February Fun Days 2021, Part 2

Learning is hard work and school can become tedious. That's why I like to spice up the month of February with a fun activity every school day. Sometimes our fun extras are low-key and easy like Mismatched Sock Day. Other events take forethought and involvement like a Presidents' Day Dinner or Chinese New Year. You can see some pictures of the first half of our February Fun Month here and pictures of our Presidents' Day Dinner here. 

And now for the final stretch of our month: 

Shark Day..........................................................................................

Sharks infested our schoolroom floor! Touching the floor meant losing life or limb, a risk nobody dared to take. We set up chairs, cushions, and boxes for safety purposes. Our precautions kept us safe and they also gave this old girl far more exercise than she bargained for. By the end of the school day, I invented Shark Repellent to spray myself with if I needed to dodge into the room for something easy. 

Do School In Your Pajamas Day.........................................................

(Go, homeschool!)

Hat Day that morphed into Robot Day..............................................

Both children chose not just a hat but an entire robot head. I laughed almost every time I walked into the school room and saw my robots dutifully working. 

After school, we exchanged our robot hats ("Aww! They'd work, Mom! I'm sure they'd pass!") for our regular face masks and went to a thrift store to see if they had any deals on bunkbeds. We didn't find any bunk beds, but we found a lovely stack of books. One of them was titled Robots, a fitting end to Robot Day. 

LEGO Day.........................................................................................

As an early birthday present for Tyler, my dad helped finance a LEGO set Tyler was saving money to buy, so it made sense to have LEGO Day while he was still assembling his newly acquired set. I gave them extra recess to devote to the building project and served lunch on LEGO themed paper plates.

Idea for next time: Give the children LEGO challenges to complete. 

Opposite Day......................................................................................

We missed honoring National Opposite Day on its official day in late January because we were in the middle moving across town. So I added Opposite Day to our February Fun Days. It happened to land at a time when we had lots of snow and great sledding. We observed Opposite Day by playing first (sledding at a park during school hours) and working later (finishing school a little later than normal). 

National Gumdrop Day.......................................................................

National Gumdrop Day fell on Presidents' Day this year. Because we had enough fun and activity happening on Presidents' Day, I separated the two. The children earned a gumdrop for diligence, neat writing, good scores, and about anything else they could convince me was reward-worthy. They were so enthusiastic about earning edible prizes that I thought I should try the same idea on National Eat Brussels Sprouts Day.

National Pancake Day.........................................................................

Pancakes for supper! It gave them something fun to look forward to all day.

Art Day...............................................................................................

We interrupted math class to draw Abe Lincoln, an idea I wished I thought of on Presidents' Day. 

We followed the instructions on Art Hub for Kids to draw
Abe. Art Hub is our go-to for step-by-step drawing tutorials.

After recess, we used pasta and grains to color pictures. 

Our final project was making cardboard cities. I hung them above my coffee bar in the kitchen and love my latest decor. 

And just like that, February Fun Days are over. If you have ideas for us to use next year, let me know in the comments below. 

February Fun Month, Part One

One of my schoolteacher role models is Deana Swanson. I follow her blog, The Plain Professors, and I cob ideas she uses in her classroom, tweaking them if needed to fit my school of two. Deana suggests six months of school is long enough for winter doldrums to set in, so she implemented February Fun Month in which every day of the month has a special activity to do or something to celebrate. By adopting her idea, February became my favorite month of school. In late January, the children help me decide what activities we will do. Many ideas come from The Plain Professors or the National Day Calendar, but this month we added some of our own as well.

February Fun Days, 2021, Weeks 1 & 2:

Backwards Day
Traditionalists that we are, we usually study school subjects in the same order every day. But on Backwards Day, we reverse that order, starting instead with Science and ending with Arithmetic. 

Groundhog Day/Bring a Critter to School Day

We watched Punxsutawny Phil predict six more weeks of winter, a believable guess, considering the piles of snow all over town. We don't own a groundhog, stuffed or otherwise, so the children invited other stuffed friends to join them in school for the day. 

Mix-Up Day

In this favorite, the children pull slips of paper from a hat, shake them from a gravy shaker, find them in nooks and crannies, pop balloons to retrieve them, or unwrap them like gifts. No matter what system I use, they always love Mix-Up Days--particularly the extra activities I include like treats, extra breaks, or unexpected art projects. 

Popcorn Day

We usually don't have midmorning snacks, but this day, we ate our fill of flavored popcorn. 

National Bubblegum Day

Chew gum during school hours? Not here, except on National Bubblegum Day.

Green All Day

The children used green ink to write spelling words and ate salads for lunch. 

We made green collages.

Wore green

Drew green plants in our creative journals

Day 100

Another annual favorite happened to land in February this year. 

My children never saw candy bar
letters before--for a good reason--
but they enjoyed getting acquainted.

After receiving their letter, we had our regular school day with irregular activities mixed in:

--Measured 100 yards and ran the 100-yard dash. No Olympic records were broken, probably because we had six inches of crusty snow and six pounds of snow gear.
Oh, and because Tyler was carrying the measuring tape,
a detail he said definitely hindered speed.

--Put together 100-piece puzzles

--Learned to say 100 in French and Spanish

--Found out who was President, what stamps cost,
and what a new Chevy cost 100 years ago

Drew pictures using numerical
100's as the base

Traditional Day 100 lunch

Mismatched Sock Day

No-brainers like this one add interest to a school day without exhausting the mom. This year, I chanced upon cheap, silly socks in time to surprise the children with them on this unusual holiday.

No Desk Day

A day in which no child may do bookwork at their desk. 

Spelling Class

Chinese New Year

Another annual favorite. This year I learned about Chinese children receiving red envelopes with crisp money or notes of blessing in them. I found a template on this website and printed envelopes. To receive them, the children had to bow to me and say Thank you in Chinese. Well, sort of Chinese. We learned it from Google Translate and you know how reliable that is. My children didn't receive money in their envelopes, but found fun activities to do instead. 

Being low on red paper and not being superstitious,
I used a variety of colors.

Eating popcorn with chopsticks. 
Most of us were successful...

--We drew Chinese flags in our creative journals and made Chinese lanterns. 

I made place names for our Chinese dinner.

A delicious ending to a full week.

That brings us up to date! Next up for us is a Presidents' Day dinner made up of favorite foods of our Presidents. Guests have been invited and excitement is mounting. Speaking of that dinner, I have shopping to do and food to prepare.

Later, friends!