Friday, November 16 - Freebies are Great - and Update
So E and I went to an 'open house' at an educational company of some sort (not really sure WHAT they do). They were giving away a bunch of resources they had been sent by the publisher for their review. They review them and get rid of them. Anyway, we brought home a ton of stuff! I think we had 6 or 7 paper bags full PLUS 3 boxes and another pile that didn't make into anything. We filled the back of the Expedition. We then sat down and went through it all. Picked out what we wanted and we still have a few boxes to get rid of. I shouldn't have to get much in the way of math and reading/language arts for a few years. I haven't even explored everything yet.
Aside from that, we've been taking it easy. Haven't been doing TOO much school time, but I've been trying to do more with him randomly throughout the day. I was home all this week (no nanny job) and we've been home, so I've been able to catch his interests right away and use them as learning times. He's loves mazes, and I've been encouraging this to help with his fine-motor skills. We got rid of a bunch of coloring books this week, but I pulled all the mazes out of them first. He's working on that right now (he's done like 10 of them already!) Its time to start looking for maze only books!
We also just learned what a dictionary was. He asked me what the word 'accident' means. He's been using the word, but I don't think he really understood it. So I pulled out his Richard Scarry Picture Dictionary and showed him how we use it. But of course, the word 'accident' wasn't in there. So I showed him how we can also look it up online. In the process I found Wordsmyth. It has a children's dictionary, which I think will be helpful. It definitely put the word 'accident' into better to understand terms for a 4 yr old!
Anyone use del.icio.us? Its a site to store your links, but you also share them with others. And they are searchable by tags. I like it because I can save my links by tags, instead of just into folders like in your favorites. You can also share your saved sites with those in your network. So if you want to join my network, go to my bookmarks here: http://del.icio.us/djbartch. Oh, and they have buttons for you to put on your IE, Firefox, etc, so adding sites is as easy as adding them to your favorites!
That's the best way for young children to learn anyway. They don't need to be sitting at books. Let them dump out their banks, and have them seperate the different coins into piles. Then learn that if we put 4 quarters together that makes a dollar. Just easy fun things. Of course, my youngest thinks some workbooks are fun. Just use what is peaceful and wait for the results. It's a long story how we got there, but my 10 yo has only studied a handful of spelling words (she can't hear phonetically). However, especially in the last few months, her spelling has just bloomed--just by living life.
Great find on the books!
I'm sure you know this, but you can print out some great mazes of all levels off the internet. Last year I got some great ones in the shapes of turkeys, leaves, and other Thanksgiving themes.
Letitia
I'm a homeschooling mom of a 5 yr old boy - Bug. We're Sabbath keeping, God loving Christians from Portland, OR. We're excited to start our Kindergarten Year!
