, Wednesdays are science, and Thursdays are history.
Now, it's interesting with this because like I have had this kind of set for quite a long time that every day just kind of has a little theme.
9:19
And it's fascinating to me that it means I don't have to think.
So obviously, like I've planned art lessons or I planned a science lesson, but it's not like I'm sitting there on Saturday or Sunday night, like, oh crap, what are we going to do next week?
It reminds me of somebody's really good at meal planning and they're just like Tuesday's always tacos, Monday mornings, always pancakes, Wednesday's always this right?
9:43
Like when it's just this something to help you be consistent with it and don't have to really think super hard with it, it is easier to fulfill it.
So with finances, if you already have stuff that you love, fantastic.
But I thought what would be great this month is as we focus on finances is to also include what's the word, economics?
10:05
And I love looking at the whole spectrum of things.
So if you just have little kids, just play games with money and count money and learn math and just basic things like that.
But as your kids are getting a little bit older, there are other things that you can do.
And this would even be for younger kids.
10:21
So my 7 year old, one of the things we like to do with money are playing games like Monopoly where he has to count the money.
We're just playing with a lot of things like that.
So if you already have Monopoly, fantastic.
I have other games in here suggested that you could buy, but I'm just going to use Monopoly because we already own it and I don't want to have to keep buying like thousands of other games.
10:43
So just different.
I always do kind of like a get together activity each day.
So this one would have a financial theme to it, some flash cards that you would use to just help you understand more language with finances and financial literacy.
So that's really great books and videos recommended for finances.
11:04
So on Tuesdays, this is these are how may I say that this is our arts day.
So it's I thought it would be so fun because I usually have history as the theme and history this month is the Louisiana Purchase and then Lewis and Clark's Journey and Expedition.
11:24
So I thought like really early American history that tall tales would be really fun.
And so all month long, different great books with different tall tales that you can read, draw pictures, there's music to listen to.
And then I didn't do a specific artist.
11:41
I just found beautiful Native American art so that you can just get that out.
You can look at it, you can try to create your own, just really fun things with the tall tales, the Native American art, old Western music that you can really have as part of your arts.
11:58
And this month there's also a writing activity of how to create your own tall tale and how to guide with that for science because so for the get together game, it's usually something math related.
And then for science, I thought how perfect to study mammals of North America because there were all these new types of species that Lewis and Clark discovered as they went on their little expedition.
12:26
It was not a little expedition, but on their expedition.
So different awesome books with that really fun coloring books and artworks to find with animals, field guides, learning about different animals and just really giving your kids this love for nature and animals.
12:44
And this would be fun to even if you want to dive into what animals live in your area, right?
So in Utah, we live at the base of the Wasatch Front, the Wasatch Mountains.
And so some animals we have in those mountains, we have elk and deer, but we also have things like mountain lions.
13:03
And so every now and then, sometimes in the winter or spring when like it's we've had a heavy winter, we'll have a mountain lions come down and it's kind of creepy.
My neighbors left lost chickens to mountain lions.
And so it would be kind of interesting to talk about mountain like what animals are in your area.
13:20
We have black bears in those mountains because maybe somebody in Florida or the South, you have Gators.
And so that might be fun to like talk about some of the, I know that's not a mammal, but just like a very interesting animal that lives in your area, right?
So just fun things that you can do to just get your kids excited about science if you're traveling somewhere and just like, OK, we are headed to Kansas.
13:43
What animals are there, right?
And so just different animals that live in your state or in your town, anywhere like that.
So but that's kind of the theme or different animals that Lewis and Clark found and discovered on their journey.
And then we go into history and to get together activity is AUSA map, floor and floor puzzle.
14:06
And those are just so fun.
We have we have so many different puzzles of different continents or different like the whole world.
And it's just funny to me how much geography those little puzzles have taught to my kids.
So I don't know if I talked about this before, but when my daughter went to Mongolia this last summer, she was shocked that people were like, I don't know where we are, Like, what continent?
14:31
Where are are we in Africa?
And she was like, no, we're in between Russia and China.
Like, do you even know where those are?
And not that she was being condescending, but it she was just kind of shocked that people were not familiar with the world.
