Homeschooling Journal: May 2014 Part 1

 

Spanish Lessons: My Favorite Things "Mis Cosas Favoritas"

Homeschooling a Toddler: What 3 Learning Sessions Look Like

Have you ever attempted to homeschool a toddler? If you have, you have probably realized how they are extremely tactile, how they love to explore new and exciting things and how they have a short attention span. To maximize this precious one-on-one time with them, it is important to focus on one thing and one thing only: flexibility.

With toddlers, as with infants and newborns, it doesn't matter how prepared you are or how much you have planned for this time. It will happen in their time and in their way. As stressful as that may sound, in the end, it is best to follow the child because that is how she learns best.

Here, I present to you three easy review lessons to keep things short, fun and moving along. This is not to tell you what to teach or how to teach it, but rather how it works for our family in hopes that this will inspire you to get ideas and come up with your own fun and easy activities that your toddler will simply love and enjoy revisiting when you invite her again to join in. 

These lessons are geared for toddlers that are 2-3 years old, but you can start some of these activities sooner and make them more complex as they get older and/or master the skills. 
The amount of time each session takes varies. I follow her and keep an eye on her attention span for that day. I usually have more material than what we use, just to be ready. Usually, our lessons are about 30 minutes long, but sometimes as little as 15 minutes, so we break up our lesson into two parts and come back later for the other half.

Homeschooling Journal: April 2014 Part 7

Homeschooling a Toddler

We practiced the numbers 0-10 and then read a really great book with lots of vocabulary words.

It included body parts, clothing, mealtime words, food, at home, toys, going out, playground, bathtime, bedtime, transportation, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.

Homeschooling Journal: April 2014 Part 6

French: Action Verbs

We practiced the motions as we learned the action words in French.

Marche: Walk             Assis: Sit

Debout: Stand Up      Danse: Dance

Tourne: Turn Around  Saute: Jump/Hop

Court: Run                 Dorme: Sleep

Read on

Homeschooling Journal: March 2014 Part 1

What a great weekend we had! First, it rained on Saturday (which we don't get very often) and second, we had a fun Mardi Gras party on Sunday.

Homeschooling Journal: February 2014 Part 1

Haircut (first one in a really, really, REALLY long time). I am so happy!

Homeschooling June 2013 Part 5

Good morning! I love it that we can hang out and chill in the mornings.

Today, K had a trial piano lesson. He did well, but I think I'll be  teaching him at home. There is a lot to do before actually learning to play the piano (finger dexterity exercises, patterning, notes and "values" of notes, etc). We have three or 4 play pianos, so we will work on all this stuff and look for a reasonably-priced piano in the meanwhile.

Homeschooling Baby Girl

Sight words

Painted toenails and anklet (yes, it has nothing to do with homeschooling, but it was too cute to not share)

Learning the letters in the alphabet.

Sight words and matching pictures

Basic shapes

Big and small basic shapes

The colors

Learning the colors and shapes in those colors

Numbers one through five

Bible stories. I make them short and sweet and dramatize with my voice a lot.

Letters A though E. She pretty much knows all of these.

A few times a week, she watched educational DVDs that teach her sight words.
These are Your Baby Can Read. They have been very successful with K
and his reading skills, so now we are using them with A.

Homeschooling: Circle Time

Continents, calendar, months of the year, days of the week, memory verse, etc.

Montessori Culture (Geography): Landforms

Nomenclature

I forgot to color the nomenclature cards (I only colored the answer keys),
so I improvised and made it part of the lesson. K helped color the cards with me.

Not perfect, but anything kid-made is wonderful.

Showing K bays and lakes on the inflatable globe.

Showing K peninsulas, islands, capes, etc. on the globe.

Showing K straits, isthmuses, etc. on the globe.

Sandpaper landforms

Sandpaper landforms and nomenclature cards.

Sandpaper landforms and nomenclature cards.

