Homeschool on hold?

I had surgery this last Tuesday so I guess our routine has been interrupted, but learning is never on hold at this house! There are times when teacher and student need to formally sit down to complete work, but I prefer learning to take place in laid back fun situations. Especially at this age. So although I'm torn that I can't do much with Isaac this week, I know he is still finding ways to learn as long as I model a love of learning!

Eli is learning too! How to help with laundry!

Cube hunt, shape of the day!

Isaac was excited that he found a new cylinder!

Isaac has started using some of the Handwriting without Tears tools that I bought online. I was introduced to this curriculum while student teaching. I'm not crazy about their whole line, but I love their preschool and prewriting activities. I think Isaac loves them too. He is using playdoh here to form his letters properly.

I love the stamp and see activities. He uses the stamps, then the small magnetic pencil. Just another way to get those fingers ready for formal writing.

I didn't get any pictures of it, but today we used the slate. He writes the letter with a small piece of chalk and traces back over the letter with a small wet sponge. Promotes the right grasp he needs for holding a pencil. Being a boy, it isn't coming naturally!

And no preK day would be complete without time to play outside!





The Ants Go Marching One by One...

What fun we've been having! Last week Isaac had a playdate, and we went outside and enjoyed some rain! Praise the Lord for answered prayers!

I'm trying to compile a list of sight words that Isaac knows. These are the ones he knew in his flashcard set the other day: go, come, so, say, is, he, you, too, to, of, the, we, my, no, play, and, game, on, what.

Isaac used our letter flashcards to spell his favorite planets with help. He got tired of waiting on me, so he got his books and copied off of the cover.

We also made his favorite, Jupiter, out of playdough.

This morning, Isaac chose pentagon for his shape of the day. At breakfast, he asked to have "a pancake with 5 sides like a pentagon."

I was excited, but wondering how Isaac would do when he asked to do the morning message. So I let him. He doesn't hold his pencil/markers properly. I'm trying to figure out how to encourage proper grasping without frustrating him. Anyway, I felt he did pretty good! He wrote with all the letters jumbled together (totally normal) and he only wrote the sounds he heard or thought to write, but so cool! He separated some of his words successfully. Good first try! He is definitely an emergent writer!

His sentence said: WerGotomabktoDaY

Translation: We are going to make a book today.

By the way, I told him we were going to start his "All About Me" book today. We haven't got to it yet, but I'll share when we've finished!

So today we began our "Ant" unit. I know he likes the planets right now, but we'll have no trouble getting back to them. I'm more prepared for the ant unit anyhow. This unit can be found at http://www.daniellesplace.com/

First, we searched for the perfect anthill.

These guys looked pretty busy. We discussed how ants are always busy, hard at work. You never see a lazy ant. When I told him that no one tells them what to do, they just do it, he said, "God tells them what to do." I said, "Well, you're right. God made them to work like this, but he doesn't have to tell them over and over what to do. Should mommy have to tell you?"

 We put our ants in a mason jar to observe. Isaac was concerned that the ants wouldn't like being in the jar. Then he said he wanted to keep them in his bedroom....uh...no.

 We watched them start to dig tunnels. I said, "Do you know that God talks about ants in the Bible? He wants us to not be lazy, but be hard workers like ants!"

We then discussed Proverbs 6:6. I had these little ant cards cut out with each word in the verse put on the back of a card. He matched the word cards to the verse/sentence on paper. While he worked on this, I was bathing Eli. Eli had a little too much fun in the dirt! haha

We then proceeded upstairs to the playroom. Isaac wanted to use his magnetic letters to spell words. We spelled ant, hut, gut, cut, can, man, ban, mommy, and daddy. At this point Isaac threw a fit and got a spanking because he didn't want to help pick up all the magnetic letters. Don't think homeschooling is all fun and games! He certainly wasn't remembering to be the ant---not to be lazy and do his part!

