Pressure off

This week was so much more relaxed and by the end of the week, my son and I both liked each other a lot more than in previous weeks.  It is a good sign that I was pushing him too much and frustrating both of us.

We had fun with the new approach to the art cards in which we tried to recreate the painting.  This way allowed us to focus on the painting in detail and still have fun with it.  I was concerned in subsequent weeks about the paintings being too complicated for us but a friend of mine suggested just choosing an element to copy and I think that is a fantastic idea!

Here is some of our work for the week:

There hasn't been enough writing for my liking but this is one of our biggest pressure points.  He doesn't want to.  It isn't fun and making him do it just sucks out any desire he has to do it correctly.  I don't know now whether he can't write some things properly or whether he just chooses not to.  I think it is mostly the latter but I can't be sure.  I'm still brainstorming on this.

The phonics lesson went "ok" but that is all.  I'm on the fence.  We'll hit it again in the morning as well as the letter "S" this week.

We are traveling beginning Wednesday so I'm hoping to do anything that requires home supplies in the first part of the week.  He can practice writing anywhere.  I'll bring along a workbook or two and the flashcards.

And a bonus picture of the kiddo trying on hipster glasses. :P

Week 3 Round Up

Day #1
Session A -10 min  Calender X
Notes: Pledge, ABC Cards 24/26

Session B - 45 min
Notes: Numbers Book (finished the "1" page), FSR lesson 3 photocopy, Colored an American Flag print out

Day #2
Session A -5 min Calender X
Notes: Pledge

Session B - 30 min
Notes: Letter M Page (cookie monster book), M is for Mitten Page, Reading - Gingerbread Man, David Gets in Trouble, Christian Liberty Nature Reader, A New Home for a Pirate

Day #3
Session A -10 min Calender X
Notes: Pledge, Numbers 1-10 cards (10/10  - Need to add the next 10)

Session B - 30 min
Notes: "Birch Forest" - we used watercolors to try to recreate the painting, "Black Beauty" (simple), flower craft, "A Tree is Nice"

Day #4
Session A - 10 min Calender x
Notes: Pledge

Session B - 35 min
Notes: Babbit, Keeping Safe, "Still Life with Apples" - we used watercolors to try to recreate the painting, The Mightiest

Day #5
Session A- 5 min Calender X
Notes: Pledge

Session B - Hours!
Notes: Brazos Bend State Park (hike and nature center), Drawing & Writing his and O's name, Numbers Coloring Book "2" page

Day #5.5
Notes: Preschooler Workbook first 25 pages

Week 3 Planning

I'm finding a little groove here but I think that the kindergarten curriculum is moving too fast for us now.  So week 3 is going to be a blend of things from the first 2 weeks that we were unable to complete on time.  I think that this may be the case every few weeks, so I'll just plan that in.  Every 3rd week will be review and covering items we didn't get to.  This feels like such a relief because now I feel I have so much more time to cover the things in the curriculum without forcing him to sit down longer than what he is really able to.

So this week will bring a little writing practice.  We'll try to focus on writing his name left to right a bit more consistently.  We'll also be doing his first phonics lesson ("am") and his ability to absorb that will probably determine our pace for the rest of the year.  I have some fun ideas for "am" and I'm excited to try them out.

I will also try to integrate the 2 art cards this week and I'm going to have access to the recommended read-alouds this week as well.  There is also room in our schedule for counting practice.

I'd like to re-visit the geography portion of our lessons a bit more and discuss other continents and countries, not just our own.  We've already talked about our country and the flag, maybe this would be a good opportunity to take a look at some flags from other countries.  Maybe then he'd like to create his own?

Hopefully I'll get to taking some more pictures of what we're doing day to day because pictures are always nice to break up a wall of text and I want to show off our projects as well!  Until then, remember I also update our goodreads page and I try to keep an active pinterest as well.

Wish me luck this week!

Week 2 Round Up

Day 1
Session A - 15 min  Calender X
Notes: geography (planet, continent, country, state, city, street), introduced pledge, ABC Cards 24/26

Session B - 90+ min
Notes: Magic Treehouse #5 (Night of the Ninjas), looked up Japan in the encyclopedia, Alphabet coloring "A", Numbers Coloring "2", Babbit


Day 2
Session A - 15 min Calender X
Notes: Geography, Pledge, Numbers 1-10 (8-9 / 10)

Session B - 20 min
Notes: "A" is for Alligator (Nature Reader), Alphabet Animals "A" page

Day 3
Session A - 15 min Calender X
Notes: Pledge, ABC Cards

Session B - 45 min
Notes: Numbers book "1", Treasury of Curious George (2 stories), Beading craft, Apple craft

Day 4
Session A - 10 min Calender X
Notes: Geography, Pledge

Session B - 25 min
Notes: "In A Dark Dark Room & Other Scary Stories", FSR Lesson 2 ("A), Star Spangled Banner, Discussed the flag of the USA

Day 5
Session A - 5 min Calender X
Notes: Pledge

Session B - 120 min
Notes: Children's Museum! We met SuperWhy!

