Been a While!!

Homeschooling updates got put on the back burner for a while! At the first of September, we found a house and then bought it, so I've spent the last two months very busy with all of that!

So what have I done along the way for learning at home? Isaac has watched ALOT of LeapFrog DVDs. haha... He loves the Letter Factory. Great way to preoccupy your child when you need to pack and he learns alot! He stills plays on his educational websites, too.

I've been taking him to the Duncan Public Library for Story Time. Great learning experience and time spent in a controlled, safe setting.

I've really focused more on my Bible class lessons lately than working at home with Isaac on secular things. I was using thedowschoolroom.com, but they recently shut down their site. I was so disappointed. Isaac loved learning the songs from that site. He has been singing the Parable and Miracle song. I hope they create a new site soon...

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!

Obsessed much with his alphabet. That is Isaac! A friend gave me the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD. He LOVES it. It is helping him reinforce his letter sounds. He started playing with his refrigerator magnets again, too. This Leap Frog toy is really neat. You place the letters in the sun, and it sings a song about that letter and its sound. Eli was even having fun as you can see!

We did some more letter painting today. Isaac said, "I just love painting my letters!" He kept making the sounds as he was painting. He was so excited about "I" that he had to break for ice cream! haha

Morning Message

The last few days were pretty busy. My parents were here, I had to get Eli’s pictures taken, Eli’s birthday, and some other personal business to work out. We still managed to get a little homeschooling in!

Everyday we have continued with our morning message. Isaac has even asked to do it some mornings! I bought a pocket chart to put our messages in weekly.

At the end of each week, I put each cut up sentence strip in a separate envelope, date it, and write the sentence on the outside of the envelope. Isaac can then go back in his own time and play with the sentence, try to put them in correct order and such.

This morning Isaac played around with the sentence from last week: "We took Nicholas and Leah to school." He laughed, mixing the words around and making nonsensical sentences, but this taught me something! Last week, he was reading the sentences in the pocket chart. I figured he was just memorizing the sentences that we came up with. But this taught me that he didn't just simply memorize the entire sentence as a whole, but that he could sight read each word! He was memorizing or learning the words as a whole. When reading his nonsensical sentences to me, he pointed to each word individually and read them aloud. Wow. This approach really does work! 

I couldn't get him to put the sentence back in the right order. I wasn't sure if he was just being stubborn and didn't want to do it or wasn't sure how to do it. So that is when I wrote the sentence correctly on the outside and told him he could look at it and copy. He moved on to playing with his toys at that point. Attention span gone!

I bought an ABC strip and put it around his room. I've caught him standing under it and looking at the letters. He'll point and sing the ABC song. Sometimes he just says the letters. When we've randomly talked about letters in the day, I know he's looked at it because he'll say "J as in jelly beans," a picture on the ABC strip.

I loved read alongs when I was little. I remembered one particular read along that I loved. I called mom to see if she could find it. She found the tape, but no books. So when she went to visit Mamaw the other day, sure enough, she found the books! I shared them with Isaac. He wasn't as thrilled as me....yet.

We've really focused alot on sorting, letters, and phonics. I wanted to work with patterns. Isaac likes to get out my unifix cubes and play, so I used this as a time to try some simple ABAB patterns. He had a good time with it.

I'm learning so much if not more than Isaac with this! Some days we don't do much of anything, other days more. It is alot of fun! I can't wait to start library day next week. I hope he'll stay for the hour and enjoy it!

Look for the opportunities

You want to always look for the opportunities to learn. They are everywhere!

Foam Letters in the Bathtub!

What kid doesn't have letter blocks? Yours? Buy now.

Playdough! Helps with fine motor skills...aka Develop those finger skills! You can even buy playdough tools like letter stamps that Isaac is using here. Another fun way to play with letters!

Environmental print! Your child already recognizes these. Use them to help your child identify letters you're studying. They'll feel special because they think they are reading the word, when in fact, they are just memorizing the word in context. But this is still fun to do. Eventually, your child will begin to make connections with it all!

