Getting back in action
Hello, Home Edders!
How are you so far?
We have experienced some down-time in our homeschool recently following a 9-day weekend here in the UAE last week in celebration of the Eid Al Fitr holidays and then again this week, there was a storm that also kind of distrupted our flow.
Brain Teasers
Whatever happens, we cannot let the distractions to keep our brains understimulated. Getting back into the usual routine is also proving to be a bit challenging (as usual after a long break, sigh!). Regardless, we try to keep the brain challenged by doing some puzzles during our lazy hours.
One of the activities that all my three kids are so invested in is learning a language in Duo Lingo.
They like that it is gamified, and they can track their progress and other challenges in the app. My eldest and the Little Miss have been trying to learn Japanese, while Little Man is trying to learn Spanish.
I really do not force them to be fluent in speaking or reading, but for me introducing oneself to learn a new language is a way to tickle some parts of our brain and fire up the some neurons here and there.
"bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime," from Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.
Here's one article I found that discusses what happens inside the brain of a bilingual child.
This being said, I still am struggling to teach Filipino (Tagalog) to these three.
Puzzles!
If we cannot do sit downs to complete all of the day's lesosns, we at least do some puzzles just to challenge the brains a bit.
Please excuse the nails of this one. LOL.
Cross words, patterns, etc. Little Man loves these. He gains confidence with every completed task, he sometimes he asks for more.
I shared this library activity last time, and this is when I got to see how Little Man put together his motorcycle while following a diagram. I have to say, that there were times when I did not get how his mind was working, and yet he was able to complete the figure correctly.
This is an incomplete part of the motorcycle. There were seven (7) parts that he had to do separately before the motorcycle is done.
Memory Game
Here's another activity that we do during our down times-- cards. We love to challenge ourselves with our own memory game using the cards. We use timer and try to beat each other's time in solving the puzzle.
There are many more brain teasers that we engage in when the kids are "not in the mood to study", like a game of chess, scrabble, or solving Rubiks cube.
It's already Friday and obviously there are again 2 days of weekend ahead of us. I know it's going to be a struggle again on Monday -- seriously, how can homeschoolers get "Monday sickness"?! LOL.
Anyway, we've got to do what we have to do, right? So here's to cheering my little homeschool and myself to get through the next homeschool days.
Of course, here's us, sending good vibes and good energy to you who like us, may be struggling with "motivation" right now. Hugs!
All photos are owned by the author unless stated otherwise.