Yap came home from school the other day and asked if he could play a game on the computer that his teacher had shared with him at school. It's called Sugar, Sugar and now I'M addicted to it! It's a fun physics problem solving game for kids, suggested ages 3rd to 5th grade, but, really, I have wasted sooo much time on this game. But I can use the excuse that it's making me smarter than a 5th grader!
The premise of the game is this; as sugar falls out of the comma, you use your mouse to draw lines to funnel the sugar to fill up various cups on the screen. The first few levels are fairly straight forward.
The higher up the levels you get the more difficult it becomes by adding color filters the sugar has to pass through before it gets to the cup and an anti gravity button that when pressed allows all the sugar particles to rise up.
It took me a couple weeks before I finally mastered all 30 levels. Some of them took quite a few tries and lots of thinking before I finally figured out the solutions. This game also teaches you a lot about the force of gravity too.
Yesterday afternoon Yap and I were chilling on the couch, he had a fever, DR, Yip and Yahoo went for a drive. We spent a lot of time on Sugar, Sugar. It was a great way to spend a sick day.
Yahoo is 3 1/2 years old. Where did the time go? It feels like just yesterday Yip and Yap were 3 1/2!
When the boys were 3 years old, and we lived in Illinois, I took them to an hour and a half "preschool" at the local high school two days a week. The program was through the home economics department, there was one teenager per child and basically it was giving these high school students hands on experience with young children. They had a big playroom, they provided a snack and usually the kids did some sort of fun art project with a teenage helper.
The boys spent their next two years, still in Illinois, in a more formal preschool in the next town. Twice a week they spent the mornings at preschool in a nearby town while I ran errands. We moved to Kansas right before they started kindergarten.
Out here in Kansas, where towns of any size are few and far between, Yahoo doesn't have the preschool options that the boys do. A lot of people have asked me if she's in preschool this year. But no, she's not.
There is a preschool in our little town. Preschool is five mornings a week but they have to be 4 years old to attend. I sure wish she could go to preschool, she has so much energy that it really needs to be focused on something.
We did look into going to Dodge City twice a week for a preschool, but it was just too far away to justify driving there so often (besides the days we drive there for football games.)
I decided to have preschool at home this year. Now, I'm not an expert on kids of this age by any stretch of the imagination BUT I have subbed a LOT in the local preschool so I've stolen lots of ideas from there.
Most days Yahoo and I have the same morning routine.
We do our calendar and add another day everyday. We count the numbers and work on number recognition. We have pictures so she has an idea of what is planned for certain days; Sunday is for church, Thursday is for Library, Saturday is for football, etc. And we add special days on the calendar too, like birthdays or days that I'm going to be substitute teaching.
We sing the days of the week song to the tune of the Addams Family theme song.
Then we sing the Months of the Year Macarena
I laminated Yahoo's name (Leola) and she practices signing her name with a dry erase marker. Then she's in charge of marking what the weather is doing on her chart. Hmmmm....it's windy in Kansas??? I never would have guessed!
Do you remember the Letter People? I remember this curriculum when I was in kindergarten and Yahoo loves to point to the letters and say the sounds but her favorite thing to do is watch this Letter People video!
Some days she dresses Jesse the Weather Bear.
Today he stood naked though, poor guy, it was only 65 degrees out!
I bet he was freezing!
I usually try to have some sort of activity to do with her.
Some days we sit and count, make patterns with beads, go on a shape or color hunt. Today we made a fall tree.
And then there are some days we don't do anything. Because after all she's three and sometimes she's just not in the mood which is fine with me. It's hard having your mom as a teacher I'm sure.
It would be nice to have a preschool nearby but we're doing to best we can out here on the prairie. Besides, I can find just about anything I need on the Internet!
Anyone have any great activity that Yahoo might enjoy?
My friend Melissa runs our Parents As Teachers program here in town. We meet every two weeks for toddlers and preschoolers to play and learn. A while ago Melissa gave me three lapbooks on the theme All About Me. The boys loved them and were kept quite busy waiting on a restaurant meal and driving in the car.
I started looking around online for some others and there are all kinds of templates and printables on the Web to create a custom lapbook. But basically they are a file folder folded to open up on a lap in order to do the activities within.