Sandpaper landforms and nomenclature cards. Suite and archipelago

Household experiment: going paperless

I bought 14 hand towels for $4 at Wal-mart to begin our experiment. I wanted to try it out before spending a ton of money on good quality cloth napkins. We have been using these instead of paper napkins and it for a couple of weeks and the experiment is a success! If the napkins don't get too dirty, we can use them multiple times, so it even save us money by not having to wash several a day. We have only had to use paper napkins once (when we had guests come over). Now, I'll be on the hunt for good quality cloth napkins that we can use.

Homeschooling June 2013 Part 3

Music: Intro. to Music

Today we practiced a "hello" song.
We learned the words and have to add in their own action item each week. It will be the repetitive feature.
We talked about how animal sounds can be used in music and sang Old MacDonald Had A Zoo.
Then we did a song with birds where we each sang a part. When combined, the sounds make a song with a beautiful melody.
We then played a bird hunt song and walked around following the instructions.
Finally, a slow song where we rested and then danced slowly to the beat. Again, a lot of fun!

Spanish: Review and Zero

We practiced:
-hola (hello)
-buenos días (good morning)
-las vocales (the vowels) with sign language
-los números (the numbers) 1-10 with sign language
-introduced "cero" (zero)
-stamped on paper matching numbers
-and played the kids' all-time fave: The Flyswatter Game" to practice the numbers. I'd say a number in Spanish and the child swats it. It was fun.

Baby Girl's Homeschooling

Sight Words

Shapes: rectangle, star, oval, heart
 

Shapes and matching items with the same shape. 

 

Cards I made with body parts 

Desk Work

 

Today, K chose the Spiderman activity book (what a shocker, right?).
We were supposed to count the shapes in the two boxes and then circle the ones that have fewer shapes. 
   
    
                                                                                    Word Families: -en, -at, -ar, -ip 

     

Montessori Practical Life: Learning to Pour Water Into a Smaller Container

 
It was fun using all kinds of pitchers and cups. Originally, the Montessori uses blue food coloring to color the water. It makes it easier for children to see and notice when they are getting to the top of the cup. I confess, I could've/should've colored the water, but didn't. I will next time, though. 

Montessori Language Arts: Sandpaper Letters (Upper Case)

 
We started out with the vowels (on blue boards). We said their name, their sounds, and we traced them with our fingers. 
 

Then we traced them on the magnetic board. 
 
He did a great job. 
 
We really enjoyed this activity. He wanted to keep going and going.
 
Tracing the letters before writing them. 
 
After the vowels, K wanted to keep going, so we started tracing a few consonant (on pink boards) and then writing them out. 

Montessori Mathematics: Spindle Boxes

 
This activity is pretty simple. You get all the spindles out, go through each number (starting with 0) and put the correct number of spindles in each box in front of the number. 
 
To go a step further, we used pipe cleaners to bundle the spindles together.
Learning to twist the wire (pipe cleaner) was like a whole new world to K.
He kept practicing over and over and it seemed to be his favorite part in the whole activity. 

Art: Father's Day Trophies

For the past two weeks we've been working on Father's Day Trophies for the world's best dads. K decorated his trophy with pasta, rice, wheat, beans, beads, glitter and gems. It was spray painted gold. Very pretty and worthy of a special owner (dad). Happy Father's Day! Keep an eye out for pictures of the trophy and other Father's Day gifts in the next post.


My husband had to travel for work. While he's gone, I kind of have a hard time sleeping at night (you know, holding down the fort alone is hard work, wink), so I left this note on my door to let him know where I was. He found me in the morning, no problems. :) Smart reader!

Music: Solfege

We learned about the "Solfege" Musical Scale. Also known as, Do-Re-Mi.
We learned the song from the movie and talked about how the notes rise and fall.
We used our bodies to indicate if the notes were going up or down.
We also used the Solfege hand signs to show each note.
Next week we are going to talk about actual notes (what they look like, how long each one is, etc).