Homeschooling Day by Day - Week 4

Last week I made a mistake of planning too many activities that required advanced preparation, such as a geoboard (which, by the way, we haven't yet made). I really don't have much time in the evenings to make toys/games/activities for the next day. And it doesn't always work out to prepare those during the day, when I'm busy with Mr. M.

Monday

Art - making greeting cards for grandparents
Math - counting dishes and silverware
Writing - yes, I know, it's really too early to teach writing, but we can practice building words like mama, papa, grandma, grandpa, etc out of magnetic letters

Tuesday

Fine motor - I have a few pictures of family members that would be great for making puppets with
Language - if the above goes well, we might even put on a little puppet show
Math - we'll make award buttons for each puppet in the show

Wednesday

Art - I'm thinking about something like making a family tree
Cooking - time to make cookies
Language - we'll look at family photographs (something Mr. M really loves) and make up little stories

Thursday

Thanksgiving - lots of cooking, setting up the table, reading Thanksgiving books
Table game - The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Art - we haven't practiced drawing faces for quite some time

Friday

Fine motor - folding laundry, pretend ironing
Language - we might try family puppets again
Math - matching socks

All Is Sort Of Well - Week 3 Wrap-Up

It's been a roller-coaster week, including the weekend. Mr. M must be going through some kind of phase that's especially trying. I have some ideas, but I'll save those for later. I'm not too worried since I've heard many times that terrible 2's are nothing compared to the horrible 3's.

The great thing was that Mr. M had terrific sessions with both his occupational therapist and physical therapist. He was such a joy, doing pretty much everything he was told to do and loving it. And the big news here, of course, is that he now jumps. Ok, he's been jumping straight up for some time. But now he does the broad jump, even without holding my hand. Hooray!

Monday and Tuesday weren't so bad. We did pretty much all activities, except for the leaf rubbing mural. Mr. M tried it, but didn't care much for it. What he did love was to play with birdseed. The weather was great and I took the birdseed container, plastic critters, and all sorts of measuring spoons and funnels out on the deck - fun, fun, fun!

Then again, we had some pretty bad moments. The worst was probably on Wednesday when I tried to make the turkey wreath with Mr. M. Not only Mr. M didn't want to join in, but he hated that I continued on with the project without him. Things got so bad with all the crying and whining, that I had to cancel all other plans for the day and instead get us both out of the house for the rest of the day.

As a matter of fact, the only art project we did this week was the pumpkin boat. And it came out splendidly! First, I had Mr. M make the sail - sprinkling cut-up bits of magazine pages on Contact paper. Next, I attached this sail to a wedge of pumpkin (good ol' Jack-o-Lantern got recycled). And we both decorated the sides with some stickers.

On Thursday I tried doing some math with Mr. M - sorting building blocks by color and size. That didn't work out well. He doesn't really care much for sorting. It's not like he doesn't know colors, shapes and sizes. So I modified the game into building a block tower with different-colored levels. It's kind of like sorting, right? And then we spent the rest of the day at the Kids' Museum.

And Friday was split between making a cookbook-tionary, pretend cooking and reading about and listening to classical music.

Change of Tunes

Hooray, we're switching our musical gears away from the Putumayo Presents: Gypsy Groove and toward some classical music. Don't get me wrong, Gypsy Groove is a wonderful CD (as all the other Putumayo CDs we've bought so far). But when your little one listens ONLY to this one CD over and over and over and over and... well, you get the picture.

And so, I'm very happy to present Mr. M's new favorite CD (and book) - My First Classical Music Book. It was love at first sight for both of us. The illustrations are awesome and the text is easy for the little one to understand and for me to translate. And then there were all those musical instruments! Oh, and of course, an hour-long CD (69 minutes, to be exact) was an instant hit with both of us.

Here's how it's going so far:

• Day 1 - read the book 3 times at the store and 4 times after returning home. Listened to the CD in the car and at home.
• Day 2 - looking at pictures of and naming all the instruments. This led to an impromptu parade around the family room with Mr. M alternating between his toy drum and a pretend trombone.
• Day 3 - have you ever heard Offenbach's Can-Can? Of course you did. But what about Can-Can accompanied by a not-quite-3-year-old on toy drums? Well, I did and it wasn't nearly as bad as my dancing to it.
• Day 4 - after reading about Bach and listening to the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Mr. M asked for paper and pencil. When I asked what for, I was informed that it was needed to "write down music". Ok, makes sense. After much scribbling, Mr. M told me that he wrote "loud organ music" which I thought was pretty cool.

