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!!

Homeschool Week 6

(October 9 & 10, 2012) We are really in a routine now. We are still working on handwriting, phonics (sort of, more about this later), sight words and literature. We love our Five in a Row curriculum for reading. Each book in the series (classic and contemporary children's literature) is read once a day for five days with enrichment activities each day. Often there is a big social studies component (usually geography and culture, but there are others in there too) and often opportunities for learning about different art techniques. It's wonderful! This week's book is "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. There's a lot of social studies to this one, and we love it. Some days miss L wants to read it twice a day!

 

Here miss L is playing a word family game and I cannot remember where I found it! It was online, and was part of a printable kit. If someone knows, please let me know and I will give credit where it is due! Anyhow, it's a fun game. There are words on the apples and you put them in the correct box. Here's the thing... We are STRUGGLING with phonics. Miss L knows all the letter sounds but when you put them together and ask her to sound them out, you can see the look in her eyes that she has no idea what you are talking about. I chose an online program, "Explode The Code" as our phonics/learning to read program at the beginning of the school year. Miss L has trouble with visual and auditory processing skills and this program requires her to work both of those areas. Eventually, she would complete the level that she was working on, not because she learned to sound out the words, but because she'd memorized the words on the screen. I don't know if I mentioned this in an earlier post (but I'm doing it now :o), but I hadn't even heard of sight words (learning high frequency words by memorization) before this school year. Yes, I embarked on homeschooling my child and I hadn't. heard. of. sight. words. It's fine now though, because I have heard of them! AND starting in the third or fourth week of school we started using both sight words (which miss L ROCKS) and phonics (which, well, you know). This week was the week we quit phonics altogether. Miss L was frustrated. I was frustrated. I sent panicked emails to my teacher friends telling them I was thinking of quitting and enrolling her in public school because I felt like a failure and she would never learn to read from me (lucky to have friends who don't mind me being an eensy bit dramatic when it comes to such high stakes stuff!). However, quitting phonics was the best thing we did. Miss L stopped being so frustrated. I stopped being so frustrated and in the end our school district doesn't teach phonics in kindergarten either. One of the awesome things about homeschool is that we can take our time and do what we're ready to do and learn at our own pace. In early October, miss L wasn't ready for phonics and definitely wasn't ready for that program (though people just rave about it, so it's great for some!). We've been so much happier since and we'll revisit phonics in the new year!

 

This week we purchased some cards for ball yoga. We love doing heavy work activities between school subjects (and sometimes as often as between words in handwriting if it's needed) and yoga, because we don't need a lot of extra stuff and we have these handy cards with positions, is our favorite. However, six weeks in we needed something fresh. Enter the yoga deck for kids on the ball. :o) We're loving it and loving something new to do!

 

Here's miss L reading a book lent to us by our favorite reading specialist. It's fantastic!

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 - 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!