He was shy at the last second! 

Week 1 Round-Up

My school notes for the week -

Day #1
     Session A - 10 min.   Calender X
          Notes: ABC cards 25/26, Numbers 1-10 cards 6/10
   
     Session B - 25 min.
          Notes: Coloring Book "M" page, Numbers Book "Zero" page, Most Loved Monster

Day #2
      Missed completely.  Tooth pain that had me laying on the couch wishing for death and I had to make a trip to the dentist.

Day #3
     Session A - 10 min.   Calender X
          Notes: ABC cards 24/26, Numbers 1-10 cards 8/10
   
     Session B - 25 min.
          Notes: Alphabet Animals "M" page, Coloring Book "1" page, Nature Reader "M is for Manatee",
                     Drawing time (he drew a house)

Day #4
     Session A - 10 min.   Calender X
          Notes: ABC cards 25/26, Numbers 1-10 cards 9/10
   
     Session B - 35 min.
          Notes: FSR Book A Lesson 1, Lots of reading (Babbit, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, The
                     Nutcracker, The Wizard of Oz)

Day #5
     Session A - 10 min.   Calender X
          Notes: ABC cards 24/26, Numbers 1-10 cards 9/10, Vowels
   
     Session B - 40 min.
          Notes: Numbers book "Zero", Wipe off ABC's "M" page, Reading (How the Grinch Stole                           Christmas), Construction paper, glue, scissors project, Practiced writing his first name

Day #6 (Make-up)
     Session A - 10 min.   Calender X
          Notes: ABC cards 25/26, Vowels
   
     Session B - 20 min
          Notes: Just drawing.  He drew a pretty wonderful shark.  Daddy accidentally threw it away : (

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Overall observations:

• ABC flashcards are getting boring and he keeps missing the same 1 letter every time.  I also need to separate them into uppercase and lowercase so that he does them separately.  Currently he says "Big Letter, Little Letter" on each one but I'm not sure how many he would recognize independently.  He *knows* his letters so he is losing focus on it.  Time to move on to a new challenge.
• He improved a lot very quickly on recognizing the written numbers.
• He is not interested in the art cards at all.  We spent maybe 2 minutes on this all week.  I need a new strategy for art stuff.  Maybe we try to recreate the pictures on our own?  I'll be brainstorming.
• This was a really hard week for me.  I dealt with a lot of other things that were not *school* and we still did most of what we were meant to do.  I feel I could do better with making things more fun for him.
• Lots of other things he did this week are not recorded because it was a lot of free play time.  Not sure how I capture this in logs because he is learning, it just isn't structured and often doesn't involve me in any way.  He spent almost 2 hours with play-dough one afternoon with friends, for example.

And now I lesson plan for next week!

Unexpected Lessons

I have already discussed positive reinforcement in my home and my gold ticket system.  I've been using the tickets now for just over a week and I have to say that I'm unexpectedly pleased with the results, but not for the reasons that I began this system in the first place.

I wanted to reinforce good behaviors in an effort to curb all those "bad" behaviors that were trying my patience.  All those behaviors that most 3.5 year olds display every now and again but wear on us even if they are normal (does anyone notice that it never matters what our children do, it is still considered some variation of normal?).  Has it helped?  To be honest, I'm not really sure.  But something even better has happened.

I started to notice all the great things about my son.  Don't get me wrong, I have always thought that he was a pretty cool kid but when you're in the midst of the 3rd tantrum of the day over how the crust on the bottom of the pizza looks, it is difficult to keep things in perspective.  Handing out these tickets gave me a reason to be on the look-out for things he does right and he does a whole lot of awesome stuff as it turns out.

He's really good at playing with his sister, for example.  I always get hung up on him putting his hands on her and running and jumping around her too much because I'm afraid he will hurt her but all week long, I kept noticing how he made her laugh and played chase with her and let me know if she was about to put something in her mouth that she shouldn't.

