Curriculum Review #1

Kumon makes a gazillion workbooks. Then I found these cute little ones for the 2+ age group. Kumon Books Can be found at Barns & Noble for about 7 bucks each.

The one pictured above was our favorite but they also have a color, fold, and cut one. These books are really very good for the price and are great at practicing fine motor control. 

Good points: 

• great fine motor control practice. 
• fun. 
• start off easy and then progress to more complicated work pages.

Bad Points: 

• Not really do-able for most 2 year olds really more for 3+
• Repetitive. 'Color the white spot on the strawberry red' - 'Color the three white spots on the icecream cone the correct colors.' 

All in all I say that if you are going to buy one go with the sticker or cutting one and pull it out once in a while when you don't have anything, or it's a sick day. Makes you feel like a good mom to get 'something' done
If your toddler or preschooler digs it then go ahead and buy all of them. Some kids just thrive on repetition and workbooks. Mine were all into it for 1 book and then lost interest now they get pulled out every now and then and are fun for about 1 pages worth of work.

Stars: 3 / 5

A day in the life...

So sparked by the 'peek' into other homeschoolers lives via several email groups I decided to throw my 'Day in the life of a homeschooled preschooler' out there.

Plenty of things change this schedule. Normal things like sickness, holidays, or things that must be done, but generally heres the scoop.

8 - 8:30 - we wake up. I am not a morning person my boys on the other hand feel that mornings are super-de-duper. I spend anywhere from 10 -30 minutes trying uselessly to convince them it's still sleepy time and they should just go back to bed.

Get up, make breakfast, eat breakfast, pour coffee, check facebook via itouch.

9 - 930-ish I get dressed. Sometimes the boys get dressed depending on their mood. We homeschool. I totally don't care if they wear their PJs until it's bed time again.

10-ish We do 'circle time' I light a candle, sing opening verse, song, closing verse, then blow out the candle.

 - Now in a normal school this is where the kids get together in a circle, sing a couple of songs, some fingerplays, and maybe a story that relates to the weekly theme. -This is not circle time at our house. -
Asher (1yr) adores anything with music, fingerplays and cute little songs are right up his ally. Loch (almost 4) on the other had loathes circle time with a deep passion. He always has, even at story time when he was just a wee babe. So 'circle time' is me doing the above with varying degrees of his running wildly around going on around me.

10:15 or so Sometime after this I ask him to check and see what the homework fairy has brought him.
The homework fairy comes in the night and leaves his school work in 4 large plastic drawers. He can normally find at least one of these that he wants to do right then.

Main lesson / Homework fairy projects can take anywhere from 5 minutes - an hour depending on what they are and his interest level.

10:30/11:30 a bit of housework and some free play

Noon is lunch followed by babys nap and a little tv time for 'quite' time.

1 or 2 is time to head out if we have things to do in town if not we finish up any left over work or projects.

3-ish Running around in town / free play at home

4 - dinner prep / housework

6 - dinner / daddy gets home / daddy time

8 teeth brushing / books / bed

Chalk Drawing 101

Chalk drawing can be very intimidating. In fact it's down right Scary. 

Drawing in general is scary for most of us with the few exceptions of those who are artistically gifted for such things. Even if it is only to be seen by the kids and not to be studied in a museum of fine art. 

All the books say the same thing about the fine arts. Something along the lines of;

"It doesn't mater how well you can sing/draw/paint/dance, just do it and your kids will enjoy the creative process."

Okay well thats great but my stick figure drawings are just not up to par. They look like nothing and are definitely not waldorf-y. So what is a mom to do?  COPY

That's right, I said COPY. 

*Secret - In the early grade school years of waldorf children copy the drawings of their teachers. It's not the dirty word we have been lead to believe.*

I have This Book (LMNOP and All the Letters A to Z)

From that and from the Oak Meadows kindergarten curriculum I can find a image that works for me.

See the L? Directly from the LMNOP book. 

This mountain scene for M? Also copied from the LMNOP book. My addition is the golden spider for our #8 story in Oak Meadow.

Okay so this one did come out of my head, mostly. Oak Meadows provided the N within the fence but since it was Solstice/Christmas I drew the Nativity. It fit with the season and with the letter N. 

In all fairness though it's not like I came up with the magnificent imagery myself.

This week is the letter O - also totally copied from the LMNOP book. See the formerly mentioned stick people? 

Now normally I change the drawing while the children are asleep. One because it's kind of magical for them to 'discover' the new drawing but mostly because if I do it while they are awake they want to 'help' which leads to less of a chalk drawing and more little kid chalk fingerprints. 

