Homeschool Week 13

Things are going pretty well with homeschooling.

At this point miss L knows her sight words from the Dolch pre-primer list. She can read them easily. The problem is that we didn't work on writing them while we were working on reading them. Visualization seems to be something that is really hard for miss L to do and that seems to be a critical component of learning to spell. So... we are trying to practice our spelling in as many multi-sensory ways possible. This day we used do a dot markers to "write" the words. Miss L has always had trouble with strength in her hands. For instance, she has a hard time coloring large areas or an entire picture in a coloring book and writing can be very difficult for her too. In order to keep her from mutinying completely we try to work on spelling not just with writing, but in other ways too.

 

I find that a critical component of our homeschooling routine is my daily coffee. I'm not gonna lie folks, homeschooling can be downright hard. Sure, I have a teaching certificate but it definitely doesn't cover kindergarten reading. I desperately want to do right by miss L. I know everyone does, but I know that I've made a lot of choices *for* her and I don't want to screw this up. She's so precious and she deserves the best, so my daily cup of caffeine helps keep me on my toes.

 

When I have discussions about homeschooling with any of my homeschooling (and non-homeschooling!) friends the subject of planning seems to always come up. Here is what is working for me. I have an excel spreadsheet that I use for weekly plans. I downloaded the template from the microsoft office website. It has room for 8 subjects per day (or periods I suppose for middle or high school teachers) and room for materials, etc at the top (though I use it to keep track of our activities for the day). I often sit down on Sunday afternoons and plan out for the week, but when I'm able I do a month at a time and even though I have to go back through and change them (it just happens) it's so much easier! 

I keep the week's plans clipped to the front of a file box and I keep our books and materials for the week in that box. I have a file folder with the name of each day for any worksheet sorts of things we have and our other materials fit in there too. It's been really helpful!

 

We use tactile letters both to practice handwriting and to practice spelling. We love these letters!

 

We use scrabble letters a LOT. In this instance we were just spelling in this frame, but often I will print out words with lowercase letters and miss L with match the letters to them or I will draw boxes for the number of letters in a word and miss L figures them out. I never knew how great scrabble tiles were for practicing spelling before this!

 

We also practiced with stamp letters this week. It's just another way to get the words onto paper. Sometimes I give miss L all but one of the letters and she fills them in.

 

We also use yarn letters and magnetic letters for spelling. They say that the first year of homeschooling is about learning your child and I have to say that's true for us. I've learned that miss L hates to fail. She's a first born and she's adopted and as I understand it both of those things feed into the fear of failure thing. If miss L doesn't KNOW she can do something, she just flat out refuses to do it. We started out with me trying to really push her to spell words the way I felt like I was taught and that I felt like she should do it. The thing is, that isn't who she is. Miss L needs a way to spell that works for her and these are some of the ways we've found to do it. I hope it's working!!

Lego time!

Okay, I'll confess. Those pink toys annoy me. You know when they take some perfectly fine gender neutral thing like an airplane and then they make it pink to appeal to girls' parents. Ugh! When I first saw Lego Friends I had the same reaction. Ugh! They took a perfectly fine building toy and painted it pink and made it into dog shows and cupcake restaurants. Seriously? I just felt like there had to be something very wrong with the world.

Of course, toy companies do their research and as soon as miss L got her first taste of Disney Princesses, she was hooked. She can't get enough of pink (me either, really...). Now, I like to think that our ingenious parenting has enabled this girl to enjoy a multitude of toys designed for either sex because she does enjoy toys designed either way, but it's probably just a matter of exposure and personality.

The first Lego Friends set we received was a gift. Miss L and her daddy put it together and even I have to admit it was pretty awesome. There are so many good things about Legos. It's so great for visual processing and fine motor practice. There's a huge pretend play component when the set is complete AND miss L gets to spend some quality time with her father.

After that, we were hooked. She loves looking at the Lego Friends when we are at the store and I like them too. As a little girl, I loved Legos and I would have just died for a set of pink ones! Honestly, one of my complaints about Legos in general is that the "story" in the "boy" Legos seem to be so often violent. If there's a bank, then there is a robber. All of the Dino sets come with a guy with a machine gun. I just don't like that. So, for now, miss L loves her Lego Friends and we love them too. Mister W can't get enough of the RV that they put together after miss L's birthday!