Here was our morning message. Isaac identified "we" after using it yesterday. He knew "Daddy." After we read the sentence together and broke it up, he was able to identify "Walmart." He knew that word was in the sentence, and again he deduced that this must be the word for his favorite store! haha...He wanted me to capitalize "we" like we did yesterday, so that opened up the opportunity for me to explain that I won't captialize it because it is not at the beginning of the sentence like yesterday. When I capitalized "Daddy" he got on to me, and I explained that it was someone's name. Same with Walmart. I was amazed that this was making sense to him. I don't expect him to be an expert on this. Duh. But exposure is great!

Morning Message

Today I started our morning message. It fits right in when we put our clothes pins on our chart each morning after completing certain chores. We talk about the day and what we plan to do. We talk about yesterday and things we may have already done. I let Isaac choose a sentence for me to write. I write it slowly, drawing attention to beginning sounds, writing left to right, forming letters, again---whatever I feel needs to be addressed for him. When I’m finished writing, I read it again, pointing to each word. We count the words. Then I cut up each word separately. We look at all the words that make up the sentence. I mix the words up, and I let Isaac try to reform the sentence. Obviously, at this age, he needs guidance, but I have him find familiar words. We find words that begin with the same letter, etc. You’d be surprised at what your kid knows and comes up with!

We wrote “We took Nicholas and Leah to school.” Isaac recognized the words “Nicholas” and “Leah” right off. He grouped “took” and “to” together because they both started with “t”. He recognized “school,” but probably wouldn’t know it if the word was isolated from this situation. Still, he was familiar with the sentence that we read aloud and made good “educated guesses.” I kept the message posted under his chart. Throughout the day, we came back to the sentence.

We played outside this morning because it was much cooler! Thank you cool front! Anyway, Isaac went and grabbed items, without me asking! He said, "Hey! Let's go write the words!" So we did. He wanted to help write this time. He wrote the "l" in leaf and the "f" in flowers. I had to cross the "f" for him, but I was still impressed. Of course, I'm impressed. I'm his Mama.

What would preschool be without playtime? I found this mess in Isaac's room. He said he was making a birthday cake to show Pa. I told him we couldn't leave it there until the next time Pa came to visit, so we'd take a picture.

Letters, letters, letters!

Isaac began watching the Letter Names and Letter Sounds DVD that comes with the Hooked on Phonics curriculum that was given to me! He loves it! I have a feeling the DVD will get on my last nerves though! ;) haha...I wanted to say that HOP has changed quite a bit from when I was young. In my education classes at OU, they always seemed to be down on the HOP curriculum, but I think it was because they didn't want us to soley use HOP. I like the readers in the set. It will be a good addition to all the other plans I have. I think it is good to keep instruction varied.

I keep educational toys around the house. Today, Isaac was playing with his foam bath letters on the floor. I encouraged him to put them in ABC order. Just another fun, different way to practice the alphabet.

Danielle's Place is a great educational website that I signed up for a while back. You can find alot of bible lessons on here, but you have to check to keep some of it scriptural. I found a unit on "Consider the Ant." The child studies the letter A while studying the verse in Proverbs. Great activities. I'm gonna try to do a unit on this for Isaac.

I let Isaac paint some letters. He enjoyed it so much, I was afraid he was gonna have to paint the whole alphabet!

Little bit of economics, little bit of science ;)

I had to get ready for my yard sale that I'm having at the Rush Springs watermelon festival this weekend, so I drug out all the "junk" to put price labels on. Isaac was immediately excited and wanted to help like always. I told him what we were doing, and he asked if he could get the labels for me. Perfect opportunity to talk more about money! I showed to him dollar signs, cent signs, and what the 25 and 50 cent labels looked like. More exposure to numbers I guess. He had a good time learning to hand me the right sticker. I explained to him how people were gonna buy our stuff kinda like when he and I pretend to play cashier with his toy cash register and toys.

I also had alot of okra to blanch for freezing. Again, "I wanna help!" (I hope he always wants to be a helper.) I let him take the okra out of the cold water and put it in the strainer. We talked about how when water gets really hot, it begins to bubble---we call that boiling. Then I said, "See this?" I ran my fingers through the steam above the pot. "Smoke!" he cried. "Well, kinda. When water gets really hot it turns to steam." I warned him how steam can be very hot and burn you too even though it seems like nothing. I let him run his fingers through the top of the steam where it was cooler so that he could see how it made his hand wet. I said, "So see it is water in a different form. It just changed." Probably beyond his comprehension right now, but doesn't hurt to introduce it in everyday life right? He'll remember the experience and just continue to build on to his knowledge.

