LIVE What Teaching Looks Like in Our Homeschool | Day 10
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 Tuesday, September 22, 2026 kindergarten day began with something very exciting for the room. Our new wooden play structure had arrived, and my son assembled it for us before the children came. It is made of beautiful pine and has such a lovely natural finish. The wood is incredibly smooth, and you can actually smell the pine when you walk into the room. I also ordered some felted autumn leaves to decorate it and dyed a piece of cotton fabric that we can drape over the top to create a cozy little enclosure for imaginative play.
Our teepee has been wonderful, but it has always been a little too small for all three boys to fit comfortably inside together. This new structure gives them much more room to play, while still creating that enclosed, cozy feeling children seem to love. I also like that we can change the configuration and make it smaller or larger depending on how they want to use it.
Once the children arrived, we spent some time checking on all of the seedlings we had planted during our previous kindergarten days. Gardening has become such a natural part of our rhythm. Some plants were thriving, while others were struggling a little, so we looked carefully at each one, watered the plants that needed it, and added a few more seeds where nothing had germinated.
I love that gardening gives children an opportunity to experience care, patience, observation, and responsibility without needing a formal lesson. They notice which plants are strong, which ones need water, and which ones might need another chance. There is so much learning happening simply through tending something over time.
We also returned to our weaving project. I demonstrated how to work over and under the warp threads, showing the children how the pattern alternates as they move across the weaving. We began with our hands before introducing a needle, giving them time to understand the movement and rhythm first.
This kind of work asks for quite a bit from young children. They have to visually track the threads, remember whether the yarn goes over or under next, coordinate both hands, pull the yarn through without making it too tight, and maintain enough focus to continue the pattern. I helped where necessary, demonstrated when needed, and then allowed them to continue working through the process themselves.
There were beautiful moments of concentration as they began to understand the rhythm of the weaving. Instead of correcting every little mistake immediately, I tried to give them enough space to notice what came next and work through the sequence.
We eventually transitioned into snack and free play before gathering again for our story. We continued reading The Hedgehog Leaves Home, following the little mouse and hedgehog as they traveled through the story and encountered a fox and her cubs. The children were completely engaged, looking closely at the illustrations, finding the animals, remembering parts of the story from previous days, and deciding very quickly whether the fox looked friendly or unfriendly.
So much of our kindergarten day continues to revolve around these very simple experiences: caring for plants, working with our hands, listening to stories, playing, observing, and participating