So I made him go lay on the couch and look at our ant book, "Are You An Ant?" while I put Eli down for a nap. I figured this would give him time to cool off and have some quiet time while I read to Eli and layed him down.

When I came out of Eli's room, we read the story together and played our Ant Game. Each ant card had either the letter a, n, or t on the back. We took turns flipping them over. First one to spell ant, won. Had to remind him of left-right directions again.

More to come!

Isaac's First Day of PreKindergarten

So I really wasn't going to "officially" start recording our schoolwork until Nick and Leah started public school, but then I knew I'd be having surgery in August, so for the last month, I just wrote down things we did that were educational and I journaled Isaac's thinking processes. Then, I thought, even if I take a laid back approach to homeschooling (the kid is only 4 people!), I can document all this so that I can look back on his growth and have some great memories. So when I saw everyone's facebook postings about "My kid started preK today boo hoo!" ---I kinda felt left out, so....we had an official first day today! ;) And here's how it went.

Around 8:30am, we had breakfast and then the boys played for just a little bit while I straightened up the kitchen.

Isaac starts his chore chart. We made a new one this year because #1 Eli destroyed the last one and #2 we needed to change some of his responsibilities. He started in on his morning duties and then got distracted by...

His planet books. The kid is obsessed. He was interested before we went to NASA, and now he wants to know everything. The kid stayed awake during a NASA imax show that everyone else was asleep in. He was fascinated. He loves Jupiter and can tell you how many moons the planet has! LOL...He can tell you a little bit about Mars, too.

Ask him about the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

Eli checks out Venus.

We move on to the flag and the pledge. I told them to be like soldiers, but they just liked to wave the flag. I told Isaac that we should be thankful to God for our freedoms.

Then Isaac decides what number comes next on the calendar and adds the date.

Eli gets bored quickly so I give him a couple of puzzles.

We have our "Calendar Time." This was our first time to use this nifty little set up. Some of the concepts on here are over his head right now, but it will make sense some day.

You can find links to this set up starting at http://www.mamajenn.com/ and http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/ . These wonderful homeschooling moms give you the instructions and free pdf files! So cool. We discuss the date, yesterday/today/tomorrow, the seasons, the weather, shape and color of the day, and how many days in school.

We then did our Morning Message. Isaac tells me what to write as we discuss our day ahead. I model writing to him, punctuation, capital letters, etc. We cut up the sentences, count the words, identify words he knows, and he sticks them back up in the correct order.

At 10:00am, it was playtime! He had enough. It was really too long, but that was simply because it was our first time to use the new Calendar Time activity. He had alot of questions.

 Then, I thought, "We need a first day of school picture!" This is what I got.

 I said, "Lets try again." This is what I got. Defeated. Isaac won.

Then I said, "What about a brothers first day of school pic?" Here ya go.

 

11:30am Lunch and some more playtime!

12:30pm - We go on a cylinder hunt. I let him choose a shape of the day (this was on our Calendar Time). So we went around the house and took pictures of items he thought looked like cylinders. I want to eventually print these pics for each shape and we'll make a shape book. We also went on a blue color hunt. He knows his colors, but it is all fun, and he'll learn new things when we make the book.

 Cylinder #1 - door hinges, okay yeah, I'll give him that!

 Cylinder #2 - staircase posts, yeah...

 Cylinder #3 - Door knob, I can see that...

Cylinder #4 - Canned goods, definitely

12:45-1:15pm - Computer time. I let him play some games. He usually picks these challenging mind games or goes to http://www.starfall.com/. That sight single handedly taught him his letters and sounds when he was 2.

1:20-2:00pm - We make a trip to the grocery store. I make him give the lady my check card. I try to get him to speak up. We talk about things as we go through the store: different foods, prices, etc. We then headed to the post office. Same thing, I make him give the post lady the package pick up slip. Just trying to teach him to be polite and socialize! (Yikes, did I say that word?!)

