School - Kickin It Home Style

Andrew and I are pretty solid in our decision to homeschool, but we still have over a year before she would enter preschool so things could change. But lately, I have noticed that Caelyn is super bored at home. She needs something more and whenever I would engage her in learning, she would eat it up. By learning, I don't mean the normal singing ABCs or reading books. I had bought her a workbook for tracing and she went crazy over it.

So, now that student teaching is done I decided I have plenty of time do some Tot School. I got the idea from many great homeschooling blogs like 1+1+1=1
We started this week with doing the letter A. I got some great printables from the above linked blog. Today we started on working with some crafts. She enjoyed crafts way more than I thought! We spent over an hour working on crafts.

 Caelyn is totally into birds. So, while reading a magazine, I saw this great picture of baby birds. So, I glued it on a sheet of construction paper, cut up some yarn and she had some more pompoms.. I put the glue down and we began. The whole time I talked to her about nests and baby birds (what I know about birds - Mom needs to brush up on some learning herself!) We talked about how she watches birds in the front yard finding worms for their babies. She really enjoyed making a nest!

 I love these! We have a dry erase board in the kitchen. I found these and scoped them up! Perfect! I write the letter out that we are focusing on, along with some words associated with the letter A. At this age, its more learning in context. She can do a worksheet, but the attention span doesn't last forever. We talk about letters, words, and pictures she knows already. I write out letters and tell her what they are.

 That faces tells you she is having a good time! ;-)

 Another crafty favorite we have right now! These are foam stick on letters. The back is sticky. She picks whatever she wants and we talk about the letter she picked and the color. She put down the purple E then a few other letters. She picked up the green E and she said "Green E, Purple E" and pointed at the purple one. I was so proud! This picture was for daddy - or so she said.

I wish this picture would rotate, but I will show it again later. This is our felt board I made. I covered an unused cork board in some felt. I went to WalMart and bought a ton of felt sheets. I am in the process of cutting out tons of different things for the board. Today, we did patterns and she loved it. I would make a pattern and ask her what shape came next. We played this for at least 20 minutes. She totally enjoyed it and it was an easy craft for me to make which I will explain later!

School is a little over an hour, at least today. I finish whenever she wants. Throughout the day, learning always continues. She really enjoys flashcards throughout the day of pictures. I am thinking of more crafts to make everyday and ways to engage her in learning. Not every child would enjoy this, but she seems to eat it up and is excited for school tomorrow which is going to involve a collage making from magazine clippings and some more writing and tracing.