The cookie match teaches kids to count the chocolate chips in the cookie and match it with a number. The double circle in the middle spins with pics underneath so kids can retell the story. The mouse talks about different characteristics of a mouse; pointy claws, small ears, etc. I didn't use all the printables because some of them were too old for Yahoo. So I made up some of my own. The crayon box has crayons of different colors and the three mice on the upper left helps Yahoo learn the concept of different sizes.
She likes the crayons the best!
Yesterday I was filling in for the Sunday School Teacher and thought lapbooks would be a good lesson. As it's spring and all I made Gardening Lapbooks. I cut and pasted everything just because we would be short on time for the kids to do it all. If I were doing this at home with the boys I'd make them do the grunt work!
The cover has a gardening Bible verse and a name tag.
And here's the inside. I found SO many resources for gardening I really could have made 3 or 4 different lapbooks that were completely different.
We had some gardening magazines the kids cut up to fill in some of the spots like what plants they would put in a garden.
If they didn't want to cut and paste pictures they could also draw or write in the empty spots. Ideally they would photograph their garden, house, etc. but like I said we were working on short time.
A place to talk about some of God's wonderful critters; the gardening good and the gardening bad.
And for some of the younger kids and lace up carrot for fine motor skills.
I really love the idea of lapbooks. With a little creativity and some imagination a lapbook could be used for any subject and any age level. I've seen some really neat ones (just Google image lapbooks) older kids have done about different history and science themes.
My boys really like the lapbooks too. I'm not sure if they like them so well because they are portable or it's just the novelty of being able to have so much 'stuff' in such a small space but I'm thinking we might be making a few of these for the summer. We are planning a couple road trips and I think all the tourist brochures that get collected would be a good resource for a lapbook.
Have you ever done a lapbook? Please share if you have! What good themes can you think of for a lapbook?
As we are trying to get organized and prepared for the move to Kansas we've been going through boxes and cabinets trying to get rid of stuff we really don't need. Or in some cases forgot we owned in the first place!
In one of our get rid of piles DR put an old suitcase of his. I'm not sure where the suitcase came from or even if he ever used it but I couldn't resist. Since we are getting ready to pack up and travel to Kansas, who knows when, I decided to use this suitcase as an opportunity to learn about Kansas with the boys.
After cruising the Internet, checking out books from the library and looking at pictures DR and I took in Kansas we slowly began covering our suitcase with images representative our new home state.
We talked a bit about the homesteaders, sod houses, wagons, Sante Fe Trail, cowboys and the Chisolm Trail. We used a map of America to show where we are going and where we and our family live now.
Inside the upper flap we put animals that lived in the grassy plains. How do you like our construction paper grass? From salt dough we made a rattlesnake and a 13 striped ground squirrel. Did you know there were 13 striped ground squirrel's? Me neither.
In the main suitcase compartment we talked about things that grew in Kansas. All the fields out there are irrigated by center pivots and therefore Kansas fields are circular not square. We made wheat out of skewers and felt and put sunflowers and strawberries on top, all of which are grown in Kansas. Did you know Kansas is the sunflower state? Yep, it is!
We worked on this a here and there for weeks. We also talked about Dodge City and other places of interest along with famous Kansans. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Amelia Earhart and George Washington Carver. (I love peanut butter Mr. Carver, thank you very much!)
I know I had fun learning about Kansas and the boys are definitely excited. Yip prays every night asking God to let tomorrow be the day we can go to Kansas. It will be here before you know it bud!
When I was growing up I loved the tv show Little House on the Prairie. Kind of ironic isn't it, now that I'm getting ready to move to the Kansas prairie? I remember watching Laura Ingalls and wanting to do everything she did. I wanted to wear a bonnet to bed and pack my lunch in a bucket and braid my hair!
Recently,with the help of grandmas, Yip and Yap were able to do have some old fashioned fun. First my mom sent them some turkey feathers and we made quill pens. Yeah, Laura Ingalls never wrote with quill pens but I do remember picking up chicken feathers in our barnyard as a kid and trying to write with them. It never worked.
I found this site that gave instructions on how to cut your quill. They worked really well! Much better than I expected them too. Yip even wrote a bunches of his letters with it! We may use quill pens everyday if it gets them to write more.
And then, about a week later, we drove to southern Indiana to visit DR's mom. We ended up coming home with a 1/2 gallon jar of marbles. Cool!! I remember Laura Ingalls always winning the marbles from the boys but getting in trouble for gambling. Geez, I wanted to be like her!