Today I broke out their own chalk boards while I did my drawing. I gave them no prompting in anyway as to the what or how of their drawings. The instructions were merely to "share the chalk there is plenty for both of you." and "draw on your own board."

Yule - 7 years.

"The world is our mom"

Loch - 3 1/2 years.

"The world - and some robots."

Exploring our world at 30 below

Dancing with the music and silks. Loud baby Mozart + play silks equal a really good time. The trick is mommy has to be playing too or for some reason it's no fun at all.

Right, okay. So there is plenty of ice outside it's -30...but at -30 we don't go outside. Even in full wool long john and parks its COLD. So instead we are freezing / thawing a bowel of water in the freezer. 

What happens when we put water in the freezer? Take it out? Pour new water into it? poke it with a spoon?

Rice and sand in a tray with various scooping devices and containers makes for a whole HOUR of self directed learning. Loch kept coming back to this every 45 minutes or so. Hiding 'treasures' in it to re-find them was the biggest hit.

Sorting lady bugs by size is really old hat but it is still fun. We also practice counting each sized bugs. I think he just likes the fact that they are red - his favorite color.

Tricky cheap preschooling tips

See apple? See dry spaghetti noodles stuck in apple? every tried to stick dry spaghetti noodle into an apple? it's actually kind of hard. I'm not sure how this is 'school'....lets call it 'fine motor control' but it was totally fun.

Those paint chips in the paint section of home depot? Perfect for matching colors (grab two of each) for younger kids or for arranging by shade which is what Loch is doing here. I choose to grab red-pink, blue- light blue, & yellow - pale yellow to start with. As we becomes better at it I will add in non primary colors or other paint chips that include words such as 'tuscan' or 'beige'

Paper + crayons = letter practice! 

Color and print letters on paper, tape to the kitchen floor. We practiced letters by playing hopscotch & right leg E! Left hand D!

Piece of wood from old cut down tree makes perfect practice for nailing. This particular type of wood was a little hard so I had to start the nail but after that he got to nail it down. All sorts of fun. Who doesn't like hitting stuff?

Sometimes you need a break...

 
   So it was happening.. Loch was being wild, loud, and disruptive. He fought anything that even seemed like school. Even the slightest 'school-y' question would erupt in arguments between us. It was time for a good long break. A good long break.

So I took a leap of faith and we did no official school work for 3 weeks. The homework fairy had the holidays off and we took the week before, during, & after 'off'.

Today was are first day back to the books and it went well. Mondays have always been our light days to  help get back into the groove after the chaotic weekends and today we talked about the sound the letter M makes, M words, and the number 8. We made a block tower, read some stories, and watched too much scooby do.
But there were no fighting, no arguments, no mommy pulling her hair out.

Take a deep breath and get back to business.




(and when I find my cord thingy I will make a post with some pictures.)

Just the basics

I got an email today from simple homeschool about remembering the basics as a spine for your homeschooling. Everything else? It's gravy. I struggle as every homeschooler parent does with the "what if" question. 

• What if we're not doing enough?
• What if my children aren't being challanged enough?
• What if they decide to go to public school one day and they learn that I have handicaped them both socially as well as academicly? 
• What if they can't ever get a good job or go to collage?
• What if I've ruined my kids by keeping them home?
• What if....What if.....What if....

"The bare minimum a family should do is to surround your children with literature and to do math at least once a week."  ~Jena

"Education is not something which the teacher does, but a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being". ~Maria Montessori

So whats the minimum you need? What is 'enough'? Books to be sure. I don't think anyone would argue that having books (fiction & nonfiction) in your home is a good thing. It promotes literacy, it increases vocabulary and attention span, it prompts the imagination. 

After that? I vote...

Craft supplies! All things can be accomplished with craft supplies. (including math) It provides endless entertainment, puppets for stories, hopscotch makings, things to count and cardboard numbers.

Remember the basics, everything else is just gravy. 

Preschool Main lesson books

Main Lesson books are something used in waldorf schools and provide a space for all the childrens best work as well as a living textbook made by the child themselves. Traditionally a waldorf preschooler would never have a main lesson book as they do no formal lesson work but I like having a place to keep 'samples' of his work throughout the year. It provides a good place to see progress over the years and it is a built in scrapbook.

First page of our lesson book. Letter A. sticks from the yard which Loch put into an A form and I helped glue down.

The #1. Represented by a painted 'sun' and a painted (and glittered) number one.

