It took me a bit to realize just how much our little guy, RJ, wanted to be a part of our homeschool. I've worked out some things for him to do to keep up with our learning, and have other things in place to keep him busy while I work with others. And some days, when the other kids are other places doing other things, or our online planner has done its job and the other kids are doing what's on the schedule, he and I get to spend some time doing some really cool stuff. I should establish, before we get into it, that he is already solid on the Kindergarten Readiness checklists, so we don't spend a lot of time on typical preschool things like letters, numbers, and shapes. Standard things that I try to wrap into his week are Phonics, Letter and Number writing and tracing, and Sight Words. Plus lots of other great stuff that is specific to him. Here's a look at a super fun day we had recently.
He likes to start with his sight words, so we did that. For the first part which I call "Say and Shout," he doesn't need to be seated. So he can stand, twirl, jump, whatever he feels like doing while we play the game. "Say and Shout" is easy - we have 10 business-card-sized, cardstock-printed sight words and I show him one at a time. If he knows it, he shouts it! If he doesn't, then after 3 seconds, I say it, and then he shouts it. I started this game with Riley when she was 2 as she had been interested in Indigo's words from school at the time. It works well because kids that age love to shout the words. When they have been recognizing a word immediately a bunch of times in a row, it moves to the "I Know It" pile, and we add in a new word. This is very similar to what public school kindergartners are doing. Then, we play "Seek and Find" with the same 10 words. I spread them out face up, and call out each word. He has to find it and put it in a pile. Then, when only one is left, he has to tell me which one it is. If he's not losing interest after that, he can take the stack of 10 sight words and spell them on the white board with the magnetic letters. This day, he was done after Seek and Find, and wanted to build something.
He built this machine out of Tinker Toys, he says it should go in the "newseum," as we've just visited the National Museum of Industrial History, which showcased A LOT of machinery.
We took a snack break and he ate a banana and an apple. Then he reminded me about the lollipop he got the other day so we got that, too.
We read and did the activities in this All About Maps book. This guy LOVES maps.
Then he played with Kinetic Sand as I had to go feed the baby.
Shelby went down for her morning nap, so we did the next page in our Kinder Art Book. Riley and RJ are doing it together, and it's from www.kinderart.com. Page 3 is "I Can Make a Pattern" and they get to cut out Red, Yellow, and Blue circles and make a Caterpillar in a pattern.
Then it was time to paint his wooden rocket ship. We start with blue, of course. This also keeps him busy while the rest of us work together.
Riley calls everyone down to explore her ladybug larvae which arrived today. She reads the book to them and they explore the plastic figures of the stages. Doing school on the kitchen island allows me to make lunch while we work on stuff.
After lunch, RJ uses this lentil beans kit from www.topscience.org to compare measurements. And to cover his hands, and pour and dump, and pour and dump. This is his first time doing the comparing measurements booklet that came with it. It's cute to see him so excited about finding his answers.
When we put that away, I could tell he was weary of doing things, and needed a rest, so he got some independent reading time in his room with his new library books. He does well with this, for the most part, probably because it's an established thing that all the kids do and it's never used as a punishment or in a negative way. After 30 minutes of independent reading, he got a snack and went outside to dig in the dirt pile. By then, everyone else was wrapping up their day, and we were done!
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