Building healthy families at home.
My decision this spring to get myself moving and healthy has been difficult for Xav. He has been concerned that I've been "starving" myself. Though I have been explaining nutrition, healthy eating, and sensible portions he seemed to really struggle with the idea of "denying" yourself food. He seems to think if you eat a healthy meal, you can fill the time between meals with all the empty junk you want. The WAY Comes Home Kit from HomeSchool Scholastics, an i4 Learning Company is helping me teach the boys more about the better choices I've been making and why it is important for all of us to look after the bodies God has given to us.
WAY stands for Wellness, Academics, & You. Originally, developed in 2005 for use in schools, the new WAY Comes Home Kit was created especially for homeschoolers. WAY combines physical activities, vocabulary, and learning activities about health, nutrition, and fitness. The WAY Comes Home Kit includes tons of items to help you teach your family a bit about all those topics.
UN-boxing day was a blast! The kit comes with an Instructor/Parent Guide, DVD with video clips and exercise segments, student journals (3 options based on age/grade level), a balance scale, plastic eggs, three small bins, a stethoscope, ink pad, WAY Comes Home to MyPlate booklet, vocabulary cards and activity pack, and glitter.
The Parent Guide and Journals (for K-1, grades 2-3, and grades 4-5) are all softcover books. The journals vary in length from 40 to 64 pages. The Parent Guide is 144 pages. The boys loved that the journals have a blank cover for them to personalize any way they wanted.There is also a consumable packet of WAY vocab cards and illustrations. This pack includes the cards for all three levels. Copyright allows for copying some of the pages for games like matching.
All of these cool pieces are included in the WAY Comes Home Kit. There was just so much. You can see why the boys were so excited to unpack the box when it arrived.
For ease of use, the Parent Guide is color coded by the three age levels.
- Health Safari - blue and green for K-1
- Me Mysteries - orange and red for 2nd-3rd
- Innerspace Adventure - purple and blue for 4th-5th or 6th
Each lesson begins with a synopsis for the parent, followed by a list of required and some optional items for that level, including on-topic library books. Vocabulary words are listed and followed by activities that involve reading, demonstrations, and discussions. These are followed by possible ways to include children in the household who are working at other levels.
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| Some of the activities in L to R Health Safari, Me Mysteries, and Innerspace Adventure. |
There are plenty of blank pages in the journals for recording information and completing activities from the Include Me Too! sections, but the books aren't actually set up to do exactly the same thing across the age levels. Part of this makes sense, as children at different levels understand the information differently and may need different instruction. As the parent teaching three kiddos at different levels, it would have been more convenient if everyone was recording basically the same things. For instance, in module three one book had a chart to record the student's resting, active, and recovering heart rate. Another level has several blank, lined pages for recording all physical activity and related information for one week. The third level has pages for drawing pictures. I would have loved a simple chart in each book. We all completed the activity and recorded the information, because heart and respiration rates are an excellent indicator of how we are working our bodies. I think WAY works best for multiple kids at different levels if you chose a level to work on, then do the activities that incorporate other ages.
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| The journaling pages in the upper grades and K-1 books. |
The lessons can be completed in a week or so or could take much longer with all of the other optional activities. The topics remain the same for each module even though the journals do not cover them in the same way. There are so many things to choose from and books to read, this could keep us busy for much of the school year.
Module 1: Getting Started - The importance of learning about health and wellness.
Module 2: Where Do You Begin - Students learn how to assess where they are now and document the information so they can review personal progress.
Module 3: Let's Get Active - Explore different types of physical activities.
Module 4: The Nutrition WAY - Learn about healthy eating using the MyPlate Guidelines.
Module 5: Health-It's Personal - Everyday health and hygiene practices are learned in this module.
You may know that technology is not my friend. I've looked and looked for pictures from our germy/moldy bread experiment and cannot find them anywhere!
I do, however, have pics from the glitter experiment WHICH WE DID OUTDOORS! Here, Xav was contaminated by glitter germs. If you've ever worked with glitter you know it *is* just like a contamination. He shook hands with Merrick and we examined the cross contamination that occurred. After that, they went around touching the railing and other things around the yard, happily spreading their glittery germs everywhere they went.
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| Spreading germs. |
There is also an online component available to purchasers. We didn't receive access to it, but I understand new content is added every month and lessons in math, science, and technology are being planned. This is a terrific Homeschool health and wellness curriculum.
As of right now, the entire WAY Comes Home Curriculum kit is $10 off the regular price of $49.95. As a special offer to all Schoolhouse Review Crew readers there is an additional discount of $15 which will about cover shipping to most locations! Simply use the code GC0737011 at checkout.
Find HomeSchool Scholastics on social media.
Twitter @WAYComesHome
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