We've been loving our new Getting into Geography book. It has lots of fun activities to help the kids understand their shapes. I like it, because it's working on two levels...Ivan is just getting an introduction to shapes and what they are and how to describe them, and then Lincoln, even though he already knows his shapes, gets to explore WHY certain shapes are what they are and what their properties are and aren't. So we get to do the activities all together, and both boys get to learn at their own level, that's what I'm loving about it. I especially love that there are a range of activities and none of them involve pencil and paper. We do enough pencil and paper. The activities take about 10 minutes, and I've been doing them as our big "together" activity right after devotional, before I split the kids up to work with them on individual things.
So far in the book, I've given the boys each a set of the four basic shapes, and we've talked about them, and described them, then we graphed them, first according to color, then according to number of sides, then according to number of corners. Then I described a shape, "I'm looking for something with 3 straight edges.", or whatever description, and then they had to find it in their pile and hold it up. They really liked that game. And today, we made shape models using straws, play dough, and yarn. This was more challenging for them than I thought it would be, so I think it was really beneficial. We are having trouble with the differentiating between a rectangle and a square. If I hold up a rectangle they can correctly identify it as a rectangle, and same with a square, but they have a hard time explaining to me why a rectangle is different than a square. So I think these activities are going to be good. The next few coming up are going to be kinesthetic, and I'm excited to see if that is helpful for my kids or not. And after that we have multi-sensory activities too. All involving two dimensional shapes. After that it goes into composing and decomposing shapes, symmetry, three dimensional shapes, spatial relationships, and then fun games to practice the things we've learned. All through activities and movement and not pencil and paper. So you can see why I'm so excited about it. Or maybe you think I'm nuts, either way. :)
Ivan has been working on writing his name. It's been a good learning experience for me as a teacher, because Ivan is not the same type of learner as Lincoln and does not have the same interests in what he wants to learn about as Lincoln has. Linc is a bit of a people pleaser, and will gladly do anything mostly, as long as it means he can stay in the same room with me, and he'll do it even better if I'll stay right next to him and give him continuous feedback. Plus he was really interested in letters, and reading and writing at a pretty young age. And he's pretty good at setting the pace of his education. Meaning, you can tell by his body language and attitude if he's moving too slowly or to quickly with certain material.
Ivan is different. I was surprised one Sunday when his nursery teacher said to me, "It's pretty cool that Ivan can spell his own name. You must work with him a lot." Excuse me, what? Ivan can spell his own name? This was news to me. I mean, yes, all the time we'll go around the table at dinner and spell out everyone's name, because that's just the kind of dinner conversation you have with a table full of small children. But Ivan had never spoken up, he'd never said anything about spelling his name. I'd never overheard him trying to spell his name. Nothing. Same kind of thing with the alphabet. Somehow, out of no where, Ivan knows the entire alphabet AND all the sounds the letters make. We found all these things out several months ago, before we started doing letter days for the second time. ANYWAYS, all this leads me to believe that Ivan is going to be somewhat of an independent learner. Which isn't a bad thing at all, it just means I'm going to have to be on my toes a little more so I can pay attention to what he's learning and what he needs to work on.
So a few weeks ago, Ivan insists that he too wants to have a reading lesson. And I figure what the heck? Might as well. I mean, I'm not ready to start Teach Your Child to Read with him or anything, but if he wants "a reading lesson" then he and I can take some one on one time every day and do something for his educational benefit. I decided we'd start by teaching him to write his name. He's not as interested in writing the letters as Lincoln was at his age, but he was willing to try. We've been working on it for about a week now, mostly with him tracing over top when I write the letters. I haven't been able to get him to try writing anything but an I on his own. Until today. I was in the middle of a reading lesson with Lincoln, and Ivan asked for something else to do, so I said, "Get a marker and go over to the white board and write your name, you can do it. And when I'm done I'll come help." I figured he'd just draw until I got there, but he didn't. He marched right over to the white board, and, for the first time ever, wrote his name very clearly in about 10 seconds, and then decided he was done for the day. He did a good job too. Sure, his A looks like an H but for a three year old whose never written his name before, I'd say he did awesome. I made him go get the camera so I could take a picture. You know me :)
And seeing that white board reminds me, I went on a drilling streak, and hung up a bunch of things in the school room that I've been waiting for Aaron to get around to hanging up. I barely know what to do with a drill, but I got tired of waiting, and I needed the white board, quark board, calendar, and devotional schedule up on the wall and out of the reach of a certain 21 month old, who likes to tear down papers and generally reek havoc out of any order I try to create. So my school room is almost all the way set up now! I just need Aaron to build me a book case and a couple of shelves so I can organize all my material and have a space to keep things out of reach of children, and then the school room will be in business. Oh ya, and a couple more small chairs to go around the table too.
I'm getting really excited to start Kindergarten with Lincoln. Not that I have any plans on stopping and then starting up again in the fall. Mostly I just plan on keeping on like we are and continuing to move on when he's ready. So there won't really be an "official" start of Kindergarten. But just knowing that we are doing Kindergarten things, I think, will make it feel like I'm a "real" homeschooler :) If that makes any kind of sense, I don't know. And really, since Linc already knows all his letters and sounds, and can count well passed 30, I guess, technically we're already done with Kindergarten, but you know what I mean. I'm excited to finish up a few of my scheduled weekly morning commitments and just block off all the time from when we wake up until after naps to strictly school stuff. Once fall is here, I plan on really limiting the activities and plans we make in the mornings. A public school Kindergartener would be in school for a certain amount of time each day, and they wouldn't miss here and there and everywhere because their mom had other things scheduled. So I feel like we need to give our Kindergarten a time frame and stay with in that, and not plan play dates or grocery shopping trips or whatever, in that space. And I realize that the idea of homeschooling is that you can be flexible, and I definitely intend to be flexible. But I also feel like it's important to put a certain amount of priority on school time. And starting in fall, with Kindergarten, school is going to move it's way up the priority list, more than it has been in the past when it was just preschool.
There are still a few curriculum items I want to get for fall, but maybe I'll save those for another post.
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