With the start of a new year, I thought I’d share a bit more about what goes on in our homeschool days. Homeschooling is such a curious thing…those of us already homeschooling always want to know what fellow homeschoolers are doing…and those of us not doing it might be curious what those strange people doing school at home do ALL day. {Homeschool has a lot of baggage. I get that. But I’m here to tell you it’s come a long way. It’s not just the crazy/hippie/religious folks doing it!} So here’s hoping you enjoy seeing some of what goes on at our house.
As a reminder, I have 3 kids. Elias, 1st grade. Espen, prek/k. Bergen, age 2.
I try and have some routine to our days. I typically read some Bible stories while the rest of the family eats breakfast. Then the boys get dressed, make their beds, and tidy their bedroom if it needs it. Math follows since we like to get that out of the way. Elias does his math pretty easily and Espen and I work on it together. I think math is a bit more challenging for Espen since he is learning to write at the same time.
I try to go between times of intense work, math, and then something lighter, like a game or free time. After our writing today we played alphabet bingo. I called the letter SOUNDS and the boys matched the letter on their cards. It was good practice for both of them. And also extra practice being a good winner/looser. {and those colored circles…quick game of Tiddlywinks anyone?}
Something we want to develop in the kids is focus, so we played a puzzle speed game. Simple game. Get the puzzle together as quickly as you can while being timed. We are big puzzle fans and I think it is helpful. Working under pressure and not getting distracted.
My sister-in-law got Bergen an adorable matching game from Shutterfly for Christmas. It has pictures of family members with their names. I think this would be perfect for young children and adopted kids as well.
Bergen is working on her colors, so I pulled out this book for her today. It’s an Usborne book and shows in a really beautiful way how there are many diferents shades of the same color. This is something I always feel is somewhat tricky when teaching colors. The child holds up 3 very different looking colors but you say “blue” for every one. What???? See, tricky. {If you are interested in purchasing Usborne books, I have a link where you can order. HERE. Yay!!}
The boys made these sea creatures out of toilet paper rolls. Again, this was an activity that broke up some of the more serious work.
Somehow I forgot to take pics of the “work” side of things today. It looks like we played all day! I’ll have to show more of that next time and what we are currently READING! {One of our favorite parts of school!!}