Homeschooling Day by Day - Week 2

Last week's main lesson was not to stress if some of the activities don't happen as planned or don't happen at all. The beautiful part is just about any experience can be turned into an educational one.

Plus that's the beauty of homeschool - I can go with the flow. In my planning I try for at least 1 hour of playground time each day (or going to a park or a greenway). On a rainy day we can stay home or go to a toy store or a Barnes&Noble (mostly to play with trains and look through the latest issue of Drumhead, no kidding!). But on a sunny day, we're going to be out for way more than an hour without worrying about sorting bears, lacing beads or putting together puzzles.

With this in mind, here's my very tentative schedule for Week 2:

Ok, I just realized that I it's already Monday evening and I haven't posted it yet. So we did make a scarecrow, but out of a brown bag (see picture above). Mr. M wasn't too much into it, but compensated by doing not 1 but 2 other art projects later in the day - playdoh drawing and drawing a rail road (with help of his trains).

Monday

• Art - making a scarecrow; it was a huge hit the first time we did it and Mr. M keeps asking about it now and then. We might also make another scarecrow out of a brown bag. This one will include mostly painting, drawing and gluing.


• Fine motor - we're back to the stickers are fun phase and I'm going to use this to learn body parts (I'm thinking heel, toes, individual fingers, elbows since Mr. M already knows most body parts)


• Science - making thumbprints and examining them through magnifier


• Blocks - we haven't made much progress with building a town, so we'll pick up where we left in Week 1 - buildings, signs and hopefully a railroad signal.

Tuesday

• Art - body tracing (or at least teddy bear tracing) would be fun


• Blocks - building the tallest tower we can build


• Game - I'm dying to try Twister with Mr. M


• Math - making a face out of felt to learn different shapes (ok, so Mr. M already knows most basic shapes, but never hurts to review)


• Practical life - pouring rice (can you tell I'm reviewing my Montessori books?)

Wednesday

• Art - doodle art


• Fine motor - paper-clip pick-up (with a small brush, a magnet and a pair of strawberry hullers)


• Language and memory - a game of "what's missing" with 3-5 objects


• Game - water table (ok, so it's actually a sink, but it's a ton of fun nevertheless)


• Practical life - I'm gonna get ambitious here and try to teach Mr. M to set his table for each meal

Thursday

• Art - paint to music


• Cooking - making little pizza faces out of pita bread, cheese, raisings, carrots, etc.


• Taste - tropical fruits tasting

Friday - Bear's Birthday Party

• Art - make party invitations (and deliver them to Chef Pig, teddy bears and other guests)


• Cooking - bake and decorate cupcakes


• Math - sort birthday candles by color


• Fine motor - gift wrapping (and unwrapping)


• Game - Bear's birthday party

An Hour of Paint Dough

I love MaryAnn Kohl's art books! I love that there are no fancy photographs of carefully assembled end products (ours NEVER end up looking like the pictures, not even close). I love how simple most of the projects are - no fancy supplies or involved prep-work. And I absolutely love the sheer number of ideas in each of her books.

(Here's a great interview with MaryAnn where she mentions her upcoming book)

Having lots of easy-to-prepare art projects is very important to me since I never know what Mr. M will like on any given day. Yesterday he asked if we could make a scarecrow and today he couldn't care less about it.

So while he was playing with his trains, I picked up MaryAnn's Preschool Art book. I randomly opened it on the page with the Paint Dough project.

It sounded very simple. We had all the ingredients and supplies - flour, salt, water, paint. Ok, I didn't have poster board or matte board, but I used a roasting pan with some wax paper over it.

Mr. M got totally into it - mixing salt and flour. Then I distracted him with some 'toons, added water and paint to the mix, poured into a squeeze bottle and it was ready! Mr. M absolutely loved it! First he drew by squeezing the dough, but then got a bit tired and used the brush to make some cool designs. And if you're wondering what he drew - apples.

And now I'm off to update my Amazon Wish List - to add MaryAnn's latest book.

Halloween

It was brought to my attention that I never posted Halloween pictures. That's because we didn't have Halloween this year. We were out of town (I guess the two giant bags of candy will have to wait until next year unless we use them in some cool projects).

But that doesn't mean we didn't do any Halloween-y stuff. First, we shopped for little pumpkins at a farmer's market. Then we went to an actual pumpkin patch for the big pumpkin. Then we drew lots of pumpkins and apples and put them all over the family room.

Then, of course, we read some Halloween books, including Margery Cuyler's The Bumpy Little Pumpkin and Erica Silverman's The Big Pumpkin - these two we read over and over and over and finally learned them by heart (as usual, I translated both into Russian for Mr. M).

Then we baked cookies. Actually, my hubby, being the family baker, baked them with Mr. M while I took some pictures. Unfortunately, we didn't decorate the cookies this year all because I didn't realize that for sprinkles to stay on the cookies, we had to frost them first. Shows how much I know about baking.

As for the costume, our idea was to dress Mr. M as the train engineer (his last year's costume). He didn't mind it at first, but then, on Oct. 30 he told us that he wanted to be a witch. Off we ran to Target, grabbed a plain black witch's costume - a dress and a hat (of course it was a girl's costume, have you seen witch's costumes for boys?!). Back home I cut the dress to make it into a short tunic and decorated the hat with some Halloween stickers and creepy crawlers.

