We are a creative homeschooling family of 3. I have homeschooled my 2 boys from the start and we do lots of unit studies and get out into our beautiful part of the world as often as we can.
As the boys are getting older and we are getting busier I find I am posting less about our journey but will continue to update occasionally.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Back to School

It is our first full week of homeschooling this week. What with last weeks public holiday and our "Not Back to School Pool Party". We are all well rested and keen to be getting on with all the plans we have made together.

Yesterday Mr10 was unwell so we missed our normal planned Monday and stayed home.


In this pic you can see Mr10 trying to use his left hand and also his swollen right hand.
We were doing T t t for turtle and Mr10 was illustrating one for Mr5.

Unfortunately Mr10 was stung on the wrist by a paper wasp on Sunday and still has a swollen hand. He has not really been able to do much, but has been reading, sleeping and building things with Lego. He has also been helping me start to teach Mr5. It has been interesting for him to be in that role and I caught him using a couple of my most common phrases- LOL.
"Shh and listen"
and
"Please stop being silly"

Mostly though Mr 5 and I have had the luxury of whole mornings 1 on 1.
We worked on his phonics, today's letter was 'i' so we did his Jolly Phonics workbook.


Then we worked on his letter book page. We looked through a magazine for i's and talked about the different fonts we found again- he is having a bit of trouble with all the different fonts, we have covered the letters s, a, t and now i and I have actually been surprised in the variations - its another one of those things I am aware off but don't really pay that much attention too, but can certainly add to the confusion of a young learner. We found some images of i words- an igloo and some insects. And stuck on the favourites- the foam sticker letters.

I am doing a double page for each letter and we are displaying them for a while then they will be bound into his very own letter book. We are using cardboard folder divider. I wanted to find some A4 cardboard but could not locate any so we picked up 6 packs of 5 dividers and then Mr5 and I marbled them one sunny day.


And then we did some letter writing on the white board.

But we still needed to do with this keen little man
"No Mummy, we are not finished I can't read everything yet"


So I made up some instant pudding.
Now I am unfamiliar with this product but read about it on a lovely blog I recently visited where a mum used it for tactile letter learning and I thought it might be an idea that appealed to my boy(s) lol. It was a hit, it was sweet and squishy and fun. Mr10 joined in and wrote letters into his plate for Mr5 to copy and identify the sound-


This is great I could wash up before mid afternoon- why have I not got onto the idea of Mr10 doing some of Mr5s teaching before?


It led to an interesting discussion, Mr5 has recently asked me why we don't eat artificial flavourings and colourings because apparently He "Loves Them!" so I should be buying him lollies and soft drinks and mostly the blue rainbow ice cream at the ice cream shop. After Mr5 had tasted the pudding a few times he asked if it had artificials in it, Mr10 answered," Probably mate it is very processed I will go and have a look". So they got the pack and saw numbers listed in the ingredients, Mr5 decided he didn't like artificials after all.
I thought they would end up eating the pudding, but once they were finished writing and playing in it, they put it into the chook bucket.
Next time I won't use 700ml milk, I will make it up with water.

Next we did some Maths. We have just started Math-U-See and Mr5 loves it. He talks right back to Steve on the DVD and then gets out the blocks and does his worksheets and asks to do more and more lessons- I am limiting him to 2 a day, I don't want to wear out his enthusiasm.


We then went out to check the mail and sweep the verandah and just had to do a bit more writing, letters and numbers- our dog Reiley thought they looked so good he had to lie on them!

3 comments:

Catherine (Alecat Music) said...

Well, that pudding writing sounds like you're all having too much fun, lol!!
Glad to see you're all enjoying getting into your new rhythm for the year.
alecat xxxx

Anonymous said...

Fantastic blog for someone (me) who is considering (but really scared) to homeschool. You make it sound like fun, not school!
And, just had to tell you that I am in love with your fig tree... it is majestic!

Louise said...

Thanks Alecat- we are having fun.

And thanks The Magic Onions (Great Name) for visiting my blog. Homeschooling is great fun, it is very rewarding and wonderful for lots of families. It can be hard work, it does take time and you can burn out but for me the rewards are so much greater than the negatives. I urge you look more into homeschooling and talk to families who are choosing that lifestyle, and you can always just try it to start with and then take it year by year.