Mar. 5, 2008 - Games
I've been trying to include some board games into our days. Today, we played Scattergories, which Ariella did pretty well at. This was the first time she played the game. I gave her two timers worth to come up with words while I had only one, but she did pretty well coming up with words for each prompt. Since it was her first time playing, I didn't really focus on correct spelling, but when we play it again, I'm going to at least point out to her the correct way of spelling her words. Today was just to introduce her to the game and teach her the rules. Kaylah played too...she was on my team. She rolled the letter die, named the letter and then I read her the prompts and she had to think of answers that begin with the letter sound. Most times, she would just name answers that did not begin with the letter.
We also played Mastermind. Ariella played the code maker and I played the codebreaker. Which means, she came up with the code (the order of various colored pegs) and I had to work my way up the board trying to break the code. She answered my guesses with littlle pegs. It's a logic game. Again, it was just to teach her the rules. Next time, she'll take a turn being the codebreaker! Kaylah's part was to put the pegs in where I directed her to.
Other games we've played are scrabble, chutes and ladders, hi-ho cherrio, candyland, bingo, making change, don't break the ice, boggle, and a few card games.
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Feb. 29, 2008 - What's Kaylah Learning Right Now?
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Feb. 22, 2008 - Wacky Caterpillar
Kaylah is posing with her caterpillar that she made this morning. She found the directions for it in her High Five magazine. After this picture was taken, Ariella woke up and they made two more longer caterpillars that are now on dispay up on our curtain rods.
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Feb. 14, 2008 - Creative Writing
This morning, Ariella finished her story. She felt very accomplished and we talked about sending it in to an on-line homeschool newsletter. Getting her to do creative writing has been somewhat difficult this year. I started out the year by giving her journal topics, then when she wouldn't do that, I gave her the choice about what to write about. Well, that didn't bring about any writing, so I switched to us taking turns writing a fictional story. We were into it for a while until our story fizzled out and we kind of lost interest in it.
I went back to giving assigned topics for her journal. Each week I would give her two topics from which to choose. And each week she would do everything but her journal. I hated that she refused to write, but I knew it was just a matter of finding what would click for her. I also knew that in kindergarten, she did "Kid Writing" which was a form of a journal where she would have to write and draw a corresponding picture. She did fine with that. But then she most likely did it to comply with her teacher's request (kind of like eating spagghetti at a friend's house when she won't touch the stiff at home!)
Then I read about Charlotte Mason's technique of narrating. I decided to give this a try and it was working. I continued with the two journal topics, but since I was no longer going to require her to write the journals, I had her do both topics rather than have the choice. She did get to to choose the day and which one to do first. She told me what she wanted to say on the topic and I wrote it. When she knew that she wouldn't have to write it, she would be think a little deeper and delve a little bit more into a topic than she had been doing before.
Of course, now we're trying unschooling, so I was a little curious as to what she was going use as her outlet for writing. I am glad that she has been pouring her creative juices into her story. She's been carrying the lap top around with her, sitting down to type when the mood hit her. And she's already talking about what her next story is going to be about.
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Feb. 13, 2008 - Mom, Do I have off next Monday?
Ariela asked me this while we were eating lunch. My reply..."Off from Brownies? Yes. Off from CCD? Yes." Her reply..."No, mom, off from school!" After achuckle, I asked her if she wanted me to put her outside and lock the door all day. How can I give her off from being homeschooled, I wanted to know, considering we haven't been doing workbooks and reading from text books. After we talked about it a while, I think she finally sees that her friends don't have one up on her.
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Feb. 7, 2008 - Kaylah's learning
Kaylah never really went to regular school. She went to Mommy's Morning Out, a program held at a near-by preschool, last year two mornings a week. She liked it. But mostly what she knows about school she learned from Ariella. Ariella plays school with her and that's how she knows of recess, lunch time, homework, the principal's office, and raising your hand to speak.
Kaylah has her own binder.In it though are dot to dot pictures, coloring pages, and blank art paper. It's mostly to make her feel big like Ariella. In the beginning, she wanted to do her schoolwork too. I even came up with a movable chest of drawers that I filled with "school" stuff for her. It has a bag of clay, lacing beads, blank paper, crayons, sentence puzzles, rubber stamps and ink pads, picture flash cards, and some workbooks that specialize in preschool and kindergarten skills. When she wants to do schoolwork with Ariella she knows to go to these drawers and find something.
But for the most part, Kaylah plays. She plays well with the babies although sometimes can get alittle rough with them. She plays great with Ariella too. Best of all, she can play wonderfully by herself. Kaylah has no problem going upstairs, pulling out the dress up box and playing dress up for quite some time. She can become engrossed in an art project or lay down on the rug with her basket of Little People stuff and play while I make dinner or put in a load of laundry. Kaylah is a wonderful player and I would hate to ruin that trait of her's by demanding her to sit down and learn phonics.
Sooner or later, she'll learn it, but with Kaylah, it's so much easier to let her learn something when she wants to learn it rather than teach it and her not learn a thing!
Below: Kaylah at TLC and below that she's sewing clothes onto her sock puppet.
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Feb. 7, 2008 - Binder work
For the past six half months, Ariella has been required to do binder work. I would sit down each Sunday and come up with what she needed to do for the week. Some of it could be done independently but most of it she wanted me to sit down next to her at the kitchen table while she completed it.
We started by me outlining what needed to be done daily. But, she rarely got everything completed and even if I only gave her a few things, I felt like I was writing up lesson plans and that was just way too much like school. Why was I homeschooling anyways?! I didn't want homeschooling to be school at home. Plus I had to do work every night to prepare for the next day. For the first month, I was beginning to doubt my decision. I read about all the benefits and believed that this was the right choice. But as Ariella cried over having to do her work every day, I felt like a bad mother for having thought I could do this.
So we switched to weekly binder work. This allowed for more freedom. As long as Ariella completed at least 90% of the work (some weeks she did it all), she was able to choose when to do what. At first I let her sleep in and do the work whenevr she felt up to it. But then she started using it as an excuse to stay up. "Mom, but I have school work to do!" I felt like I had to let her do it. But then, no...I realized that we had to come up with some kind of schedule. I started waking her up around 6:30 or 7 and we'd sit on the couch before anyone else awoke and read some. Then when the rest of the brood awoke (around 7:30), we'd eat breakfast and get started on her binder work.
So, she'd do a little work and take a ten minute break. She's do a little more then get distracted with Kaylah and start playing. This went on for a few weeks and I could feel the frustration building. I would explain, I would lose patience, I would yell, Ariella would cry. I wrote up a schedule with her help to show that if she sat down and did four hours of work (with a half hour break thrown in) that she could indeed be done by noon. Then she could have the whole rest of the day to play and do whatever she wanted to.
Which brings us to now. I'm willing to give a bit more freedom and fit her learning into neat categories for the sake of the the school district. Let's see where it takes us. I've always been pretty laid back, so maybe this may be the fit for us.
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