We found a great website that explained the rules and even some variations. We were all down in the dirt ready to play. But we quickly learned that it's harder than it looks. We have spent most of our time just practicing shooting our marbles. Yip and Yap are definitely better at it than I am!
I can't believe how much fun we have been having with these marbles! We even played on the carpet one rainy day and it worked really well.
Now, if I could only walk around in braids without being thought of as a weirdo then my childhood dreams will have come true!!
Are you a child of the 80's? I am! I was in kindergarten in 1982 and my teacher taught the alphabet with the letter people. Remember them? Mr. H with his Horrible Hair was my favorite. Who didn't cringe at Mr. R and his Ripping Rubber Bands? And of course the Misses; A, E, I, O, U. I loved Excersicing with Miss E. My mom couldn't figure out how a 5 year old knew the correct use of the word "obstinate".....thanks Miss O.
I had totally forgotten about them until my sister told me about The Letter People Video she found on YouTube. When the boys were learning their letters they loved watching this video. I even find myself singing along...it has some catchy tunes!
Luckily I was able to find this image on the internet of the Letter People. I enlarged it and printed two color copies. The boys and I glued them to the colored side of a cereal box and cut them out after they had dried.
We use them as a memory matching game. Our rule to win your matched pair is to say the name of the letter and the sound it makes. Sometimes we also divide into teams, Yip and Yap vs. Mom, and we race to see who can put the letter people in alphabetical order.
Learning letters has been much easier and fun for the boys by using the Letter People as inspiration!
If you have been following along with my homeschooling posts, you know I've discussed why we sort of homeschool the boys in math and reading. Today is the writing post.
Boys and writing....ugh!! Do you know any boys who have nice handwriting? It's just part of their nature as boys I believe not to write nicely or even care about it. But the way of the world is going more toward writing and verbal expressions of ideas. When we began working on our writing, the boys were against it and it was a struggle. Therefore, we've tackled writing from a lot of different directions.
First, we've used the old style manuscript papers. The boys begin by tracing the letters, then writing them on their own. This is boring but important to learning their letters and how upper and lowercase are formed. We don't do this everyday...if I did I would have a revolt on my hands!
A much more fun way to approach writing is using story picture pages. We usually start with a topic such as, "Where do you want to live?" The boys draw a picture, like that at left by Yip, then I write a short sentence for them to copy. For a while, I tried to have the boys phonetically sound out the words then write them, but they needed a little more structured guidance before that. The boys really enjoy this since it becomes their creation. We've done topics such as sick days, favorite food, movies, etc.
Here's another fun thing to do to get your kids to write. Start by having them write their name, or some other word, large on a sheet of blank paper. Like "Mommy" at left. Once they've done a nice, neat job of that (because remember we are emphasizing writing) have them turn the letters into something else. For example, the letters MOMMY have been turned into two faces and two kites.
Once a week I also give the boys a short Bible verse to copy and then we recite it everyday and talk about its meaning. This week's verse was No one can serve two masters. Matthew 6:24. It also gives us another opportunity to work with numbers. We've also learned how to address envelopes and of course, sign cards to put in those envelopes, as another way to incorporate writing.
I also ecourage the boys to write on the sidewalk, the basement walls (concrete blocks), garage floor....almost anywhere. I want them to like to write and feel comfortable with it long before they hit a structured writing curriculum in school. We've been at this for well over six months and the boys are doing so much better. They are confident in what they can write and, in the words of Yap "I concentrate and go slow so I don't make a mistake!" I don't think I can end on a better note than that!
My last homeschooling post on writing will be on Wednesday. Today I am going to quickly share with you a bunch of websites the boys and I like to visit. In our technological age I feel it's important for children to become comfortable with technology early, which isn't hard. Kids are drawn to it and pick it up quickly! However, I do limit the boys time on the computer and haven't yet taught them how to search the internet on their own. Every time I come across a website I think the boys would enjoy I bookmark it. Then during their computer time I'll give them the choice of a few different ones they can use. I always try to find educational but fun websites and activities. So here are some of them. Hope you find something you and your munchkins can use.
