Homeschool: Take Two...a learning experience (for me)

We started off today's lesson with music. I found recorders at the dollar store and let the little ones  try to make different sounds.

Then we read the first part of chapter two out of Leggtowne Chronicles by Beth Cantrell.  Today's story was about rabbit who has a big secret...he can spin a web.

Narration: The kids drew pictures of the different things that took place in the story. (I helped a little bit).

Science: I made them rabbit ears out of pipe-cleaners and we talked about the difference between rabbits's ears and ours, we watched a video on how ears works, and decided that rabbits can hear very well because they have such big ears.

Numbers: (Here is where my learning for the day came in). I wrote out three numbers and had the children trace them with their fingers.  I gave the kids silly-string and had them shoot thier 'webs' at the number...so if the number was 5, they shot the silly-string 5 times.  Here's what I learned...silly string is messy and NOT good for indoors...Oops...but, the kids loved it!

Fine motor skills/free-play: The children's attention span was waning so I pulled out the play-dough and let them create whatever they desired.

We had a good time of learning...I'm not giving-up yet!!

Homeschool Activity: Take One

The idea of homeschooling has really intimidated me but, I decided to read the book "For the Children's Sake" by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.  I've only read 50 pages but I've already started implementing some of the concepts. Below was our first lesson...

I read my children the first chapter out of Leggtowne Chronicles by Beth Cantrell:

Http://www.tatepublishing.com

Harold and Maudine: A Love Story

In this story Harold, the spider realizes that he needs a helper.  He sets out to look for a wife and finds Maudine...his 'not so likely' long-legged' suitable helper.

Craft:

I cut out the main body part and 8 legs for each spider. My children choose the colors and finger painted the body of each spider.

Numbers:

We counted to 8 see real times to make sure we had the right number of legs and made sure Harold had the short ones and Maudine had the long-legs.

Letters:

We traced and colored the letters H and M for Harold and Maudine to go on their backs.

Science:

We watched a brief video of a spider building a web on YouTube.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y9K1H6Yn6o

Then we built our own web using white yarn.

Narration:

We made a video re-telling the story.

Play:

Then my, almost 4 year olds, played for an hour by themselves with Harold and Maudine after our lesson was over.

Later they asked me if we could do it again...which of course made my heart glad.  In the past I have tried to teach them colors, letters and numbers and it has ended up with all of us being frustrated at each other. This morning it was different...it was fun...and I could see them excited about learning...yay!!! That's my goal...if they are excited about learning then they can learn anything and the possibilities in the future for them are endless!