My homeschooling Secret Weapon

Audio books are my secret homeschooling weapon! The girls LOVE them, they buy me about 15 mins while also counting as "educational". Matter of fact, this post WOULD NOT be happening if it wasn't for an audio book rented from the library!

I like to say it works on Anna, my 2 year olds, listening skills....she is now very good at knowing when to turn the page, while Kaelyn has excellent listening skills, it teaches her how to use inflection with her book as well as reading comprehension. I've picked up a few really cheap audio books from the Dollar Tree (Jonah and the Whale, Jack and the Beanstalk, Noah's Ark and Cinderella). While the biblical ones have songs following the story, the classics have questions. Kaelyn has started answering the questions outloud.

In addition to audio books, my lovely Mama Dot (aka my Grandma) bought the girls a subscription to Highlights and it has an audio book option on it's website! LOVE IT! The girls will sit and flip through their stack of three highlights while I cook dinner.

I know my posts have been scarce these past few weeks, and there is a LOT going on in my life (I'd really enjoy a slow down) and to better serve my family, my job, my volunteer position, I've had to let things slide. Once I get the handle I'll be back in full force, but for now I am going to squeeze in a shower while Snow White finishes on audio!

What are your homeschool secret weapons/tricks? I would love to diversify!

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Preschool review: Hearts and more Basics!

So this week has been pretty awesome as far as homeschooling goes.
Kaelyn continues to  progress with Reading and she enjoys her new reading corner (I'll put up pictures later), Anna has started signing her alphabet although she really doesn't like to actively do anything yet.

Kaelyn worked on cutting...so she made this cool fence.

Then we sorted colors, counted and graphed the results. We "predicted" which color would have the most hearts, which would have the least and the "evaluated" the results.


We made "heart snowflakes"!!! And decorated them.

And we also talked about recycling. We turned toilet paper rolls into heart garland and took the broken crayons and made them into heart shaped multi colored crayons for our friends.

The girls painted them, and I cut and poked holes. Then the girls threaded the ribbon through!

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Preschool Corner- Getting back to basics

I know, long time no see! I now have a computer and although I don't really have any pictures of the kids in action, I do have some shots of their work!

In order to actually get homsechooling done, I've had to eliminate some of the fun themed aspects because they take time, planning and often require us to be at home. The basics, and adapted fun activities have become our staple since we spend a lot of time in the car and at doctors appointments.

KAELYN: 

MATH: We are counting past 20 without mistakes, and if she could remember the tens changes past 40 she would be well on her way to counting over 100. We are doing great at manipulating items to solve word problems for both addition and subtraction using "key words" like gave, added, earned, etc to determine what type of problem she is doing and to manipulate her manipulative's to find the answer.

WRITING: I have had her practice her penmanship and spelling by using Progressive Phonics handwriting pages. She has started coloring her drawings and illustrating scenes from books...and her artwork is impressive!

Both the flash card and hearts are from the dollar spot at Target. We use those hearts as manipulative for Kaelyn and for Fine Motor Skills work for Anna. Anna uses a spoon and moves them from one container to the other. She seems to really enjoy this!

READING: We are READING PEOPLE! It's so exciting. She is using phonics and sight words to sound out and read!!!! Below are some of the books that she is picking up and bringing to read to me regularly. What I love, is if she can't figure out a word, she spells it out, tries to sound it out and THEN brings it to me for help! Her confidence is there, and she is tackling reading with excitement and pride.

See the colored picture in the middle??? Kaelyn colored it!

SCIENCE: We are reading aloud Magic School Bus Whales chapter book as a family at nap and at bedtime. The girls are really enjoying it and we are discussing the difference between Baleen Whales and Toothed Whales. Due to the snow, we have been reviewing states of matter (what does snow become when it melts, etc) and talking about the seasons and why some trees still have "leaves" and others do not.