Printable Books - I don't use this site much, it's just easier for us to go to the library. Letter People - Were you a child of the 80's? Then you remember the Letter People. I printed this off and made a matching game for the boys. They also race me to see who can put the alphabet in the correct order first. You also need to watch this Letter People Video. Letter Games
There are so many more out there. These are just some that we have used in the past. I'm glad I did this post because I've found some sites I think we need to revisit. What about the rest of you parents out there? Do you have any great websites for kids of all ages to share? I'm always looking for things to do with my kids as they get older.
Even though I have only been actively homeschooling Yip and Yap since last fall, we had started reading much earlier. When the boys were only four, about the winter of 2008 I found this book at the library, which I later bought off Amazon.
The title itself was intriguing...100 Easy Lessons? Not only that but the book claims that it can be done in only twenty minutes a day. Well, I was working with four year olds and although it worked very well for us, 100 days, 20 minutes a day wasn't nearly close to what we experienced.
Following are examples of three different lessons from the book.
Lesson 3 - starts easy enough learning sounds, not the names of letters. The names of the letters aren't introduced until all the sounds have been learned.
Lesson 50 - Halfway through the book. You'll notice the funny print? It's designed to help children learn the sounds and blends of letters. Lesson 100 - The last lesson of the book. Quite a long passage and actually there are two additional pages to this lesson.
The concept of this book on the whole is very sound and works well. Not only do they introduce sounds before letter names but they also teach sounding out words along side sight words. However, the book was moving along too fast for us. Most lessons towards the end of the book took two days for us to finish if we only worked twenty minutes a day. We stopped at lesson 80 and began using beginning reading books from the library. Luckily our library has a wonderful selection to choose from. They even have Dick and Jane books!
Now that we had gotten to the point of reading library books without the repetition of the lessons from the reading book, I noticed after a while the boys had gotten into the bad habit of only looking at the beginning sounds of a word and then guessing at what it was. For example, if the book had the word THERE, the boys would see the TH and say THE or THAT or THIS without looking at the end sounds.
To help combat this I created a flip sound book for each of them. I bought two small notebooks and cut the pages into three sections. On each page of the first section I wrote consanants; B, C, D, F, G, and so on. In the middle section I wrote vowels; A, E, I, O, U and Y. Then in the last section I wrote the consanants again. So when the book was flipped they had a simple word with three separate sounds like CUP below.
After working with the simple sounds for a couple weeks, I added consanant blends to the first and last sections and vowel combinations in the middle. An example is below.
Now I know, well at least I think I know, that "sparth" isn't a real word. The great thing about these flip books is the funny sound combinations the boys come up with which makes them seem more like games than reading.
One of the reasons I have pushed my boys to read before kindergarten is because I remember my own brothers in elementary school. (They graduated high school in 09, 08, 06) None of them enjoyed school and I don't think any of them enjoyed reading at all. I felt that if the boys could get ahead and have some confidence before starting school it may make school a whole lot easier. The writing post will be coming to you next week!
Last week I explained how and why I am "homeschooling" my boys this year. As for today's post, math, we have done shapes, mazes, dot to dots but most of this past year has been spent identifying numbers between 1-20 and addition. The boys have had the most trouble differentiating the numbers 12 and 20 and have had difficulty with 13,15 wanting to call them three-teen and five-teen. We don't do flash cards; I just think it's boring. I try to do more hands on learning and for the names of our numbers we used a sticker page as seen below.
Once the boys said the correct name they put a sticker on the number. Here, the numbers 15 and 9 are covered. I think the boys liked this because it was hands on and hey, who doesn't like playing with stickers? We also used this technique to learn our letters.
I did buy a math workbook at Wal-Mart for us to work in. We do a page a day or sometimes take two days to do a page. We've already went through a kindergarten workbook and this is a 1st grade book so we are taking it a bit slow and doing other math activities along with it.
Right now we are working on adding numbers. I'll give the boys a worksheet with addition problems and then let them choose what kind of tools they want to use to solve the problems. They may want to count on their fingers or use Lego's as manipulatives. They also have a number line and this addition chart they can use too.
I don't like the idea of teaching kids there is only one way to solve a math problem. I have discovered through my GED class that every one's brain works differently so that's why I try to give the boys a lot of different tools to work with.
We have also used these bead bags quite a bit the last couple years. I have a separate bag for the numbers 1 to 10.
As you can see I've filled the bag with beads then duct taped it shut. I sure don't want those all over the floor. Then I've written the number 10 at the top. When the boys were learning to count we'd turn the bag over to hide the number, they'd count and then flip it over to check their answer.
