LIVE Kindergarten Adventures | Day 7
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play.
Our seventh day, Thursday, September 10, 2026, homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews began in our kindergarten room, which is really starting to come together. I recently finished building a little shelf and have been filling the space with things from our homeschool room along with a few things I've purchased specifically for the children. We meet twice a week for two hours, although I'm quickly realizing that two hours never feels like enough time.
Today we were preparing a fall meal together with acorn squash, butternut squash, carrots, kale, and chicken. I cut the squash in half ahead of time so each child could work with their own piece. Using little grapefruit spoons, they scooped out all of the seeds while I prepared kale chips with olive oil and salt. They only take about five to eight minutes at 350°F, but you really have to watch them because they can go from soft to burnt very quickly.
My 15-year-old daughter helped the children peel carrots. The carrots didn't really need to be peeled, but I wanted them to have the experience of using the peelers. Once they were peeled, I cut them into long pieces so the children could practice cutting them into smaller pieces with serrated knives. They've had several opportunities to work with knives now, and they're becoming so capable and confident. These are real tools, and even at four years old, I think it's important for children to begin learning how to use them carefully and appropriately.
Once most of our kitchen work was finished, the children enjoyed the kale chips while I seasoned everything and prepared our meal for the oven. Then something happened that hasn't happened very much during our previous lessons. They became completely absorbed in imaginative play.
Usually the children are so eager to move from one project to the next that they don't spend very long playing. Today, however, my 15-year-old daughter and their 11-year-old brother created some games for them. My daughter brought down dress-up clothes that my own children used years ago, and I even pulled an old teepee out of the garage. It's simply made with dowels, an old sheet, and a few pieces of fabric, but they loved it.
They played for about 45 minutes, and they were so beautifully engaged that my sister-in-law and I simply sat down and enjoyed a cup of coffee. I had planned to do wet-on-wet watercolor painting, but I would have happily skipped it because their imaginative play was going so well.
The children, however, had been looking forward to watercolor painting. The previous day, they had helped me open a package containing watercolor bookmarks, so they remembered and specifically asked to paint. Since my sister-in-law had some extra time, our usual two-hour lesson stretched to more than three hours.
We're beginning our watercolor experience very simply with yellow. At this age, there's quite a bit to learn beyond simply putting paint on the paper. The children are learning how to hold and care for their brushes, how to rinse them, dry them, and return to the paint. I'm still learning too, particularly when it comes to how much I should correct things like paintbrush and pencil grip at this age.
Once the paintings were finished, we finally sat down for our fall meal. It had been waiting in the oven while we painted, so it was a little more cooked than I intended, but it was still delicious. I especially loved the butternut squash with a little cinnamon.
Because our day had already gone well beyond our usual time, we skipped our closing story and ended with the meal. The children's watercolor paintings stayed behind to dry, along with all of the seeds they had collected from the squash.
After everyone left, I had one more little experiment to work on. I've been saving avocado skins from the guacamole we made during a previous lesson to use for natural dyeing. My freezer is becoming completely filled with compost and plant dye materials, so I'm experimenting with drying the avocado skins and storing them in mason jars instead. I'm curious to see whether they'll produce the same colors once we eventually use them for dyeing.
Our seventh day ended up being much longer than planned, but it was filled with practical work, cooking, painting, imaginative play, and plenty of unexpected moments. I'm continuing to learn that sometimes the best thing I can do is allow the children the time to become completely absorbed in what they're already doing.
