Homeschooling the early years, part 9, Special Days

NOTE: This series is for newbie homeschoolers that are in overdrive…overplanning, overscheduling and overthinking your child’s preK or kinder year….WE’VE ALL DONE IT. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Jump to Part: | Part 1 | 2-An Enriching Environment | 3-Books | 4-Creating & Playing | 5-Friends | 6-Outside Time | 7-Weekly Clubs & Classes | 8-Media Time | 9-Special Days | 10-Trips | 11-Learning Activities | 12-Final Words

This is part 9 of my 12 part series on “Homeschooling the Early Years”, discussing the things that my family did with our littles instead of using a preK or kindergarten curriculum…

Here’s what I’ve talked about in this series so far:

• setting up an enriching environment
• spending lots of time reading great books
• making sure to have daily creative and play time
• schedule as much friend time as possible
• spending lots of time outside
• having the kids in 1 or 2 weekly clubs and classes
• learning from age appropriate media, such as computer and tv time…

Continuing on….

Instead of curriculum….We celebrated special occasions with friends and family…

Things like birthdays and holidays were very fun times with our friends and family…My kids’ themed birthdays were always a huge affair, I called them “Birthday Extravaganzas” and went all out in the planning…We didn’t do anything big like we did birthdays. It was our one big event for each child annually. Once they got older, they did much of the planning! But oh I had so much fun with their birthdays when they were little!

Here’s a list of the themes we’ve done for my kids over the years:

My daughter: Lego Duplo, Bugs, Flower Fairies, Jungle, Mermaid, Fancy Tea Party, Art Show, Dragons, Minecraft, Origami, Doctor Who, Halloween…

My son: Splash Party, Construction, Animals, Robots, Snakes, Aliens, Mad Scientist, Messy Party, Lego, Water War…

We also took every opportunity to celebrate other fun holidays and special occasions we could when my kids were little…to enjoy time with friends and family and ENJOY LIFE and make fun memories!

The pics of the celebrations below are only the ones that happened when they were 5 and under. And I, sadly, don’t have great pics of every party…We focused mainly on the event and didn’t always do a good job of documenting.

So many FUN times!! And lots of things learned by littles! Not the least of which is that dreaded S word…socialization.

So many relationships developed and fond memories made.

We also attended special community events…

There were many special events in our community that we attended with friends and family…

So many awesome events we participated in! I don’t have good pictures of every event…plus there wouldn’t be enough room for them all!

Go on to Part 10