And so we don't ever really, we have done like really specific geography lessons, but just by playing with the geography puzzles.
14:52
And we have a large map on the wall and we're talking about places like, Oh, this is where your sister went to Mongolia.
Oh, this is where dad had to go for a trip, or this is somewhere I'd love to travel.
That would be so amazing.
Or we've heard about this place.
Let's look it up.
And just getting them so familiar with the country like you can the continent, you can do the world is what I meant to say.
15:14
You can do geography so naturally that it's really fun and engaging without quizzing them on it and just making it so natural.
So geography is just mixed right into history that wherever we are learning about, we kind of learn about where those locations are.
15:30
So that I found a really fun map you can purchase that is Lewis and Clark trail poster that just kind of shows their new route of adding in that land.
So if you last month, so you these are just going to get left up on my side, I'm just going to leave these up.
15:47
I took out last year's because I just want to continue to refine those.
And so things just get better as you continue to do something.
So this year, this year, this year's lesson plans are just much more clear.
But so we started last month with the French Revolution and I thought it went perfectly from French Revolution to the Louisiana Purchase of understanding why in the world France was willing to sell Louisiana to the United States.
16:14
And you can go back even further.
Why did France even own land over here in the United States in the 1st place?
And why did England migrate?
So you can go back as far as you want or you can just start with last month where it was about the French Revolution.
And then this one just goes into the Louisiana Purchase.
16:30
And I found a really great book about the Louisiana Purchase.
That's a cute little picture book.
And then I have found so many really cute books for Lewis and Clark in their expedition.
Some awesome people that were huge helps to them like Sacagawea.
And so some really great things with that.
16:47
It's interesting.
I utilize picture books so much for these, like for kids.
And it's great for you too because if you can explain something simple enough for a child to understand, that helps you to build this foundation too of really understanding, like what was going on?
17:07
Who were these people versus diving into some deep, really intense text that you're just not quite ready for.
So Charlotte Mason called it scaffolding, right?
But I love starting with picture books.
So if you have just really young kids, you can grab some of these picture books and just pre read them yourself.
17:26
And then you can just show the pictures to your kids and just kind of tell them because if they can't sit for a full picture book yet, right of just like look at the end.
This is they were in the Mississippi River.
And where did that go?
I'm going to say Mississippi now.
I'm trying to think if it was the Missouri, but one of those big rivers and then they went up and they were trying to find the Pacific Ocean, right?
17:45
And so you could just kind of talk about it.
Then you can go to and a kid can sit there a little bit longer that you can read the picture book to them.
If you were in a place where you're like, actually, I'm ready for my kid to just read the book by themselves.
Have them read the picture book by themselves.
And when they're ready for more, you can do the the books I've suggested with younger teens and books suggested for older teens.
18:06
And a lot of times those just because you have an older teen, it doesn't mean you need to start there.
Because if your kid doesn't even have the basic foundations of understanding, the most simplistic form of the history or the science, you throw something that's quote UN quote grade level at them, it's not going to make sense and that they're going to feel very overwhelmed and they're not going to enjoy it.
18:25
So that's why I love starting with picture books and then offering so much more.
So I had those and then I always have a couple different books that or ideas that you can do for read aloud.
I love giving a couple different options.
And then for your teens, I love to give ideas for books with a life skills, for book with finances or economics.
18:47
A book, this, this one, I didn't have a book specific for science, just because I had so many other awesome books for them to read, but they could be reading any of those picture books.
There's a field guide you could have them utilize, But then books for history, books for biographies and books for literature.
19:03
So all of those are available on my website, coachmccomas.com.
They're also LinkedIn, my Instagram bio so that you can go and download these lesson plans, but you can also just get them for free when you are in Mama's membership.
So if you were like, hey, not only do I get these lessons plans, but I also could get some help from Meg because sometimes I feel like I want to kill my kids and I don't want to keep feeling that way.
19:25
So then you can get the extra aided support, group calls and even private coaching for free just as part of your membership to get some extra help there.
So I hope this helps you as you are continuing on your home school journey.
Know that I am forever rooting you on.
Love you all and I will talk to you next week.
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