'Things of Summer' Objects collected on a walk and glued onto the paper with his crayon colored grass.

F for Feathers H for House - Loch lacks the fine motor control to be able to write, draw, or paint letters and numbers so instead we make use of our glue and craft items.

Michealmas dragon nature collage and a picture of Loch making orange playdough.

The number four represented by squares. This particular square collage is a robot, with a hulahoop.

Fall collage and painting

First 'lapbook' inspired to make a halloween lapbook. On the left is a candy matching game. Middle is a story kitty, story was verbally told to me and I wrote it down, on the right is a spider colored by Loch and I wrote in the answers he gave me about that spider. (Where he lives, what he eats, number of eyes/legs etc)

A lesson learned

Yesterday was the waldorf pre-k coop day and I learned a lesson I hope to try and remember.
Loch is 3 1/2 and has never ever ever liked circle time. He didn't like it at 8 months old and he doesn't like it now. This of course can make things like library story times or waldorf play groups.... challenging. I've tried to come to grips with it and I stand in the circle with the baby and Loch goes off and plays with sticks or what have you. The rule is that he can do pretty much whatever he wants as long as he doesn't interfere and disturb the people that DO want to participate in circle time.

Yesterday it was par for the course, them comes the walk around the field, Loch wants to go! (Yippeee!) Okay we get about 20 feet into or group walk, 'we' get distracted by a sign with a picture of a goose on it. I wait, I wait, I do the baby jiggle dance and try to urge Loch to catch up to the group. I take a breath.

Please?

No. Instead ' we' lay in the middle of the path and make snow angels.

Okay fine. Take a breath mama. That's okay. But after 15 minutes I'm cold and I want to go inside for craft and snack.

' we' want to lay in the snow forever. Begging, pleading, bribing, nothing works. A little lightbulb goes off in my head. I start singing 'The ants go marching one by one' and start marching down the path. At first? nothing. No response at all but the baby things it is hilarious so at least he's happy and interested. After marching down and back three or four times the boy child starts to wonder what is crazy mommy is doing... he stands up... he looks. he creeps up..... I make another turn and start down the path again.

"Wait Mommy! Wait for me!"

YAY! He is comming! he is even smiling while he does it! Wooooooooooo!

My lesson. Take a breath. Remember that his priorities are different from mine. Remember that when time isn't a factor, that when we don't 'have' to be anywhere to just relax. Let go. Try and enjoy the ride. And when in doubt start singing. If nothing else at least the baby thinks I'm funny.

Making the 'school' fit into your 'house'

A fairly normal looking living room. The scene of (sporadically) organized chaos. Some people have whole rooms dedicated to school, others have houses with some school stuff thrown in. Now traditional preschool waldorf says you don't need more then your real house with your real stuff but... Well we are all parents in the 21st century and we all feel pressured to make with the 'offical'. So how do we fit our school into our houses without it taking over our space?



Workboxes. For me I use this plastic drawer thing from Krogers.



Inside I put the daily 'school' activities. I use one box per year of age for preschool years. This particular day I have a magnifying glass, workbooks, a craft project, and some grass hopper puppets with a verse.



We, as many homeschoolers do, have books that have books that have books. Our books are on several shelves throughout our house. They are in storage containers, they are on the sofa, they are under the sofa. They are shoved into the space between the bed and the wall. The bottom shelf though in the living room are 'resource' books for general use. I figured if I put them out in the living room the children would 'discover' them. (Recently actually this has happen as Loch has discovered there are pictures/info of dinosaurs in the encyclopedias.

A set of Encyclopedia Britannica from my childhood, a newer Usborne Encyclopedia, dictionaries, and a few 'stuff to do when you're bored' books.


The painting board and 'hows the weather?' board I got from Funshine Express Thought they would be perfect for visually saying what the letter, color, and number for the week is. As well as practicing observation of daily weather patterns.



Black board has a drawing for this weeks theme. I'm a little ashamed to post this one, last weeks was fabulous and much more waldorf-y but that one disappeared into Neverwhere. I promise to atone by doing a post about blackboard drawing later.


The world map lives over the toy bins. Really it should be lower as the kids actually can't see it by themselves but... well.. it fits there and the baby can't eat it. Map was free from
UNICF



Bullition board is over the dinning room table. Contents change weekly. Sometimes it's the theme for the week ,(here is Fire Saftly and hexagons) sometimes kids art.



Our nature table sits on the windowsill. It makes use of a very lovely space only about 3 inches wide so otherwise completely useless.