Reflections and Learning

I have my days when I think I can't do it. You only see on here what I want you to see. There are times I think, am I teaching them anything? Do they even remember that Bible lesson yesterday on obedience and respect? This morning while getting ready for Storytime at the library...I lost it. I had a temper tantrum more less, and I didn't teach my boys a thing, but I successfully reinforced their bad behavior of losing control by getting angry myself. It is like a viscious cycle. Isaac's difficult behavior gets me on fire. I lose it, I reinforce his behavior. So today I sat down with the boys after I calmed down. I apologized, but I also explained to them how their disobedient behavior makes me feel and what I expect of them. I told Isaac that together we needed to work on the behavior that we need to change. So we shook hands on it. I know I'll try to do better. i was ashamed.

With that being said. All honesty out. It is hard to juggle it all, and I don't pretend to know it all. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but what always takes me back to my decision to homeschool is knowing and feeling that I am doing the best that I can to raise my children in the Lord. So what if my child can/can't regurgitate all the information that the state requires him to know? I want to give my child the tools to be able to think for himself, and by thinking for himself, he can learn and accomplish anything in this world. Most importantly, when I feel like we haven't accomplished anything academically, when I feel like a failure, I want him to at least be able to reason his way through the Scriptures and know Truth, and THAT to me is educated. Because what else in this world really matters?

So here is what we've been doing lately...www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com. LOVE IT! This lady makes available free printouts. Yes free! Tons of great stuff for PreK age. She is amazing. Go check out her site.

Missing Numbers sheet...you fill in the empty spaces with the appropriate number tile. This was really too easy for Isaac. I'm going to make some new ones with bigger numbers. But he still really enjoyed it anyway. And bonus is always that Eli will be right behind him on anything I make!

Learning to recognize his number words. I'll eventually cut these tiles into individually letters for him to spell the word, then we'll use black & white tiles so that he doesn't rely on the color as a clue.

Isaac really liked this number puzzle. I think I'll print some more. You put the numbers in order at the bottom, and it makes a picture. Easy again, so maybe I'll make my own with 3-digit numbers.

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I thought Isaac would like this one more, but he prefers to make his own pattern.

Yesterday morning, Isaac and Eli had a ball playing with these blocks. When it was time to pick them up, Isaac wanted to sort (go figure the Nerd) anyway, so I said, "Lets pick up all the red pieces," and blue pieces, orange pieces and so forth. We also sorted by shapes, too.

So since he was really into this, I thought...great opportunity to introduce graphs to him. I made the graph while he counted and sorted. Then we discussed the graph together. He had to decide by looking at the graph how many blocks we had of each color, which color did we have the most of, least of, which colors had the same amounts, etc.

When it came to the brown blocks, we realized we had alot of them. I introduced counting by 2's to him to show him that it would help us count faster. He kinda got the idea and tried to count with me as we drug two by two into our pile. Just a simple introduction for future learning. Maybe when we look at a number line to count by 2's, he'll remember doing this.

I successfully made our Large Decimal Street picture for our MathUSee blocks. We laminated it with contact paper so that I can write and erase the numbers we make on the picture. The Math U See Primer introduces 100s, 10, and 1s place which he had been having fun with.