One more fabulous thing about my child is that he likes cleaning up.  If I ask him to pick up his toy room, he does it.  By himself.  Until every single toy is picked up off the floor and put into the toybox.  Most days, that's more than I can say for my husband (sorry T - it doesn't count as cleaning the kitchen if there are still dishes in the sink :P ).  He even sings his own little pick up, clean up song to himself.  Not only is he cleaning, but he is cheerfully doing so.  I definitely don't sound cheery while I'm cleaning.

There is something else totally unexpected happening here too.  After about day 4, my son started awarding ME gold tickets out of his own pile.  I cut him up an apple and he awarded me a ticket, saying, "Mom, thank you for getting me a snack.  I appreciate it.  Here, you earned a gold ticket!"  I've also earned a ticket for taking care of his sister and for helping him get dressed.  Can you believe it?  I have my kid appreciating me for doing things for him.  He is so sincere and doesn't mind at all that he has fewer tickets at the end of each day, which is just crazy.  The rewards don't matter to him.  He only wants to have a pile of gold tickets to remind him that I think he's done well at something and to hand out to his mom and dad at his discretion.

This has all turned out to be a nice little exercise in appreciating one another in spite of all our flaws.  I'm so happy that he loved being recognized so much that he modeled it back to me exactly to show me how nice it feels.

Week 1 Planning

Week 1 begins tomorrow.  I'm going over the core curriculum lessons plans as I write.

Recitation this week will be ABC's, numbers 1-10, and I'm going to add knowing which letters are vowels. We will note the month/day of the week/day each morning and discuss the weather and anything we have planned for the day.

Lesson 1 Phonics is the letter Mm.  We will work with this letter all week.  We'll read "M is for Manatee" in our Nature Reader.  Each week includes a music selection and a painting selection.  I'll play the song while we're doing things during the week and I'll probably tape the painting up somewhere prominent and we'll return to it for a moment each day.  My notebook will probably have just a check mark each day for touching on the music/art at least 1 time.

I'll be skipping the read-aloud book this week and return to it later.  I've got books from the library that we can integrate in.  I also have a book called "Most Loved Monster" and all the monster names begin with the letter "M".  I will do the poem selection for the week.

For math, we'll just practice writing and spelling the number 1.

Finally for what the curriculum calls "copybook", we'll just work on his first and last name.  This is just to help improve fine motors / penmanship.  It can also help with memorization.  This is one place where the curriculum will quickly become too advanced for him I think.  He isn't ready for the amount of writing that kindergarten will require.

Crafts will include drawing ("Me" and/or "Mommy") and possibly a poster with "M" pictures glued to it (cuttings from a magazine?).

Week 0 Round Up

I made it to the end of my practice week.  We did...ok.  He did his recitations and the calender every morning.  This week his recitations were simply his alphabet flash cards and numbers 1-10 flashcards.  I kept a notebook log of this.  The PM sessions were a bit tougher.  We put in the actual *time* but most of it was in 2 days instead of 5.  There is just so much to squeeze in naptime and I was otherwise engaged during it 3 days this week.

I did realize a few things though:

1. Kids are a lot more self-reliant than we give them credit for.  He did really well this week when given a task to complete.  Friday morning, he even went through his flashcards by himself from beginning to end.
2. I need to relax.  All this organizing and planning and wanting awesome things to happen is resulting in anxiety that I am passing on to kiddo.  No bueno.  Part of this homeschooling thing is letting them direct their learning and trusting that they will learn in their own good time as long as you keep giving them opportunities.  And...he's 3.  Only 3.
3. Planning lessons can be so much work.  For the PM sessions I don't know that I had any coherent plan.  We read.  He practiced some writing.  He painted and cut and glued.  Themes and more detailed crafts will need more prep.

We also made a big effort to get out of the house this week.  We went to the Japanese Garden in downtown Houston on Tuesday and the Matagorda Nature Park (Beach) on Wednesday.  These were both nice activities and the children really enjoyed the beach in particular.

Another topic that I stumbled upon this week is "bullying" and/or managing conflict with his friends.  I found a book at the library called "The Little Bully" and I am really glad that I decided to check it out.  Its a very simple book but it was such a nice way to talk about how our friends don't always treat us nicely but that the reason why usually has nothing to do with you but more to do with them.  In the book, the main character has an opportunity to be mean to the bully back, but he chooses not to.  I like that too.  Its something that I think parents should discuss with their children.  Rarely can someone be labelled a bully in such black and white terms and often children take turns wearing that hat.  I like the idea of teaching them to see past unkind words and actions and find the real reasons for them.