Around 2pm we get home and open our package. It was his Math U See Primer! He was excited and immediately want to get to work. He was tickled that the man we'd be watching on DVD is named Steve. He looked at me funny and said, "Pa?" We worked the first few pages in the text. Super easy, but I tried to challenge him here and there. I help him see patterns with his numbers. I refer him to dice patterns alot. 

Next he works a maze that I laminated so that he can wipe off and try again.

We decorated his schoolbox with supplies. He found the letter stickers for his name and spelled it out on his box. Finally, he wanted to color with his markers, so we got out a good old paint/marker book. Lastly, he went upstairs and played with his hotwheels.

3 pm -The End! The day was really not structured. I flew by the seat of my pants and let him take the lead with a bit of guidance. I think we had a good day!

Tomorrow is pretty much just a play day. He has a friend coming over. I guess you could call it "socialization." ;)

So what have we been doing lately?

Here are just a few things we've done in the last month:

Isaac wanted to write his letters. I totally let him write them how he wanted at this point. He put the letter magnet next to the letter he wrote.

He wanted to put the months in order.

I had some cuissenaire rods and an activity book with them. I was planning on saving these, but he found them in my closet and demanded to work with them now. He had alot of fun. These activities help with spatial reasoning, counting, comparing, non standard measurement, fine motor skills. 

And Eli has started a band. He got all these out by himself.

We've also been doing alot of reading (as usual). The Little Red Hen, The Gingerbread Man, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, dictation with dry erase board, Chutes & Ladders, Neon Maze and Civiballs--games on yahoo Isaac can play these!!, animal sounds, vowels, kicking a ball, basketball, Mother May I, Simon Says, sorting, patterns, Sorry, Trouble, Cheerio 100 book, cutting, coloring, Words Their Way folder games. 

My Plans for the year

Over the summer, I planned some of the subjects, topics, themes, etc that I want to introduce to Isaac in the next year. However, I still haven't quite figured out how much I want to do and what approach I want to take. The perfectionist in me wants structure and order like a real classroom, but my heart tells me that approach is in conflict with one of the reasons why I want to homeschool. I want to go with his interests and have fun. I want him to be a kid. I want him to LOVE learning.

It is really ironic. I saw an article in a recent Parents magazine that talked about helping your kids continue to learn during the summer while they are not in public school. It was saying that "unstructured" learning and going with their interests keeps them engaged, and they actually learn more. Then it goes on to list all these fun things you can do at home during the summer to keep your kids learning (pretty much everything on the list sounded like it was written by a typical homeschool mom). Basically they were saying this is the best way to get their minds moving yet----send them back to school in the fall where the majority of kids won't be learning this way. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing public school. Hello?! I have a degree in it, but I know that it is just a simple fact that it is impossible to meet every child's need. Every classroom would be better if the teacher-student ratio was smaller. That is one thing that draws me to homeschooling. More one-on-one. Freedom to go with their interest, excell in their best, pick up where they need to when we need to.

So with all that being said, I'm gonna just list some of the topics I want to encourage; topics I want to find opportunities to teach, but he may take us into a study of pumpjacks for all I know!

Bible- memory work, continue with BSG for all ages.

Language Arts - lots of reading, print awareness skills, review of letters and sounds, rhymes, opposites, position words, left and right, alliteration, word families, sight words

Math - height, weight, graphing, patterns, sorting, finger patterns, dot patterns, Recognizing numbers (as high as what challenges him??) shapes, measurement, money (mainly identifying coins), 5 Frames, writing and drawing shapes (not being formal with this)

Science - the kids is obsessed with Space and the planets, ants, magnets, static electricity, float/sink, simple states of matter as with water, weather, shadows, animals, bugs, life cycles

Social Studies - state name, age, birthday, self dress, make bed, manners, giving, maps, local community, transportation, jobs, Oklahoma, United States

Motor Skills - fine and gross motor, kicking, throwing, running, hopping, etc, fingerpainting, sand, shaving cream, playdough, tongs, cutting, stringing, lacing, tracing, stamping, writing