Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Creation



One of the challenges I have in homeschooling the girls is finding a way to incorporate my niece's pre-schooling with my daughters', who are in 2nd and 4th grade. This is the first year that I've attempted to have a little structure with Little Miss but I felt it was necessary to try something new with her. She is very active and loves to color, cut, glue, draw on the white board, play with her toys, play with stickers, etc. BUT each activity will only hold her interest for 10-15 minutes -- which sounds perfectly normal for a 3-year-old. However, since I am responsible for the necessary schooling of Grace and Emily, I find it increasingly difficult to keep her entertained while teaching them. We do not use a "here's your workbook page, fill it out" kind of curriculum. Weaver is an inter-active, parent involved curriculum. In years past, I was able to make sure that Little Miss was down for naps while we schooled. Then, towards the close of our last school year, she was only taking one nap a day. So instead of schooling in the morning, we started schooling in the afternoon when she was down. Well, this didn't make for much of our school day! I decided that I'd better try something new this year and I found a great curriculum called Bright Beginnings, geared towards preschoolers. And while it is a beautiful resource, it is still quite a challenge to juggle it all! *sigh* One thing I am learning to do is to go over certain subjects, such as math or language arts, with Grace and Emily in advance and then let them work on their own for a bit while I do something with Little Miss. Today was a fun day as we are starting with God and Creation. We read about how God created the heavens and the earth; the plants and animals and people. Our activity was to take 1 cup of flour, 2 cups of oats and 1 cup of water. I let Little Miss pour each item in and we began to mush and gush. I let her feel as each item went in and she told me how it felt - soft, gushy! Then we smelled it -- ewww! And she decided to taste it -- double ewww! So I added cinnamon, nutmeg (which is covering "fall" smells from part of her lesson) and for fun, added different types of sprinkles. Of course, she wanted to eat some of the yummy sprinkles! At her suggestion, we added more water and it got even gushier! Although I try to involve her in the hands-on actvities that we do with school, it was fun to have one just for her.

3 comments:

SoCalVal said...

This is great. I have got to try it.

Valerie

Leah Courtney said...

Hi, Patty. I read your post on Just4homeschoolfamilies,and I wanted to share some of what I do- not that it always works - LOL.
I have a 3 and 4 yo and homeschool a 4th and 3rd grader. I also use more teacher intensive, hands on curriculum- not Weaver, I tried that last year and it just didn't work for us.
The main thing I have learned is to keep them active and involved and close or they are into TROUBLE. I have come up with lots of "table time" activities that they can do sitting in the schoolroom that I can get them started on and then watch them play. I use playdo, drawing paper, cut and glue pages, magnets that they stick on magnetic cookie sheets, felt sets, pattern blocks- anything they can use at the table that is not extremely messy.
Both of my little girls also love computer time. the older one can do much by herself and even my 3yo can play Starfall games online (free) because it is just point and click.
I also have one specific PBS show that they watch each morning- either Barney or Word World, and I schedule anything I really need to concentrate on with the big kids for that 30 minute block.
I hope some of this helps. I have been planning to write a whole blog post on this because I know it is something lots of moms struggle with. I think you have inspired me. :-)
Check out my blog in the next few days for some more ideas.

Leah
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/lcourtneymom

Anonymous said...

That looks like such fun. I do love the photies- you can almost feel it!