Friday, February 15, 2008

Started Homeschool

have started our homeschool program!!!  (well, of course my children were learning at home all along - but now I'm working more at it....)


We are doing  Swimming Lessons and just playing for Phys-ed..... (been doing for a while....   btw - Delta earned his "floater" level and is doing great on "glider" level....)


We are doing Violin Lessons for Music (been doing for a while....   btw - Delta is starting to get to play on 1 string on the violin now....   Echo (not in lessons) can name many parts of the violin, can do a bow, and can sing "A" pretty much in pitch...


Math is just being done through play - They have Mega-Blocks, and Lego.  Delta can count to 10 very accurately, and knows the relationship between the items he is counting and the numbers.  He can sometimes do to 20, but sometimes misses numbers.   Echo can count to 10 consistantly, but almost always misses "4".  I suspect it is just a sequence of sounds to her though.


And - here is the new stuff.   I have started working on Teaching them to read (using Teach your child to read in 10 minutes a day).  Last night, I printed up 14 "business" cards with the letters/words for the first 8 or 9 "steps" of the program for playing the block game.  On the other 6 cards, I did pictures of cartoon caracters they like for a small variation of the "ledge" game.   This morning, I printed of 2 word searches with a lot of words with "U" in it.  They won't be searching for the words, just the "U"'s.

 

So after lunch, I announced that we were going to play school!   Mommy (and Daddy) are the principal, so we decide what will be taught.  Delta is the teacher, and Echo is the student.   I told Delta that although he knows the names to all the letters, that right now, we are learning what they SAY.    I then taught him U  (soft uhhhh sound) and showed him that he can teach it by having his student trace the letter with her finger while saying Uhhhh.   He tried it a few times himself, then helped Echo do it.

 

Then I had them sit at the table with the word searches, to circle all the U's they find.  Delta found most of them.   Echo was mostly just scribling over the paper, even though I helped her circle some.  (not sure how they do it with 2 year olds!!!!)

 

Then we played the modified Ledge game.   I put the character cards down, and put the U down.  Mommy says "Mickey Mouse would like uhhhh" - and then ask Delta.  Delta then underlines the U with his finger, while saying uh, and moves it to Mickey Mouse.    We did that with both of them for a while, then I announced that we were out of time.  They didn't want to stop - so I've promised we can play it again later.

 

I'll also introduce the block game later.....

 

The big problem is going to be the fact that Delta can learn this faster than Echo, and I'm not sure how long the teacher role will have him not worry about it.    We'll see....

 

Oh, and I printed a Sudoku puzzle for Delta to try later....

 

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