BTW- Special thanks to a friend from church who GAVE me a ton of her homeschooling supplies! Wow! Primers and phonics stuff. Even a book full of lesson planning forms, activity, and award reproducibles. Thanks, Jennifer!

A few more activities

I had mentioned that I had some concept sorting folder activities. Isaac asked to play a game with me during Eli's nap, so I decided to use some of those as games. I acquired a book in college called Words Their Way. I love it! The activities in it are printable from a cd. I'm so glad I put most of these together before having kids! Isaac really enjoys them. Earlier in the day, we did a sort with different fonts of the letters G,E, and H. Here he was doing a work/play concept sort. I wanted to start it out open-ended, but he really needed some guidance on what I wanted him to do. I ended up having to tell him to sort them into work/play groups. So with the next folder activity, I let him try to decide how to group them. It was on transporation with water/air/ground means of transportation. He decided on water and air groups, but couldn't decide what he'd call the other group. Finally we did one on body/clothes. He was disinterested so we moved on to something else.

After supper, Isaac went to my folder file and grabbed an activity on his own! He wanted to do another game. This one was called Alphabet Spin. You take a turn on the spinner. It lands on a capital letter. You are to find the corresponding lowercase letter to match it. He did excellent with this. Other than the p's, q's, d's, and b's which I tried to work on separately, (These should be taught separately) the only letter he had trouble with was "Ll"

At supper, James told me about a learning event that happened yesterday that I guess I missed. He said Isaac was at the computer typing a word in the search engine. He said, "Daddy! Where is the 's'?" When James went to help Isaac, he found that Isaac had typed the word "games" into the search engine! James didn't see this word on the web page, so we're assuming Isaac memorized how to spell it after seeing it on Yahoo Games many times. So cool.

But what about his socialization?!

I have already been asked this. Here is my answer. First, we go to worship 3 times a week. He is in Bible class twice a week with boys and girls his age. What better people to "socialize" with than these kids?! Second, I plan on taking him to the library for Storytime once a week. It is about an hour of singing and a story with other little children ages 3-6. Third, we don't stay at home 24/7! We aren't hermits! Socialization takes place at the grocery store, when we visit friends, at the post office, with family; the real life situations are endless! In the coming years, I'll see if he wants to do Mighty Mite Football or t-ball.

Introduction

So yesterday I started my adventures in homeschooling. Right now, the plan is to keep Isaac home for preschool and preK. I'm testing the waters and deciding on what we will do. Two major reasons I'm doing this. 1) For me, 3 years old is just too young to send him out into the real world. If I continue homeschooling beyond preK, I'm thinking it just may be the best thing for our family to "train up a child in the way he should go." 2) I recieved my degree in Elementary Education, and I guess I'm highly opinionated on how children should learn. In a natural setting, driven by their interests. I don't want a burn-out teacher slamming her book on the copy machine and asking my kindergartener and beyond to do worksheet after worksheet after worksheet. Color some more! It is fun!

So anyway, we've started a few things here around the house, but I haven't really kicked it all in gear. In my opinion, preschool should be about play, play, play. And learning through that play. I want to take the opportunities as they rise, in a natural setting, to teach Isaac. Granted some things will be structured, but not much. He's only 3. I'll also spare you some of the educational jargon. There is actually a reason I do certain things with him. There is a bigger picture to all this in my plans.

I've already implemented a chore chart that kind of gets our day going. This was taken from Gwendolyn Webb's "Train Up a Child Following God's Plan." Isaac loves it so far. He helped me make his posterboard, and we discussed his chores. Everyday, we get up and look at the chart. As he completes his chores, he moves his clothespin to the top of the posterboard. At the end of the day he receives a nickel to put in the appropriate baggie: God's, Savings, or Mine. We put our money in God's every first day, to teach that we should first consider what we give to God. The second day, his nickel goes into Savings, and third day: Mine, and so on. He may not completely grasp this right now, but it is a start. I know he understands God's because this last Sunday morning while we were getting ready for worship, he said, "I need my money to give to God today!" I was so excited. I didn't even have to remind him. He was very proud.

