Tips & tools to support your homeschooling program.

Daily Wonder recommends that you take time to conduct a baseline assessment when you begin teaching your child each school year. Then, by observing them in everyday activities, you can track their development and become aware of areas that may need extra attention. Below, you will find specific areas to assess, ways to observe your child, and suggested activities to help strengthen particular areas of need. 

It is essential to have healthy habits when it comes to posture and pencil grip.  This will serve your child over the years as the demands for sitting at a desk and writing increase. 

ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:

1. Observe your child while they are seated at the work table. Their feet should land on the floor, and their legs should be at a right angle to their body.  Take note of whether they seem very tired or have trouble keeping their spine straight. 
2. At the same time, you can observe their pencil grip. It will be important for them to learn the proper pencil grip to maintain stamina while writing.  Proper pencil grip also includes relaxed shoulders, allowing the non-dominant hand to play the role of stabilizer. 

Eye-tracking is an important foundation skill for reading. It’s important to notice whether your child can move their eyes horizontally while their head stays stationary. It is common to observe a tremor at the centre midline, which may indicate difficulty crossing the midline. ​

​ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:

1. Observe your child watch a bird or airplane pass through the sky. Do their eyes move smoothly as they follow? 
2. Tie an object to the end of a string and swing it back and forth. Observe your child’s eyes as they move from left to right while following it.
3. Observe your child as they read a book. Watch for smoothness as they track from left to right.

We use our memory for imaginative thinking. For example, when we remember something we’ve been told or see, we build imaginative pictures in our brains, leading to high-level thinking. The ability to build pictures takes practice, and we can strengthen this skill through memory games.

ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:

1. Ask your child to describe their bedroom to you while you are both sitting in the living room. 
   
2. If appropriate, ask them to tell you the days of the week or days of the months.
   
3. Ask them to tell you what they had for breakfast yesterday, or the day before etc.
   
4. Any memory question like; where do we go for summer vacation or who was at Sunday dinner last week? Etc.

Content warning.  This post, which addresses the painful history of residential schools, may be distressing to some readers.

Canada has declared that September 30th will be a National Day for Truth & Reconciliation fulfilling the Truth & Reconciliation Commission's call to action #80. This call to action means that the federal government in collaboration with aboriginal peoples, established this statutory holiday to honour Survivors, their families and communities and ensure that the history and legacy of residential schools is never forgotten.

This has created another opportunity to find meaningful ways to connect to this important part of Canada's history.  Below we share some ideas for how you can honour this day.

Appropriate for Grades 1 and up:
Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, a residential school survivor, shares her personal story which inspired Orange Shirt Day. 

After you share this story, here are three simple craft ideas for the young child, to build meaning and connection with the story:

• Garland of Goodness: Create orange hearts from whatever material you have on hand.  Ask your child to come up with kind words for Phyllis and write each word on a heart.  String the hearts together to form a garland that can be hung in a tree or in your window.
• Rocks of Reconcili-Action: Gather rocks from outside.  Paint them orange then add words of positive action to promote reconciliation and leave them in your community for others to find.  Some examples could be; Be Honest, Show Compassion, Love your Neighbour etc...
• Creative Colouring: Have your child colour this 'Every Child Matters' colouring page.'  If you enjoyed this activity, there are lots more colouring pages here.

Appropriate for Grades 3 and up:
This video is a gentle reminder of what residential schools were and why it's important to learn about them.

After watching the video you could have your child do the following activity:

• Compassion Collage: Have your child consider the question; what is reconciliation?  Watch this short video if needed, then have them create a collage that answers; "what is my commitment to reconciliation?"
• A Poem for Phyllis: Have your child create a concrete poem in the shape of a meaningful indigenous artifact from your area. 

At Daily Wonder, our goal is to connect parents with heart-felt, age appropriate activities to bring meaning to being human in our world.  We hope to inspire you to build community and take a moment to reflect and connect on this new national holiday in Canada.  We'd love to see your ideas.  Be sure to share with us how you built connection on this day.

Whether you welcome routine, or resist it, we're here to tell you why you should embrace it.

At Daily Wonder we talk a lot about rhythm and routine.  That’s because we know that young children feel a sense of good health when they are held by boundaries, including the lay-out of the day, week, month…. Children are meant to learn through play and doing until they reach high school.  This means we need to provide them with lots of activities that spark their creativity and provide space for wonder.  When they know what is expected of them children are freed up to be in the moment.  It is up to the adults to create the boundaries to free the children.
 
A friend recently told us that she was not expecting the freedom that came with building a fence around her property.  It sounds kind of backwards, that a fence creates freedom, but think about it…she has a dog that had to be tied up or managed all the time.  Once the fence went up, the dog knew how far it could go and the people trusted that the dog would just do dog things. We aren’t comparing children and dogs, but we are comparing the freedom fence to boundaries.
 
Rhythm – this is your wide level organization such as your year, when you start school, what holidays or celebrations you participate in, what time you get up each day, what time you start and end your morning lesson…
 
Routine – these are the details within your rhythm such as singing a song to begin the morning lesson, lighting a candle before story, and how you end the day.  Routines are kind of like the rules for ‘how we do things’. 

