Here's a little of what we've been up to this week!
I plan our school activities one week at a time, usually on the weekends. It does not take too long but I've found it makes such a big difference if I have it well planned. We have started using workboxes, which is something I've learned about from many other homeschool blogs. I plan about 5 activities for each child to do each day that we're going to do school, and this typically takes us around an hour. If we don't get to something, it's no big deal. If we need to switch things around, we do. I love having things planned out and I'm a total nerd with my charts and notes :)
This is our "workbox" area. Their first activity is usually handwriting and so it's on the table when they come downstairs. Their other four activities go in these boxes (Matthew's in the top four, Nathan's in the middle four, and Hannah's in the bottom four). This way I can put everything needed for each activity in the box and when it's time I just grab everything out - no looking around for things!
We work for the most part at our big table, although we often spread out for other activities. Matthew and I do his reading sitting on the floor in front of the whiteboard. Nathan likes to do things at the little kid table. Hannah often gets down and just wanders around playing with toys (which is fine, as long as she's happy!!).
Here are some pictures of school on Friday. While Matthew worked on one page of his math book (he is learning simple addition), Hannah and Nathan put beads onto pipe cleaners that were stuck into playdoh. They both loved this!
To make Nathan think a little more, I started some patterns and asked him to keep going with the patterns. He did great!
Next Hannah put some little craft puffs into a container while Nathan, Matthew and I played a kite game. Our letter this week (for Nathan) is K, so we have been doing some kite activities.
I got the idea for this game somewhere and then just made my own - a picture of a kite, cut up into five pieces, with a number on each piece. If its your turn you roll the die, count the dots and then pick up that piece of the kite (if you don't have it already). Nathan is working on counting and number recognition so this was good for reinforcing that. Matthew just thought it was fun! It also teaches them to take turns and to not get mad if they lose :)
Matthew has always hated coloring, but these days he is much more willing to try for longer periods of time. He colored a page that was split up into different sections with a color key telling him which color to use for the different words. He read it himself and completed it without help. He was very proud of himself!
While he did that, Nathan and I played "Step and Read" which I made up to help the boys practice letters/words. Nathan had to step on a letter and read it - if he got it wrong I made him go back to the beginning (mean mommy!). This way he practiced them a lot. At the end he got some small prizes, which was very exciting.
Matthew's completed picture!
Last week Matthew's reading lesson was pretty intense and he worked on reading words with final blends. It was a challenging week so this week we did some review with a lot of the new words. He played "Step and Read" with his new words and did great!
I'm really enjoying so many aspects of homeschooling. We were all sick for almost 2 weeks and I realized just how much school Matthew would have missed already. Thankfully he wasn't sick enough to not read or do lessons at home, so we kept plugging away. I love the planning, finding new ideas and playing games with the kids. It's amazing to see the progress they've made in only a couple of months. I don't know what the next years will hold for us, if we will continue to homeschool or not, but for now it is such a wonderful blessing to our family!
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