Here they are building that RV Camper. What a fun set!

Homeschool Week Five

Those first couple of weeks of school were just plain hard. I had my moments, to be sure (and during which I frantically email my elementary school teacher friends and they talk me down :o). Now school is a welcome challenge for me. I love my second (third?) career as a teacher at home and though it still is hard (believe me) it's really fantastic too. I get to watch my baby develop these skills right before my eyes. It's just awesome and we're really hitting a groove and a routine.

I want to do this for every week of school, but it just hasn't happened yet. For this week though, here were some highlights.

We packed meals for the backpack meal program at our church. I'm LOVING the fact that I can teach my daughter whatever I want (which is true if she went to public school as well, but we have so much more time for it). We made a list, went to the store, added up the cost of the groceries, paid for them and then sorted and packed the bags. These bags will feed six kids who receive free or reduced lunches from community around our church. Good service and lots of lessons learned! Yay!

 

We continue to work hard on sight words. Miss L has declared that her favorite thing to do "at school" is to do yarn letters. It's just another way we can practice spelling without having to always be writing. Woop woop!

 

...and mister W just cannot be left out. On Sundays as I usually make my lesson plans I plan two or three things for him to do (and try to include him in our art projects too). He loves sitting and working and I love that he has something that makes him feel so big and proud.

We made trees using handprints as the stump and branches of the tree. Mister W is trying to make his hands fit the tree here.

 

Then we added leaves and colored them and then I put dots of glue and mister W glued pom pom "apples" on the trees for fine motor practice (and you can see we had apples on our minds and and our table!).

Homeschool - Mister W

I am a member of a local homeschooling group. We aren't very regular attendees at group meetings at this point, but I do like that I can ask questions to the group. 

In this group there are lots of moms who homeschool all of their children, preschool and up. It just never occurred to me to homeschool my preschool aged child. Mister W is actually too young to attend preschool in the fall since his birthday isn't until February so I'm making plans to do some lessons with him as well. For now his subjects are going to be letters, numbers, colors, fine motor skills, bible, art and music. I figure those things will change as we get into our routine of school and I'm guessing that he won't do his lessons every day. Since it's summer we aren't doing much formal stuff, but mister W loves to sit with his mama and work on his "lessons" anyway. This day we worked on stringing these car beads on string. I'm impressed and how hard he works at this and I hope he is always so eager! May 11, 2012.

Homeschool - Trays

Homeschooling next year is something that simultaneously excites and overwhelms me. The perfectionist in my really wants to get it just right and the creator in me wants to make everything up as we go along tailoring each and every day to miss L's need at that time. I have these visions of miss L and I sitting at the kitchen table performing science experiments and reading scores of beginning reader books from the library. Realistically I have to keep in mind the fact that I do have three children at home. There are simply going to be times when I really must deal with things that aren't miss L's education even though my utopian homeschool involves so much of us just working together.

Pinterest has been such an amazing resource for me. It's fairly easy to find those moms who homeschool their kids and have philosophies very similar to mine. Though I only have rudimentary knowledge of montessori techniques, I do find myself coming back to those pages most often. One recurring theme in montessori homeschool is the idea of trays. The idea is that children can visit them in whatever order they choose and work at their own pace. 

This idea was sort of revolutionary to me and incorporating these trays has become part of my plan for our every day homeschool. Each day I'd like to introduce trays that include fine motor practice, sensory play, visual processing and one with anything else. She loves doing these trays when we bring them out (not every day at this point, but in the fall they will be).

In the picture directly below we have the feed the rabbit game (fine motor), puzzles (visual processing), free art with stamping and do a dot markers (sensory play) and handwriting practice (fine motor).

Something I think I underestimated in planning the trays is how much mister W wants to be a part of them. I have realized that I must include at least one tray that he can use as well. This day he was enjoying the play-doh create a monster tray.

Miss L enjoyed the free handwriting practice tray. She loves this whiteboard that we picked up and using a real grown-up marker. I actually didn't even know she could write all of her letters so I had to take a few photos to remember what they looked like.

Miss L made some crazy monsters too.

We love our trays!