Homeschooling Update: Following His Lead

My little sponge has been doing a lot of learning since I posted the last homeschooling update! ...but not quite the way I thought things would go. I think I'm still stuck in the public school frame of mind. I had thought that after we had gotten back into a routine after Emily was born that we'd go back to our daily school time, working on curriculums I made based on themes Sean showed interest in. Not so much.. With two preschoolers, one little baby and a daycare of under two year olds, that just didn't seem to be working. Especially since school time was during nap time and Sean has gone back to taking naps!

We haven't had regular school time since the end of last year and the workbooks I put together for the kids are gathering dust. However, the one thing that sticks out in my mind is all that Sean has learned and how easily he learned it! He's excelling when it comes to his letters. He knows all their sounds and can write them without having to see them. He's even teaching Maddy. But lately, he seems to be taking a little break from letters and moving onto numbers. The calender has become a big part of our day because Sean is always asking what day it is and so on. He figured out the pattern numbers have just by looking at the calender everyday. The other day he surprised me by counting to 100 (with a little help) when before I didn't know he could get past 20. Then one night he asked me what 2 + 3 was and I started teaching him addition. Easter candy seems to be a great addition (and subtraction) tool. Now he's showing interest in wanting to be able to read a clock. I'm running with it!

Along with the math and literacy, he's been learning about local geography. How? By car rides. He wants to know what city we're in and what street we're on. He can tell you where daddy and Uncle Justin works, what city their works are in, what street and city  hubby's parents live on/in, almost our complete address (he doesn't know zip codes yet) and he's working on my parents address (they live on the same street as us so he's memorizing their house number). I credit our Me On the Map until for sparking this interest but he's learned a lot recently just by asking me questions during car rides. He's also learning about chickens thanks to the baby chicks we're raising. I'm anxious to find out what will be next.

I never thought we'd go more toward the unschooling path when we started homeschooling but it works. And if it's not broke, don't fix it!

Here's some learning tools I made for Sean. I got the ideas from pinterest...where else!?

Telling time tools: 

the sun rays around the clock and the little time posters for daily events.

Addition tool made from an Easter egg:

He can turn the halves to create more addition problems.

Note: Even Sharpie rubs off of Easter eggs but clear tape keeps it on.

For more ideas I've found on Pinterest, check out my Homeschooling, Math and Literacy pin boards.

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© Mama Dani's Musings

School Days: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We're are more serious about homeschooling this year...well, as much as you can with pre-k4. What I mean I guess is the main goal this year is to get into a good routine and stick with it. When we did the outer space theme, we pretty much just did the unit study. I did some thinking and thought maybe it might be best to ease into a routine. So, we are going to add a subject a week until we're were we should be at. This week we did a smaller unit (that will in a way spill over into next week) and added literacy (letters, phonics and writing).

Our unit is based on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. A friend shared a lap book idea with me and I added onto it so that it could go into next week. I didn't have any file folders but I have lots of over sized construction paper. I made the construction paper work. This is the first lapbook we've made. Sean really enjoyed putting it together. He even picked it out one night for his bed time story.


I added a few extra things that were not in the original lapbook or in the add-ons. Sean knows his first name pretty well so I added another mini book for his last name. Sean really likes playing a matching game with the upper and lower case letter cards so I printed out more coconut cards and added dots to make a number matching game for next week. Tree book was a big hit because he can read it by himself.

The original lapbook can be found here and the add-ons can be found here.

We also did a simple craft. The trunk is their arm print, the leaves their hand prints, the coconuts their thumb prints and they used stamps to make the letters up the tree.


Sean played Go Fish for the first time but we used the alphabet flash cards we already had. He loved it! Doesn't help that he has beginners luck and won. ;)



Along with the unit study, I made notebooks for worksheets. Sean really likes to do worksheets and we have a ton of workbooks that were given to us (partly used) and a few that I bought. I went through them and picked the pages I thought were the best to make his pre-k4 book. I'm sure we'll add on to the notebook as the year goes on but right now it has beginning sounds, rhyming, and patterns.

I made a separate notebook for handwriting. I actually cut and pasted from existing worksheets to create the worksheets that I wanted. Instead of him learning to write the letters in alphabetic order, I wanted to group the letters like this: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/lessonplans/handwriting-group-upper-and-lower-case-letters

Maddy couldn't be left out so I made her a notebook with colors, shapes, go togethers and tracing. I used page protectors in all the notebooks so the worksheets can be used over and over again. The kids also love using the markers! -- a win/win!

My little ones hard at work:





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