Finally, we did carve a big pumpkin. It was given a nice toothy smile and set outside in the dark with a candle in its head.

So yes, we did all the Halloween stuff, except for trick-o-treating, but over the span of 2 or 3 weeks. It was kind of nice though, kind of like having Halloween over and over. And hey, we did keep all the candy!

All Play and No Work

makes for one happy little boy! Ok, so we did do some work today, but it was well-camouflaged as a fun game.

A few months ago the hubby cut down some bushes to clear up some much needed space (what for - don't ask; the site is still empty, except for a pile of dry twigs). These bushes provided habitat for some of the birds. So naturally I felt very bad (although, we've got enough bushes and trees left on the property to house most of North American birds).

Anyway, I felt bad and, with winter fast approaching, I finally made my way to a home improvement store and bought a bird feeder and a big package of bird seed. Ok, to be honest, I wanted to buy the seeds for both the birds and Mr. M.

Don't call the authorities yet! Of course, Mr. M doesn't eat the seeds. Instead, I pour them in a big plastic tub, hide some small toys and let Mr. M dig for them. It's a great sensory game plus it's quick to set up and is practically free (if you plan on eventually using the seeds to feed the birds).

Well, back to the birds. After I explained to Mr. M about the bird feeder - what it's for and how the birds eat out of it, he wanted to help. So I let him pour seeds from the bag into the feeder with a little scoop. He absolutely loved the activity. Besides, he was totally fascinated with the sound the falling seeds were making on the sides of the feeder.

Once we were done, we went outside on the deck. I decided that it was about time to sweep all the leaves and pine needles off the deck and got to work. What d'ya know! Mr. M immediately started running around and stomping on the leaves, essentially negating my hard work (the push broom IS heavy).

Fortunately, I came up with an idea of making a giant leaves-and-needles pile for him to jump in. He LOVED the idea and patiently waited until the pile was just big enough (and more importantly, off the deck). That was some great gross motor work, jumping and rolling and climbing and walking all over the pile. Oh, and of course all the sensory work - touching leaves, needles, pine cones, twigs and listening to all the crunching and rustling. Fortunately, Mr. M never suspected a thing (or else he'd be inside playing with the trains).

Homeschooling Week 1 - How Did It Go?

It's the end of the first official week of homeschooling and I'm ready to pat myself on the back and have a celebratory bowl of ice-cream (or anything else sweet). Better yet, I'm going to slice me another slice of this amazing SweetWater Pale Ale bread I bought today at Whole Foods.

Munch-munch, back to the recap of the week. Well, I have to admit that I had a lot of help from Word World's Chef Pig. Currently he's Mr. M's best buddy and MIC (Most Influencial Character). This week, Chef Pig is everywhere with us - riding trains (real and toy ones), baking bread (real and imaginary), reading books, building block towers. He's a great influence too - if Mr. M doesn't want to do something, Chef Pig leads the way.

Monday went absolutely great. We actually did every single thing I planned for us. And, even more importantly, Mr. M was eager and willing to build with blocks, play with buttons, do puzzles (he ASKED for them), etc. The only thing that didn't go as planned was the balance scales game. He simply didn't care for it at all. He understood the concept and could easily point to a heavier or ligher object when asked. But his heart was absolutely not into it. After a few minutes he just walked away. That's ok too.

The highlight of our Tuesday was objects tracing. I love this activity - it is super simple to set up and is quite fun. All you need is some paper, a crayon or a marker, and some shapes to trace (we used simple cookie cutter shapes from our Play Dough set). Oh and I also added a ruler to draw straight lines. Then Mr. M added a new twist by turning each outline into a face. And then he added some stickers too.

We also built a new train set with some leftover poster board, an empty Klinex box, and some markers. The huge train set upstairs was quickly abandoned and Mr. M concentrated on giving rides to Chef Pig and helping sorting bears get to their color-coded islands.

On Wednesday Mr. M rediscovered chalk. I give him very small pieces (to ecourage proper grip) and we both draw. We start off with a little imitation - lines, crosses, circles and his favorite letter of the moment - "C". Then we do little mazes and connect the dots-type games. This is really much cheaper than buying Kumon Mazes workbooks (although I LOVE them).

On Thursday we did little of what we planned. The day was simply too gorgeous to spend indoors. Instead, we went to the lake to feed the ducks and for a little playdate. And then we went for a train ride and a hot dog.

Finally, today- Friday - we went completely off our schedule. Instead of playing with blocks and house-cleaning, we were busy making Play Dough cakes and pasta, talking about different letters, and baking real bread.

Other things we did this week in addition to or, more often, instead of the pre-planned activities were

• reading, lots and lots of it
• music - mostly drums and some kazoo
• magnets and magnifiers - Mr. M ran around the house one day trying to stick a magnet to everything; the next day he marveled at how everything - leaves, pine cones, acorns and Chef Pig - looked big through a magnifier
• outside play - playgrounds, lakes, parks and front yard - the weather is gorgeous and we're making the most of it!