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Make all the Homeschool plans you want, the weeks of sickness will hunt you down faster than Liam Neeson in the latest Taken flick.
You will find yourself standing in a room with littles slumped tired on couches, crayons stuck in every cushion, dirty Kleenex sticking out of just everywhere thinking, “Great, how are we going to learn anything NOW?!?”
The sickness will find you, hunt you down and if you aren’t careful you will feel like your Homeschool plans have been taken too. Along with your sanity.
Nobody ever plans on losing weeks of school to sick days but I find myself there right about now, in the beginning of this dreary April.
I thought we were in the homestretch with just seven weeks of school left and instead we just lost three weeks between a week of spring break and virus going through my family like a line of dominos tumbling down in slow motion.
It started with me this time, for 5 days I felt like I couldn’t peel myself off the couch to hardly feed my kids much less teach them. By the time I’m feeling good enough to maybe, read the kids a book, it’s slowly going through us all.
So what is a homeschool family to do? Certainly I don’t just let these weeks slip completely away because my kids would actually go mad with boredom and it leaves me heavy with discouragement.
And I truly have to say how blessed I feel that we can move along on a few subjects right from the comfort of our couch. We can slowly heal our bodies without rushing our littles back to school, if you can get creative there is a lot of education that can take place on sick days!
Here is how we survive weeks of sickness in our Homeschool…
Movies
I usually hesitate to add much screen time, but when you’ve got kids with the flu, you don’t mess around! Here are all of the educational movies we typically find ourselves enjoying!
Liberty Kids has been a perfect addition to our collection since we are studying American History this year. Dreaming Daughter has been enjoying watching a show that helps her make more connections to the historical characters we’ve already been reading about!
Disney Nature documentaries have always been a favorite in our family. Every single one has left my littles captivated with the story and engaged with the beautiful scenery. If you are too sick to leave the house to enjoy nature, might as well let the nature grace the screen of your television.
Mathtacular is one of the cheesiest educational movies I have seen in a while, just saying! But I cannot deny the fact that my kids love it. Not only do they have fun watching it, it is a great visual aid when it comes to learning math! Math might be the hardest subject to accomplish when we are feeling especially sick so this has been a great addition. Pun intended. I have found the best price for Mathtacular to be over on the Sonlight website!
Audio Books
Because sometimes we love to cuddle up and listen to Mama read, and other times Mama is too sick to even read. Thankfully we had built up some Audible credits because we have used every single one of them over the last few weeks! This has helped us get through a fair amount of our Sonlight Read Aloud books while I just couldn’t imagine getting my voice to produce anything lovely sounding to come out. Here are a few we listened to these last few weeks!
The Story of Dr. Dolittle, my kids loved this one on audio book! They laughed so hard at all the silliness of a Doctor who talks to animals!
Justin Morgan Had A Horse, a beautiful story which takes place in Vermont, of a horse named Little Bub, who became a legend!
Winter Danger, takes place in the Kentucky Mountains during an extraordinarily harsh winter when a boy and his father have to move in with distant relatives. This one was a real tear jerker for me, an excellent story of learning how to give as well as let others give to you!
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of my favorites! This version is narrated by Anne Hathaway, who does an amazing job telling the story! Dreaming Daughter cannot get enough of listening to the story of Dorothy and is still waiting to know if she ever makes it home!
Blank Books
No kidding if I just leave blank books strewn about the house, my kids find them and start filling them up with pictures or use them to write stories. When they aren’t feeling good just a jar of colored pencils and a blank book is enough to keep them writing stories or drawing for hours! This keeps them working on handwriting, spelling and language arts skills even when they aren’t feeling their best.
Scratch & Sketch Books
Okay just for fun, these are a perfect way to keep little hands busy! We are studying Astronomy this year so these Solar System books were perfect to keep things familiar while taking a long break from our work books. This one in particular, along with a few others, has quite a lot of information in it as well! A perfect combination of science and art for these low key days.
Activity Books
These Usborne activity books are so fantastic. Filled with mazes, puzzles, coloring pages and fun facts to read, we cannot love these enough!
Usborne Pencil & Paper Games
If you are sick enough, you don’t even want to play board games! But these are great when all you want to do is lay on the couch but need your brain occupied! These can be played and duplicated on plain paper if needed but this book is full of game ideas requiring just a pencil & paper.
There you have it! We have rotated through all these options for weeks with only minor complaints of boredom, mainly from the healthy kids!
Weeks like this will come,
Each year I find myself more prepared to be ready for the weeks of sickness and boredom.
The least we can do is make the best of it!
How do you handle periods of extended sickness in your homeschool?
Please leave your ideas below!