ANNA!!! 3 in August
I just started really working with Anna on learning some of the basics that she refuses to learn "naturally". It was around this time that I started actively working on Kaelyn's attention span and teaching her to sit and learn for longer periods of time. Anna struggles with colors so we have been doing a lot of sorting, coloring and labeling in our everyday environments. Shapes are coming along easily, and we have a fun game that we play. In addition to I spy (numbers for Kaelyn Colors for Anna), I give Anna a hand drawn list of shapes and ask her to "call out a shape" to Kaelyn. She points and says the name of a shape and Kaelyn is suppose to try and find it. Obviously I might have to help find the less common shapes (heart shaped lettuce anyone?). Anna has taken to signing her alphabet with me which makes me very happy!

NOLEN:
We have been working on rolling over and Nolen is a rollin'! We are also working on opening and closing his hands by using puffs to encourage him to open, grasp, release. He can't get the puffs in his hand but it does encourage him to move his hands  with purpose towards a small item, which is difficult. Anna loves "helping aka eating" Nolen's snacks during this exercise, but at least she is sharing!

Here are some great weekly recaps at Preschool Corner!

Dr's Office Homeschooling

Since Nolen is requiring so many frequent doctors appointments, I have had to start rethinking my approach to homeschooling. Before I relied heavily on worksheets/traditional style learning, but that doesn't always translate well into a doctors setting where my girls will have to work independantly from me. This is what I have found that works

-Lots of File Folder Games!
-Puzzles

I carry these puzzles in a coupon sorter, and they very easily pull out. Kaelyn using them for her phonics and word recognition. Anna uses them for learning how to sort the colors and put the puzzles together.

While waiting for Nolen's medication, Kaelyn wrote a book (about 3 musketeers, I have to find it so that I can put a picture up) while Anna played with more puzzles.

-Lots of Reading! Kaelyn has progressed beyond Short A in Progressive Phonics and I am combing Progressive Phonics with Hubbard's Cupboard so that we are hitting both Phonics and Sight words! I'm so excited to see her make strides in reading! She is doing great at sounding out three letter words, especially those with the short a sound, and she can sight read *on, had, this, see, at, we, will, and a few more that I can't quite remember.

-Lots of everyday math. For example, with Fruit Snacks I make Anna tell me the color while I make Kaelyn sort them by color, tell me which has more, which has less etc. It seems to be working (with Kaelyn). Yesterday she told me that "If we had two cinderellas then we would have four evil stepsisters. But I like to pretend that Cinderella has a nice sister like Anna, so that would be two nice sisters as well" She's spontaneously drew a pattern (for her calender chart which is exactly what we used to do when we had daily school time). She asks to see this chart so that she can tell me "what kind of day it is, and what the weather was like".

-Lots of Drawing- In addition to making her own story book, she also regurgitated the plant life cycle! Complete with water hose, sunlight, dirt, seed, seedling, full blown flower with roots!!!!

Then we donated our hair!!! She is so excited to be doing something to help others. I told her I was donating my hair and explained how they would use my hair to make wigs for people who don't have hair. She didn't understand so we toured the Locks of Love photo gallery and she was SOLD on the idea.

Before she got it cut!

her and her ponytail! It was about 8 inches of hair!!!

The after! I love it because she can take care of it by herself!! As much as she likes it, I think she will grow it back out!

Nolen is doing better. He has been having choking episodes that can not be explained away easily. They occur despite position, whether he is eating or not (meaning he chokes on his own spit), time of day, etc. His peditrician started him on Zantac to see if it might help the symptoms (it seems to have helped the severity of his choking, although it could just be that I am more in tune to his cues) and we see the GI doctor on Monday. Hopefully we can get a suck swallow test scheduled so that we can determine the cause. He is doing much better with tracking/head control, and seems to be gaining strength daily. He has been spacing out and did so that the therapist was concerned. I'm going to be tracking the time and duration so that we can determine if it's something to note to the Neurologist come Jan/Feb.


More Homeschool posts at Preschool Corner!

More Life Learning

See that Giant Black Tub??? I have loaded up the most frequently used arts and crafts items into it and started leaving it out on the table for the girls to find in the morning!

I also tucked in some Halloween stickers, ghost cut outs and stamps. The girls have REALLY enjoyed this laid back, cut/color/cleanup into one giant tub approach! So much so that I even snuck a few worksheets under it in hopes of encouraging Kaelyn to do some "work" without her noticing it. Low and behold this is what she did!

Instead of tracing the animals, she cut them out! She did a REALLY good job as well!!

