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Hey friends, how are you?
I don't know if you've noticed the last few weeks the podcast format has been a tiny bit different.
Some episodes have no intro or no outro.
It's because I'm having technical issues on my side.
I have been using a certain platform to just upload my podcast myself and they have completely changed it and I'm trying to figure it all out.
0:22
So maybe I will get it fixed in the future, maybe I won't.
But I will still be here every time and at least get this part of the podcast done.
So thank you for your patience today.
We are diving into the lesson plans for April and I have some pretty fun things in store for April and I thought it would be so fun to do May, do a really simplified schedule.
0:45
Because I know sometimes in May we are maybe just barely pulling along and doing our very best and maybe you're finishing up something.
So I thought it would be super fun that when we get to May, I'm just going to give it away.
I'm just going to give it to you for free, so make sure you're on my e-mail list or I'll give you a spot where you can grab that.
1:04
So I'm going to be doing that in May and it'll be a really fun, simplified version, give you time to finish anything else you wanted to finish up, but also give you some structure if you're still going strong in May.
So excited to do that.
But today I want to talk about what we are doing for April.
So once again, there is no rush.
1:22
In home school, if you guys have been loving what we've been doing and you're like, we want to stay and we want to talk about all of these amazing things and we want us to dive in on this person and this person and go do all these things, then by all means do that.
This is just merely ideas and suggestions for you to keep your school going so you don't have to go and research all these YouTube videos or you don't have to find an activity or what books to read, all those types of things.
1:46
Just trying to make things as simple as possible.
So here on the podcast I just kind of give you the general idea and then obviously if you want all the books and all the guides and all those types of things, then I will do that.
But I know a lot of you just like to have some some direction and then grab your own book.
So I'm glad that this helps you.
2:03
So in April, one of the challenges I found is because every month I have been doing one of my successful 6 habits and skills with your children.
So we've done finances, emotional, mental, physical, social.
2:20
So we're to the final one, which is the final S, which is spiritual.
And the part where I was struggling with this is because spirituality to me is the most individualized, whether you're religious or not religious, are you?
Do you belong to a certain religion?
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Right.
Did you believe in Jesus?
Do you not believe in Jesus?
Do you believe in God?
Don't believe in God, All those types of things.
And so I found myself really stuck of what to do because I've had people reach out to me before, like we're not super religious.
Are all of your books religious?
And so I love that it can be for the masses, but I also loved this idea of but there are a lot of you who are spiritual and who do want to talk about those things.
3:00
And I thought how in the world do I tackle that right?
So I was trying to be really prayerful and really mindful of spiritual, of really making them general without making them specific, but allowing somebody to space with these books to either then dive deep and say like here's some of the symbolism with it or to just say this is a really cute story.
3:23
So as I was praying and thinking about all these things, I had the idea of Narnia, of Chronicles of Narnia.
So that could be that could be your teen's reading, it could be your monthly reading of just Narnia.
They also found, I found a children's version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
3:42
So if you are religious, you can go into the symbolism of Aslan and all the things that they do, and if you're not, it's just a really beautiful story.
So I thought that would be a really great way to really touch on the subject with spirituality and maybe a higher power without putting it in a child's face, right?
4:00
And so I have some books from CS Lewis and Max Lucado where there's just a lot of symbolism that you can make it mean that it's a higher power or it can just be a lovely story.
And I'm really excited about that because to me it was a great way to if you are religious because we just watched we had my 12 year old just finished the line that the whole sorry the whole Chronicles of Narnia series.
4:24
So we for classic movie Sunday watched the I think there are three videos that 3 movies they made so we watched all those and then we like what on this awesome conversation and deep dive of what is the symbolism of all of these books.
But if you're not religious you can just like what a great story that is so fun it's very captivating right all those types of things.
4:42
So I'm really excited about that as far as our habits for spirituality that I will be adding in.
So then we have, let's see our arts.
And the poet for April will be Emily Dickinson.
5:00
And it's interesting because sometimes if you just Google poets and get like all their poetry, sometimes you're like, oh, this is crazy or a little different.
So I love books that highlight some of their best works of art.
And so we'll be doing some of that with Emily Dickinson.
OK, this one I just.
5:17
I was in love with because well, composer, I'll stop there for start.
There we are going to be studying Frederick Chopin and I hope I saying that name correctly.
Chopin, Chopin, some awesome works of art, of his, of some beautiful music and books about him, all those types of things.
5:33
But this is fun.
So I think feel like sometimes in the home school world we only study certain artists and we're very very particular, right.
We do Da Vinci A bazillion times, and Michelangelo and Rembrandt and Van Gogh, so we'd like all of these good classics.
5:51
But sometimes we forget people who are different, and I don't like that.
I like including everybody.
So I we included Picasso.
Geez, was I don't even think it was in these lesson pods.
I think I just did that in my own home school last year.
And I know some people are like, I hate Picasso.
6:06
He's crazy, his art is ridiculous, all those types of thing.
But the reason I loved it so much is because one of my kids wouldn't create because it didn't look perfect or didn't look like this masterpiece that we were studying.
And when we did Picasso, we made crazy art and we did, we did faces and we just had tons of construction paper.
6:28
And so it could be any color and the eyes could be any shape and they could be anywhere in your face.
And then same with the nose and all those types of things.
