Welcome to OM's Newsletter for Homeschooling Families:
We're Highlighting Middle School!  

We're celebrating our middle school students with a collection of craft activities, book reviews, and tips to guide your child towards independent learning. Enjoy!
12 Ways to Support Independence in Learning
As students approach adolescence, they experience a growing sense of independence and a desire to take more ownership over their learning. But independence is a skill that grows slowly and needs to be nurtured over time.

Students need opportunities to repeatedly practice and gain confidence in their capabilities. They also need to trust that an adult will be ready and available for support when they need it. Read on for a few ways that parents and teachers can foster independence in their children .
Bring on the Birds!
Citrus Bird Feeder
Animals adapt and change their behavior based on the season. This is often most easy to observe in the birds flying right outside your window! To aid this seasonal observation of birds, we suggest creating a citrus bird feeder to attract them to visit your home.

Printables and Activities for Bird Lovers

Do you and your child love bird watching? Especially now, bird watching is a fun and engaging activity you can do from the comfort of your home or just outside your window. Keep the fun going with these printables and activities from Brightly.

Book Review: Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly
from our K-8 Director, Kay Gibson
Song for a Whale is a story about different methods of communicating and some of their challenges. Iris is the only deaf person in her school, which creates a barrier to other students and some of her teachers. She feels like no one listens to her. She is a girl who is technologically gifted and loves to fix old radios. Feeling vibrations and sound through her limbs, she is able to get an idea of different sound qualities.

When she attends a science class, she learns about a whale, Blue 55, who is unable to communicate with other whales. Iris understands how he must feel. When she develops a plan to help Blue 55, it takes her and her grieving grandmother, who is also deaf, on a journey to seek out Blue 55. This book inspires readers to learn about others and their special qualities.

The Oak Meadow 2020 Photo Contest yielded 556 entries!
And we're still in awe of all the passion your entries showed! See all our submissions in our  online gallery .

Winners
K-4: Tanner and the Lanae family
5-8: Dénis and the Wijnant family
High school: Isabella Furze

Our 5-8 winner is an Oak Meadow enrolled family, the Wijnants from Malawi, who say, "Dénis is studying how water becomes ice (during Christmas holidays in The Netherlands. When you live in Malawi with a tropic climate, a cold winter is exciting)."

Congratulations again to all our winners, and our sincerest thanks to everyone who entered!