This free-range craft/worksheet approach keeps the girls entertained and allows them to learn and develop things at their own pace. I LOVE this more relaxed "unschooling"-esque approach!

Speaking of Life learning, one of the last things the girls did with Daddy before he left was examine this guy!

 

Who says Halloween isn't educational. They spent a good 15 minutes discussing bones and joints only to end up pointing out how inaccurate my $1 Halloween skeleton is...everyone is a critic!


Then we made cookies! Hello Counting, Direction following, Science and life skills!



Then Kaelyn worked on her 8 sight words (we added See/Sees, This, is, and Me). She actually started sounding out words today which is a HUGE Step for us!

Then she played illustrator and colored in the books as well as added her own special touches....like a Musketeer and Plaid fabric for the tent on the cover page!

Anna and I have been working really hard on labeling her shapes (like with colors, she does a great job pointing to the one you request but lacks the ability to label most). She knows (labels and recognizes on her own) heart, start and circle.

And this lovely little hand-me-down from my mom has been an AWESOME game for Kaelyn to play independantly (she picks a word tile adn then spells out the word underneath it). Anna has enjoyed playing it like a puzzle.

Here is the link for more homeschooling fun over at Preschool Corner!

Preschool Corner- Review week, Ants continued

This week has been an absolutely ideal homeschooling week. We had Soccer and doctors appointments the last two days, but otherwise we've had school as part of our daily routine!!!!

 We managed to have circle time (with both girls in attendance). Our circle time consists of  looking at the weather and hypothesizing what tomorrow's weather will be, singing the days of the week and establishing what today is, yesterday was, and what tomorrow will be, the day of the month and a countdown to Halloween, review our alphabet, say the pledge and count to 100.

I spent the week reviewing what we had learned last year since this is our "official first week".

Kaelyn being "tested" on number recognition and the ability to put them in the correct order. We call this Number Jumble

MATH: I was surprised to see how well Kaelyn is counting to 100, and how well she is doing with 13,14,15,16. Those were things she struggled with before we stopped for the summer. If made to look at the numbers rather than just saying them, Kaelyn can get 13,14,15,16 correct 100% of the time and she's begining to understand the teens placement in determining what number comes after 39,49,59, etc. Kaelyn also has taught Anna how to count past 10!!! I have a feeling that my girls are going to be number people....which is so like their father and so unlike me! I wanted to insure that Kaelyn recognized her numbers and could place them in the proper order from and unordered list.  She does great with 1-8, but struggles with 9-12.  We will work on 7-12 until she grasps that last four with ease. Then we will continue on into the teens followed shortly by the 20s.

READING: I've been quizzing her during circle time on showing Anna certain letters or find the letters by sound and she's done a remarkable well job considering I never drilled the alphabet with her, just shower her the letters as we went along with writing. Then, I "tested" her using the Kindergarten printout from the public school she will be attending where Capital and Lower case are jumbled together and the children are expected to recognize all the letters without mistake and within three seconds. So using that as my standard, we flew through the list and only missed 18. Sounds like a lot, but I didn't cut her any slack. A lot of her errors were due to the style/font used (the a had a hook at the top, their J didn't have a top, etc) or are common mistakes/confusions (ie d/b, p/q, wW/mM, u/v) l with 1or that their I doesn't have a  top and bottom it's just a line). So now we know which letters to continue to review.




Playdough letters and sight words as well!

We read the first Bob book and worked on the At family. Anna is slowly picking up phonics by being around us during school.

ANNA's school:
Anna can match her colors very well, but getting her to SAY the colors is a completely different matter. The same with the alphabet or counting....I have heard her count objects 1:1 up to 5, but to get her to count with you or for you...not going to happen. Her alphabet, well, she likes to sing herself to sleep at night and she will sing the ENTIRE alphabet without error...but if you ask...it's No. So, right now I just keep playing games with her to try and get her to feel comfortable showing me what I've seen/overheard her doing already!

Pink was our Color this week!

In other news, Anna has been doing an AMAZING job with her potty training and has decided that various toys should be potty trained as well....Enjoy!

I would have had pictures of Kaelyn's first soccer game, but my Camera is doing something odd....

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