Now that we are working on addition we are using them again. I've drawn a line down the middle of the bags and they manipulate the beads to create an addition number sentence. For example, for the bag above they would write 5+5=10. Then they would move the beads to make a new problem. No matter how the beads are moved the answer is always ten. It's been really fun to see the boys number sense grow with these.
Without meaning to, we are also learning multiplication. The boys wanted to play Yahtzee and now they play on their own a lot counting the dots to get their score. It's fun to hear them say "3 5's is 15!!"
These are just a couple of things we've done. We are just beginning subtraction and hopefully will make the bead bags work for this too, along with fingers and number lines of course:)Do you have any good methods you use to teach math? Would you mind sharing? I'm always looking for something more than just worksheets or flashcards. Years ago I substitute taught at an elementary school where the kids used their fingers and knuckles to add and subtract. Is anyone familiar with that? I've forgotten how to do it of course.
The next homeschooling post, reading, will be coming up on Whatever Wednesday. Have a great day!
As a former public school teacher I have seen first hand the downside of public schooling. Teachers can't give individual attention to the students who need it. There are too few resources in schools. The social aspect, especially as kids get older, is distracting to learning. I had thought about homeschooling Yip and Yap and had discussed it with my husband. But he was against it. Of course, I may not have argued very convincingly.
In my heart I am a teacher and I would love to return to the classroom someday. As well as seeing the downsides of public schools I also recognize that there are many positive aspects of public schools. Teachers have experience and resources most parents don't have access to. Sometimes students will listen to their teachers before their parents. (Yes, really!) There are lots of great teachers out there and there is so much students can learn from different teaching styles and personalities.
The boys' birthday is at the end of August and the cutoff date for kindergarten here in Illinois is September 1st. Technically, we could have sent them to kindergarten. (Our school system only offers full day kindergarten by the way.) Wisely, our preschool teacher advised against sending them. They would be the very youngest in the class and they just weren't ready. They were still immature and would rather play than sit and work. Go figure? Sending them to all day kindergarten wasn't going to work...yet. We decided to hold off a year and send them back to preschool.
Over the summer I worked with them a bit here and there on their numbers and letters, things like that. But I kept having the nagging feeling that I should be doing more. They may not be ready for full day kindergarten but why should that stop them from learning the basics? So in the fall I decided I would start teaching them at home; reading, writing, math. I didn't invest in any big curriculum or drop a lot of money on educational books and supplies. The resources I've used have been mostly free from the library and the internet. So far, it has been working fairly well.
Every morning after breakfast, we have a short math lesson and then a writing lesson that lasts about 30 minutes, sometimes longer. Later in the day, usually when the baby is sleeping, the boys have one on one time with me when we work on reading. Usually we only do this for about 15 minutes each. I don't push it more than that unless we are reading something the boys are really into. Sometimes I'll tie in these lessons with books the boys have been reading or a holiday. We've made quite a lot of progress, but I'll get into that later.
The rest of the day we'll work on craft projects, do science experiments,read, play games or just play. We bombard our local library once a week and pick up anything the boys may be interested in. Pirates, trains, space, snakes, spiders, human body, where babies come from, presidents, holidays, cowboys and Indians...we've checked out lots of different books!
During the next couple weeks I'm going to have a separate post for math, reading and writing and talk a bit about what the boys and I do here at home. The first post, math, will be coming up on Monday. These posts, of course, won't cover everything that we've done over the course of the year but it will hit the highlights and some of the more successful methods we've used.
So there you go. I homeschool my kids...sort of. We plan on sending them to public school next year and I am confident that they'll do great! I don't know what the future may bring. I might return to teaching; I might not. We might move and end up in a terrible school corporation and we might think again about homeschooling. Who knows? But for now, this is what we are doing and this is what works for us.
Although we live in Kansas my heart and home is in Indiana. My husband DR and I have been married 15 years and lived in 5 states. Along with our twin 13 year old boys and 9 year old daughter, we love to travel and are kind of like gypsies :)
Although I'd love to live closer to my Hoosier family I am blessed to be able to see so much of the country that I wouldn't be able to otherwise. What blessings the Lord has given us!
and it has confirmed to me that I'm on the right track and that my brothers were terribly unprepared by the public schools. Hopefully I can post more about this once I'm done reading the book.
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