Aside from the Geology Tour that I organized for homeschoolers, a number of awesome things happened during our 2nd month of homeschooling. Below are some of the highlights of activities for the month of July:
- My youngest son enrolled in piano for his MAPEH. Although music is my second love, I can’t teach its technical aspect to my kids. No one else in my circle can do job better than my fellow thespian friend from the Madrigal Singers to give Ian piano lessons. My eldest used to take lessons from her before until he got busy with academics at his previous school. He also wanted to try other things aside from piano.
2. We also did the Geology Tour along fellow homeschooling kids as part of socialization and Alternative Learning Class in science. I organized this tour for the homeschooling coop that I belong to. I can’t wait to host another one! You can read about the tour here.
Related Article: Alternative Learning Class (ALC) in Geology for Homeschooling Kids
3. We had a half day workshop on watercolor painting with my eldest’s godmother, Tin. My kids learned how to make a color wheel by combining primary colors to make secondary and tertiary ones. After that, they were tasked to pain anything they want.
Tiled gallery shows some of the art projects we did this month using “The Usborne Book of Art Skills”. We are so lucky to have been given this book as birthday gift (for Ian).
4. For my eldest’s project in HELE, MAPEH, and science, we recycled carton tubes from my essential oil packaging and carton backing from toys to create this food park we fondly called “Chika and Lafang Food Park”. Below is the tiled gallery of our food park featuring a Ramen Cart, Donut Cart, Convenience Store, Lego customers paying via credit card, cash register, food box, table and chairs (from jewelry box and used resin cups):
My kids loved the food park I made using old cartons that they play with it daily. I’m planning to upcycled the boxes we have in storage, hubby was already complaining of the trash that I’ve accumulated. Haha!
5. As much as possible we DIY our school materials. But when I saw that this wooden math toy (photos below) was on sale at Shopee, I couldn’t resist! The toy is wooden and features black board, chalk, eraser, analog clock, tile numbers, math symbols, and counting sticks. The toy useful in doing basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Although my son can already do mental math (addition and subtraction), we still use the sticks as part of visual and memory stimulation exercise. I also upcycled the wood frame that used to house the tile numbers into an earring display/organizer!
6. I made my eldest son look at my hard bound picture about the Typhoon Yolanda to make him realize how important it is to understand the climate systems in the country. It was such an emotional session that I ended up writing about it in a blog. You can read about it here.
7. Ian learned how to tell time, days of the week, and months of the year using materials I found at Mr. Printables.
Learning how to tell time 
Months of the year 
Spelling 
Days of the Week
8. Nutrition Month Activities
My kids and I had a back-to-back meet-up with our fellow homeschooling families in Quezon City and our Salo partner cooks, as part of Nutrition Month activity. It was memorable for me mainly because it was my first time to meet our coop and as if the heavens are joking with me, we got rained on, hard, literally! I remember running for cover after the mommies had saved my kids from getting drenched. The show did go on as you can see in the photos below. We were all wet and looked like evacuees as we had to move to a village’s volleyball court and prepared our meals on the floor. We shared the meals we prepped after that in between banter and stories. I sure love my tribe!
After our meet-up with our local coop, my kids and I went straight to Cubao to meet our Salo home cooks and developer team, the first ever rendezvous we have organized as the app’s developers. We wanted to meet our partners personally as well as give back through a series of talks from chefs and marketing experts as part of our advocacy to bring the home cooks/home-based business out there. In the said meet-up, my kids and I learned about Sous Vide technique of cooking and how to prepare preservatives-free longganisa, tapa and tocino. We also learned about digital marketing and branding. It was overall a happy event for all of us, developers, guests, speakers and cooks. I can’t thank my Salo family enough for capping the Nutrition Month for us, in such a fun-filled afternoon.
Related page: How to be a Salo Ph cook
9. Finally, I taught Gugu how to do mental math; divisibility rules, fractions, greatest common factor, and least common multiple using video links sent by our homeschool provider and his old Prime Math books. 🙂 I have also downloaded the SAP Education App for my kids to use when reviewing for exams.
July has been my homeschooling “baptism by fire”, my first dive into this amazing way of educating my kids. It has not been easy being teacher to both my kids. There were so many struggles and emotional stress that only my husband know too well. It has, however, taught me something about my versatility and resilience. So I would like to end this article with a pat on my back and another thank you to my dad, my angel forever, for guiding me from heaven. I miss you dad. I do my best to make you and mom proud, always, you know that.
The Fabulous Scientist 