Now I'm looking for more activities to add to the mix (other than dancing and drumming). It'd be cool to do some kind of "meet the orchestra" or "instruments zoo", where kids can see each instrument up close (and even try them). Will look for local events!

Choosing Books for Mr. M

I'm very proud to report that we've just finished the first book in the Tales from Moominvalley series by Tove Jansson! Moominvalley is one of my absolutely most favorite books and fortunately I have a Russian version of it. Still, I'm very surprised that Mr. M liked it - the story is pretty complicated (more of a 8-10 year old set) and there are only a few black-and-white sketches in the book.

We've been on a book-reading spree since summer. By now I know exactly what Mr. M will and will not enjoy. But the problem is, I also have to find books that are easy to sight-translate into Russian (remember, we're doing the whole bilingual one-parent one-language thing and for some reason finding a good Russian language preschool-level book is so very hard).

So here's our joint checklist for choosing books (whether at a bookstore or at a library):

• Must have trains or musical instruments (drums or brass) or food (think pies, cakes, doughnuts) or ALL of the above.
• Must be in prose (sight-translating poems is a bit much for me)
• Must not be about alphabet or use alphabet as the basis for a story (again, has to do with translations)
• Must be short
• Must have high illustrations-to-text ratio.

Now, this last one is actually for me, not for Mr. M. Of course, he loves lots of great pictures. But he will listen to a very good story even if it has almost no pictures or just a few black-and-white ones.

But if I have to translate, having lots of images really helps me tell the story the same way each time we read it. Plus it gives me a bit of a break before we move to the next page. Plus this way Mr. M can flip through the book and "read" the story on his own.

With all this in mind, I'm now looking through the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2009. And I have my Amazon account open and Mr. M's wishlist ready to be updated.

Homeschooling Day by Day - Week 3

I guess the main thing I learned from last week's lessons is to be very flexible and not to worry if on some days NONE of the planned stuff gets done. And I decided to temporarily put our town-building game on hold.

Every time I attempt to continue, Mr. M gets absorbed with his train set. Or, if I move the activity to the family room downstairs, he brings some trains alone and demands to draw train tracks for them.

This week we're going to get ready for Thanksgiving (had to double-check the calendar today. I ran into a Santa's elf today at one of the department stores and thought maybe I missed something). So all the art work will be Thanksgiving-y.

So here it goes:

Monday

Art - fall leaves banner (if you read Filth Wizardry, you know exactly what I'm talking about. (And if you don't, hurry up and subscribe today - that blog is AWESOME!)
Fine motor - more play with birdseed. We might even make a bird feeder out of spare toilet paper tubes covered in peanut butter and rolled in birdseed.
Language - we'll take about what we do with our hands, feet, eyes, etc.
Science - mystery object match (I'm going to use this Guidecraft Feel & Find game for this activity)


Tuesday

Gross motor - I'm thinking about playing a wind-chime piano game where I hang windchimes up high so that they can only be reached on tippy-toes or with a stick. So either that or an obstacle course.
Listening - do you know the sound canister matching game? Well, we'll do that, sans the writing part. I don't have the canisters ready yet, so it'll be on my to-do list for tomorrow.
Science - sound glasses (ok, it's a Listening Tuesday) - if this sounds confusing, think back to Ms. Congeniality (the movie) and Sandra Bullock's character's performance in the talent portion of the beauty contest. I do have nice glasses, but before I risk those, I'm going to try some canning jars.
Art - we'll make some boats out of our old Jack-o-Lantern.


Wednesday

Art - Thanksgiving wreath (nothing fancy, just a themed collage)
Math - geoboard (another task for my to-do list)


I'm counting on having at least one "great weather" day this week so we can spend time outside. That's why I'm not planning much for Wednesday. Of course, if it happens to be a nice Monday, I'll just shift Monday activities to Wednesday. And if Wednesday turns out not so great, I'll do Thursday activities instead and will plan on being outdoors most of the day on Thursday. All about being flexible.


Thursday

Art - we'll be ambitious and try to make a turkey centerpiece
Game - pin the tail on a donkey sounds good (I have some leftover felt)
Fine motor - finger play with rhymes
Math - sort blocks by color and size and then build a tower
Science - learn about different wild animals


Friday

Art - I thought about making a favorite foods collage, but given Mr. M's love affair with all things Word World and cooking, we'll make a cookbooktionary.
Language - read, write, talk about recipes - nice tie-in with the Art activity
Math - I think we'll classify pictures of food stuff (i.e. veggies, fruits, cakes, yummy and yukkie)
Science - continuing with the food theme, we'll do some tasting and sorting - salt/sugar, flour/baking soda, watered-down lemon juice/water, etc.