And all of a sudden it gave this kid this space saying, oh, I can create and it doesn't have to look a certain way.
So it totally gave my my son this space to realize that art gets to be so many different ways and not just these classic artists who are beautiful and I love their works of art.
6:53
There's just so many more.
So this one is going to be a very different one and I'm excited about it.
So, and I hope I say his name right, that's not my strong suit, is pronouncing people's names correctly.
So I apologize because it goes in with what our science will be, but we are going to be studying Louis Wayne and he was a British artist who painted cats and a lot of cats.
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And it's most likely that he was schizophrenic and started to decline, his mental health and all these types of things and so his works of art, you will see a shift from when his mental state was better to when it gets more, what's the word as he goes on a decline.
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And so you'll see the art just get really, really different in exploring these types of things.
But I just love the idea of this man who really loved cats.
And I'd love cats.
I I do.
But I just thought how interesting that he was able to take a subject he loved and create with it.
7:49
And I love that idea with our kids.
So, so often we're just like, you have to fit in this beautiful little box.
And sometimes even as home schoolers, we're like, no, get outside the box.
And then we start teaching.
We're like, but kind of be in a box, right?
And we got to learn these types of things and do these types of things.
8:05
So I love grabbing somebody that's just completely different.
And so I found some really awesome books with him, some really fun videos, all of those types of things to just really study him.
There is a movie about him.
I cannot remember what it is even rated or if it's appropriate.
8:21
You would have to go and check that out if you wanted to see kind of his story in his life through a movie format.
So there is a movie made about him, but just kind of fun of really just finding a different artist that's just different and exploring all those types of things.
So the reason I picked him is because for science we are studying animals.
8:41
So I thought, how fun to have our artist be somebody who is painting cats and then for our science, having animals.
So there are so many awesome ways you can go with animals.
I mean really, if you don't want to buy any book, you can just go to the zoo, you can walk around the neighborhood and try to find animals.
8:59
I don't know where you live.
We live in a rooster alley.
We our rooster's actually gone.
But our neighbors, let's see, we had 1234 other neighbors and then at one time we had my rooster.
So 5 Roosters.
So the summertime.
It's hilarious here.
One of my neighbors has goats.
9:15
Just different things like that where you can find animals in your town if you're in a city, right?
I bet you have a lot more dogs and different types of dog breeds and different things that you could just really find with that.
I'm going to a zoo looking stuff up online, lots of stuff like that.
And then always I'll have some book recommendations, some fun stuff.
9:33
But you know, it's funny.
We have animal flash cards and my kids love these flash cards and we'll look at these flash cards all the time.
They just have little sciencey facts about them, about animals and all of those fun things.
And so something as simple as that.
So lots of fun things with animals usually.
9:50
I always have writing.
So with our writing for April, it is actually going to be a animal project where you'll get to dive into an animal, learn about it, kind of do a research project.
A really simplified form if you have younger kids, but obviously you could go much more in depth with older kids.
10:07
So just trying to have everything kind of relate to one another.
OK then we have history.
So we kind of are going on still.
We've just been doing a deep dive with America.
And I love, love, love doing deep dives.
And I was, I think it was either a real or somewhere I was reading.
10:25
But what's so fun about home school is that we get to dive in and find out why.
So instead of just saying the American Revolution, war started in the late 1700s and 76 they signed the Declaration of Independence and yada yada yada, America becomes a new nation.
10:41
But it's like why in the world were the Americans fighting the British in the 1st place?
Right.
So I love that we got to study so much why?
And so this last month in March, we did the Constitution.
And so we're going to add on to that and add on to the Bill of Rights.
And for older kids, if they're really this would be, if a kid is really wanting this, the The Federalist Papers.
11:01
So different things like that, but then the story of the flag and the story of the sea, the let's see the flag, the Bill of Rights, stuff like that of just really understanding American history at such a deep level to kind of tie off our American history study in such a fun way of that founding fathers research.
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So that will be a ton of fun for teens.
I have lots of fun books for for spirituality.
Once again, I went with stuff that was just written by CS Lewis so that it is kind of just Christian neutral.
11:37
One of them is Christian heroes.
So if you are not super religious, you could just even read it as a person, just like I would read somebody else like oh, this is a really neat Jewish man or this is a really neat Muslim woman or something like that, right?
So you could read it in that context of this is just a nice story about a man who happens to be Christian if you are not religious, but if you are, then fantastic and dive in.
11:59
Either way, it works.
Some awesome books about animals, history, the law.
So we have a version, right, for younger kids of the real version of the law for older kids.
All those types of things of just really being able to dive in and create this amazing home school for you.
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So our memorization will be a poem by Emily Dickinson, our scripture, this month.
What is it?
Oh, it's about love, right?
So first, John, let's see John, chapter 4, verses 7:00 and 8:00.
So just really diving in about love and God's love for us because we are working on the habit of spirituality.
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So you can just go ahead and take these topics and go and create whatever it is you want to create.
If you're like Meg, I'm burned out.
You can go on over to coachmegthomas.com and you can grab a Lesson plan.
I always do a link in my Instagram as well at coach Meg Thomas and we can really dive in and I can help you create such an amazing home school.
12:59
So make sure you go ahead and grab those.
Or if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me and have an amazing rest of your day.
See you friends.