Theme Weeks

{Abby and Connor with symmetrical butterflies they painted during Bug Week}

TIP: Choose a theme to study with your kids each week.

A few months ago I was feeling lame as a mom. I was just getting through the days, not making them special. Not that every moment as a family needs to be special, but I wanted to have one small moment each day that felt special. One moment when I was really living in that moment with my children, experiencing life and learning together.

With a nudge from a good friend, I started Theme Weeks (for example, Weather Week). Each week I chose a topic and came up with five activities, one for each day, we could do to learn about and celebrate our theme. At some point in every day we found time to focus on our theme and, more importantly, on doing something together.

SIDE NOTE: As I mentioned in my introduction, I'm not good at playing with my kids. I don't know how to play trains or Planet Heroes; setting up a track, sorting toys, playing board games, doing puzzle, an activity with a method is more my style. Organizing a plan for focused kid-Mom time is necessary for me to feel involved and successful as a mother.

You can check out the theme weeks we did at the blog I created for planning and recording our experiences. (You'll notice that it's been a while since we've done this. Just like everything, these ideas ebb and flow. I'm sure we'll try theme weeks again when the need for them arises.)

I found that having a theme each week really helped us to learn more about one subject. It helped us remember what we had done and learned. And it helped us learn how to learn; by studying one subject we found different ways to gather answers to our questions.

If you feel like you could step it up a notch as a mom (like I did) then give Theme Weeks a try!