But not home-school...
Well, as we have been busy I would love to share with you what we've been doing! First, as K has been on winter break from school we've been working really hard to keep his mind on what he had been learning in his first semester!
Behold- workbook time!!!
Sometimes- I'm stupid.
See, this worked for about the first week. He got a piece of candy after workbook time and had to complete 1-3 pages from 3 workbooks (numbers, letters, and phonics). I also incorporated posters for singing and we learned the "signs" for "Do, Re, Mi..." and so on. (Pictured above are "Do and La"). So the first week went pretty well and then the novelty wore off and he simply wouldn't try. Knowing that he can count to 20 and he refuses to go to 5- could be frustrating.
However, I believe that while children should be educated in school (be it at a school- home-schooled- whatever you choose) their education is ultimately a parents responsibility. So, I get frustrated that K won't practice his letters- being frustrated is not going to fix it. It will probably make the situation worse. So, since my husband and I were doing this together it was on us to figure out what motivates K. Our frustration and pushing- do not motivate K. So- we very purposely didn't do that. If we began to feel frustrated- we switched who was helping him. We rarely both worked at the same time because we didn't want to tag team and overwhelm him.
Moving on. Let me tell you when doing this there were times things didn't work out. I'd love to claim that this was all miraculously smooth and I'm perfectly cut out to be a preschool teacher myself- but that would be shameless lie. My starry eyed notions of this being easy have left the building and have given me a whole new respect for teachers of young children.
So then, what do you do?
On our Boba Fett page- BOBA SAYS "Be a bounty hunter like me, hunt for things with the "long i" sound. So we hunted around the house- then I was the merchant and he brought me his bounty and I paid him in candy. He LOVED that one.
Also because it's really really freaking cold right now- we threw boiling water out the window to see what would happen and did and experiment with that. That was a huge hit. Mostly because it looked cool. I'm having trouble embedding the video so here's a link where you can check it out.
We hope as he grows to continue this, especially during summer breaks. He learns one way at school- he learns differently at home. At home he learns best interactively. By doing. The cute Kindle apps, work books and posters- are all fun props but what works best is getting in there with him: playing, singing, pretending, gentle guiding toward a goal- but keeping it under the guise of play time. Maybe all you awesome Moms and Dad already figured that out- it took us some trial and error. We always praise K because I believe a positive reinforcement is ALWAYS better than a negative one. I hope you've gotten some ideas.
Got any for me? I'd love to hear em!!
Thanks!