2. Yes, it's not your own dog's poop, but pick it up anyways if you see it on your walk.
3. Ditch the paper towels, use a cloth instead.
4. Refuse the plastic straw and carry your own reuse-able ones.
5. Donate old clothing and household items to your local thrift stores, free stores or shelters.
6. Buy local, support local businesses and cut down on environmental shipping costs.
7. Choose sustainable products.
8. Grow a garden, even just one pot with a plant on your window sill if you don't have a yard.

More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. For more information, visit www.earthday.org

The Easter Bunny
A charming, simple story about how the Easter Bunny learned how to deliver eggs. http://happywhimsicalhearts.com/2016/03/easter-bunny-rabbits/ This website has really great resources on further ways to celebrate the seasons, ways to bring Waldorf into the home, etc.

Egg Dying 
Natural dyed eggs are usually a 2 day project. To prepare, collect leaves and flowers, and secure them to the eggs using panty hose or cheese cloth (they work best when freshly picked, as maleable and moist sticks best to the eggs). After they have sat in the dye, the wrapping is removed revealing the beautiful stamp of the chosen flower or leaf.

If you're not so keen on the chemicals in store-bought Easter egg dye, try these nine all-natural options. Each features a colouring agent — a vegetable, fruit juice, or spice — that gives colour to hard-boiled eggs.

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery by the great prophet Moses. Moses would not have survived to free his people, had it not been for the cleverness of his sister Miriam. She set him in a basket on the river Nile, and watched over him until the Pharaoh's daughter found him and took him home to be her own son. 

In this way, Moses survived the dangerous times in Egypt, and grew up with a deep compassion for the Jewish people. In his adult years, he fulfilled his destiny to guide the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, to form a covenant with God through the Ten Commandments. 

Miriam, perhaps the only woman in the bible, who is not referred to as someone's mother or daughter, has, in more recent times, taken a place of honour at the Passover Seder. As Jewish celebrations and rituals become modernized to fit our new levels of awareness, we turn to the women of the Bible stories, choosing to elevate them to places of importance. In modern Jewish rituals, when the Seder, or religious dinner ritual takes place, many families choose to include Miriam as one of the sacred guests. A cup is filled with water, in her honour, and songs and stories are shared to celebrate her strengths. 

What a wonderful time we live in, where we can honour the importance of the feminine, and include it in a ritual that was formed thousands of years ago. 

Here are some ways you can learn more about Miriam and celebrate her as well.

Sing Miriam's Song
A beautiful song depicting the spirit of women now and in ancient days.  Here are the lyrics so you can sing along:​

Hey Parents! After you have been a super hero and guided your child through the Daily Wonder morning lesson, maybe you want to take a step back, maybe you have to attend to your regular job, or maybe you need a coffee break.  Whatever the reason, learning does not have to stop. In fact, learning is an ongoing process, and Daily Wonder will show you how easy it is to connect regular homeschool activities like free-play and everyday life experiences with your Ministry of Education Big Ideas and Learning Outcomes!

Applied Design, Skills and Technologies
Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Designs grow out of natural curiosity
Grades 4-5: Big Ideas/Concepts: Designs can be improved with prototyping and testing.  Skills are developed through practice, effort and action.

Math
Grade 1: Big Idea/Concept:  Addition and subtraction with numbers to 10 can be modeled concretely, pictorially, and symbolically to develop computational fluency.
Grade 3: Big Idea/Concept: Fractions are a type of number that can represent quantities.
Grade 5: Adjust the recipe and learn this Big Idea/Concept: Numbers describe quantities that can be represented by equivalent fractions.

Career Education
Grade 1-3: Big Ideas/Concepts: Strong communities are the result of being connected to family and community and working together toward common goals.  Everything we learn helps us to develop skills.  Communities include many different roles requiring many different skills.

Career Education
Grades 4-5: Big Ideas/Concepts: Strong communities are the result of being connected to family and community and working together toward common goals. Leadership requires listening to and respecting the ideas of others.
Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Practicing respectful, ethical, inclusive behaviour prepares us for the expectations of the workplace.  Leadership represents good planning, goal setting, and collaboration.

Career Education
Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Confidence develops through the process of self-discovery

Physical and Health Education
Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Knowing about our bodies and making healthy choices helps us look after ourselves.

Physical and Health Education
Grade1: Big Idea/Concept: Good health comprises physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Grades 2-3: Big Idea/Concept: Having good communication skills and managing our emotions enables us to develop and maintain healthy relationships.

Physical and Health Education
Grade 1: Big Idea/Concept: Good health comprises physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Grades 2-3: Big Idea/Concept: Having good communication skills and managing our emotions enables us to develop and maintain healthy relationships.

Physical and Health Education and Career Education
Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Our personal digital identity forms part of our public identity. Practicing respectful, ethical, inclusive behaviour prepares us for the expectations of the workplace.

Applied Design Skills and Technology
Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Technologies are tools that extend human capabilities. 
Grades 4-5: Big Idea/Concept: Skills are developed through practice, effort, and action. 
Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Design can be responsive to identified needs. 
Complex tasks require the acquisition of additional skills.