Four years old and incredibly excited to start school. Well, in his words, he wanted to “go to
university” but we explained to him how he had to take first steps first. It feels like we are always teaching him new
things and he’s just a little sponge anyway, so preschooling at home seemed like a
great idea to me, too! So we got tiny
backpacks (sister couldn’t be left out), some basic supplies, and a few simple
work books. We added in what we already
had at home (crayons, glue, ruler, scissors, “science” books) and his
anticipation was tangible!
We weren’t going to start until the local schools did, but I
realized his excitement was not going to allow his supplies to wait at this
point, so we set a start date for the following Monday. At last the day arrived and he powered though
all his lessons and put his stickers on his chart like a champ!
As I woke him up for our next day of school I told him with
enthusiasm, “and we get to do school again today!” To which he responded, “MOM, do we HAVE
to!?” Really!? That was all I got!? ONE day of excitement about school! Boy, I was going to have to get creative, and
quick! =) Thankfully, as soon as we started, he was
really into it again. But it definitely
got me thinking about how I was going to keep this boy engaged.
So with that, I bring you our second week of preschool:
1.
Stick Letters:
Thankfully he can form his name with mostly straight lines. Our only trouble was his sister trying to
rearrange the letters to suit her own creativity! I’d like to try this again with other new words
as he learns them.
2.
Insect Anatomy: As we read about the basics of
insects this week, we decided to grab a bag and collect whatever little pieces
we thought we might be able to glue down.
We counted antennae, wings and legs of our newly made insects and found symmetry
in that the insect would have the same number of parts (legs/wings/antennae) on
one side as it did on the other. Then we were able to examine a couple live
ants in our driveway!
3.
Chalk Tracing:
I know not everyone has a place to scrawl on with chalk (this is the
first time we ever have!) but could be done just as easily with crayons/markers
on paper. This is all over Pintrest, but
the idea is that you write a simple word (I did mine in a pale yellow so he
could really see his red or blue chalk over it.
Then we would talk about the sounds each of the letters made and blend
them together until he read each word!
This last step took a little determination, but he was so excited when
he did finally READ a word!
4.
Rendering Lard: I’ll be writing a post about
this later, but this was a fascinating experiment! For those of you who do not know, lard is pig
fat that is rendered through a slow heating process. It’s used like shortening in baking and is
making a comeback for it’s natural, healthful properties (Lauren goes into that in
a little more detail on her page).
Anyway, this led to some interesting conversations about what lard was,
and then what fat was, why our body needs it, but not too much, and what was
left over after the lard was removed (small portions of muscle, blood vessel,
and tendon) and then their role in the body.
5.
Baking: I’m
not going to lie, here: baking with these wee ones can be super stressful
sometimes. I’ve come to realize that
many recipes are more forgiving than they let on, because there is no way we
ended up with the right proportions of the ingredients! But, we were able to use some of our fresh
lard to make snickerdoodles (having cookies as an end product is always great
inspiration to be a good helper!) Although
they don’t understand the fractions or even the measurements yet, we talked
about them and he was really pointing out which measuring cups were bigger than
others and asking about why we needed one teaspoon of salt instead of one
cup!
We still did our work books, science
reading, and bible verses, but doing the extras and taking it outside sure kept
him focused longer. And with much more enthusiasm! I hope these ideas have sparked some ideas of your own! What have you done
to keep your little ones engaged? I would love to hear how
you find ways to incorporate real life into your school!
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