Next week, I'm going to write the days of the week on separate sentence strips. Each new day, we'll pull the appropriate day out of our Days of the Week pocket and hang it next to his chore chart. Any exposure to written word is good. So this will help him begin to grasp the idea of a calendar and perhaps recognize these words as you would sight words.

I also plan on doing a morning message sentence. We'll talk about things that happened yesterday or the things we plan on doing today. I'll write one short sentence down on chart paper or a sentence strip. He will help me come up with the sentence. I'll draw attention to letters, we'll count the words in the sentence, whatever I feel needs to be addressed for his development.

Isaac loves to help cook, so at breakfast, if we make pancakes or waffles, he helps measure things out for me. We count, we talk about more and less, following the recipe. The other day he even grabbed one of my measuring cups off of the drying rack and said, "Hey a fourth cup!" I think he was referring to a 1/4th of a cup, what we always use in cookies.

So yesterday, we were enjoying the breeze while sitting under a shaded tree in the front yard. Isaac was exploring and playing. I decided this could be a good learning time! (to me, this is homeschooling!) I asked him to go find me a rock, so that he could show Eli. Isaac goes and grabs a rock. After examining it, I ask him to find a bigger rock, then a bigger rock. Then I ask him to find smaller rocks. We count our rocks. I asked him to go explore and find other things that might be interesting. He collects another rock, a leaf, a stick, and a locust.

When it was time to go inside, Isaac asked if he could bring his treasures indoors. I said yes and that I wanted to sit down and look at them. I have a ton of printer paper at the house. You know the connected paper with the holes on the sides. So I pulled out four attached sheets. I asked him to lay each item on a different rectangle of paper. I grab my sharpie, and we talk about each item. I write the word of the item beneath it, drawing attention to the first letter and first sound. At 2 Isaac could sing his alphabet, at 2 1/2 he recognized all the letters, could put them in order, speak the alphabet, and knew most of the sounds. Well, somewhere along the way, he has forgotten quite a bit as far as the sounds go. When Eli turned 6 months, my life got busier, and I didn't remember to continue to address the alphabet in daily situations. So after we write the words for each item, I asked if he could find any other items that have the beginning sound like "sssssssssstick." We were eating watermelon, and he shouted, "Seed!"

When it was time for me to put Eli down for his nap, I had Isaac get on starfall.com. This website is basically where he learned his alphabet at 2. He loves it. Great review.Starfall is pretty much self-guided, so I don’t have to sit there and help him out. I love it!

While Eli was still asleep, I read aloud a few books to Isaac. I let him pick them out. He picks the same Bible Story books that we've been using a bedtime. Gets old, to me, but repetition is good! I'm trying to make my questions a little more difficult for him since he should be becoming VERY familiar with the stories! I want to soon incorporate some cutting and pasting activities related to his storytime. Perhaps some learning centers....


Concept sorts are very important for Isaac’s age. I have a variety of folder games we'll get to eventually with concept sorts, but today he helped me unload the dishwasher. Sorting and putting up the silverware is often his job. Big forks, little forks, big spoons, little spoons, slotted spoons, baby silverware, knives. Our sorting continues with what else, but LAUNDRY! Isaac sorts the colors for me. He gets to fold washcloths. Helps with more motorskills. These things may sound so simple and silly to be calling it school, but sadly, so many parents don’t teach their kids these simple things anymore. Not only is he learning some basic things like number, colors, categorizing, he's learning about responsibility and helping out around the house!

In the evenings, Isaac helps Daddy in the garden. Oh the possibilities for school here! More to come!

So today has been slow. We were playing on the back porch with chalk, and Isaac said, "I want to write some words!" I asked him to spell his name to me as I wrote it out. Success! What word do you want to write next? Mommy! How do you think you spell Mommy? I know he's seen these words many times, so I wanted to see how much he knew from sight. He said, "M-O....ummm." That was it, but I was still proud and encouraged him through!

We drew a series of pictures, and he asked me to write the words beneath. Kind of like our activity yesterday! he wanted to help out. He said, “Look, Mom! I made a G!” Sure enough, it was a G. Only backwards. I still encouraged him with such a good try. I’m pretty sure it was an M that followed the G!

So many beginnings, it is exciting to be apart of the process! I pretty much let him take the lead, and I guide the learning as he guides me. It is such a wonderful way to learn. He is excited.