My homeschooling career started 19 years ago, and I STILL LOVE, LOVE IT!

Being my children’s teacher is so fulfilling.

I praise the Lord for that fact!

Over our Christmas break I spent many days planning school.

Yes, that says days!

Ever since our “first day” of school back in August, I have just been winging it.

There have been SO many other things needing my attention!

All good things!

But I missed planning school and having a good plan to follow SO much.

I’m glad to be back at it to bring this important thing to fruition!

I planned four weeks of school over Christmas break – including four weeks of FIAR.

FIAR is my favorite way of schooling the kiddos!

Take a book, read it, and run with ALL kinds of learning based on that one story.

It’s SO FUN!

This past week we started our learning from a book called Hanna’s Cold Winter.

It’s about a family that saves the hippos in a zoo in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II.

As I am reading the book aloud to the children, they have a tic tac toe board of words they are listening for.

This activity builds listening skills!

And it builds vocabulary and spelling skills too!

We read a go along book called The Butterfly which is about a French family who was hiding Jews in their cellar during the Nazi occupation in France also during World War II.

These books have sparked SO much conversation!

The best part of reading aloud to your kiddos!

Since we read a book called The Butterfly, we did a butterfly craft!

I get all of my FIAR and craft ideas on Pinterest!

First we outlined our butterflies with black glue.

After the glue dried, we water colored our butterflies.

Then it was time to decorate them!

The kiddos enjoyed that craft a lot.

We have many more go along books to read and hands on activities to do based on the book Hanna’s Cold Winter.

School these days is good.

Looking forward to many more days of learning with these kiddos!!