Like most of the country, I unexpectedly began homeschooling my kids last month. Our school district decided at 3pm on one Sunday afternoon that school would not be resuming- which was the right thing to do, but that didn’t give us much time to prepare for “school” the next day!
Now that it’s been a month, we’ve gotten a little more into the swing of things. Each kid is getting some guidance on what to do from their teachers, but a lot of the learning has been left up to me. I’m actually really enjoying it! We’re making sure to tackle the subjects that they would have been learning, but teaching them at home gives me the ability to focus on the things that I want to as well, and can even provide more opportunity for hands-on learning. That is, with the right resources!
Dole, our favorite fruit brand, has a lot of great resources on their website for teaching kids about nutrition and food. They recently added a few materials that we’ve used in our at-home curriculum that have been a big hit!
First, for lunch time last week I challenged the kids to “Snack Their Colors” with this chart from the Dole website! It has a rainbow- Zac’s favorite- and helps kids keep track of which colors they’ve eaten so they can try to fill up their rainbows! We did the best we could for now of course, since we’ve been limiting our shopping and can’t quite get to every color right now. But the kids had fun seeing how many they could eat and have committed to eating a full rainbow once we can get all the colors we need!
Then, we used these Garden Markers to get ready to plant a garden! We live in the desert and our landscaping is all rocks, so we can’t grow a full garden. But we’re going to grow some tomatoes and we’re going to try for some zucchini and yellow bell peppers too, so we got our garden markers ready!
{Side note: These DIY Garden Markers- and the Grow Your Alphabet Garden Markers– also make great matching game cards if you print two sets!}
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Finally, we downloaded the Banana Crossword Fun sheet and worked on that together, learning about our favorite fruit along the way!
While my kids are missing traditional school, it’s made it a little easier to cope with our new normal by making the school day a little more fun and interesting. It also means a lot to me that companies like Dole have really stepped in to help out parents like me who are looking for creative and fun ways to keep their kids engaged and learning.
You can find all of these FREE resources and more, including a Healthy Eating Toolkit, a Digital Cookbook Library, and Health Resources for Families on the Dole website!
What are some ways you’re keeping “school” interesting for your kids?
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