Organizing appropriate puzzles, books and toys and making them available during school time for my little one, is a necessary way to keep things running smoothly during the morning learning times. I am also adding a weekly activity planned with inspiration from Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready (see page references below). Listed below are weekly activities that I hope to have the older three kids do with our 2 year old keeping him happy and busy while I am teaching. Some are longer activities, some are just quick games.
Week One: Big and Little--Make homemade playdough and teach concept of big and little. (p. 119)
Week Two: Making Necklaces--Using our Lauri necklaces, show how to feed the string through the teddy bears to make a necklace. (p. 121)
Week Three: My Family--Get a family picture and point to family members asking child to name everyone and if possible, tell you something about each person. (p. 124)
Week Four: Painting--Using the Crayola No Mess fingerpaint and paper, let the fun begin. (p. 128)
Week Five: Farm Animals--Get a few picture books with animals and gather together a collection of beanie babies and have fun matching names and names and sounds. (p. 129)
Week Six: Jack Be Nimble--Teach rhyme and have child jump over a cup or a small candlestick. (p. 131)
Week Seven: The Three Bears--Read story and focus on counting 1-2-3. (p. 133)
Week Eight: Sock Match--Using four different pairs of socks, mix up and have child match them and name whose socks they are (Mommy's, Daddy's, etc.) (p. 134)
Week Nine: Dress Up Dolls--Using the wooden doll boards, have child dress the boy and girl dolls.
Week Ten: Clapping Hands--High, Low, Right, Left, Behind, In Front... (p. 147)
Week Eleven: My Color Booklet--Fold over 8.5 x 11 paper twice and use each side to color eight primary colors--have child do this on his own and then label the pages and work on learning the colors.
I was happy to discover your blog today. I was unable to find a contact link. I hope it's OK that I'm contacting you through a public comment. I've developed an educational program for Windows called SpellQuizzer that helps children learn their spelling and vocabulary words without the battle that parents often have getting them to sit down and write them out while the parents dictate to them. The parent enters the child's spelling words into the software making a sound recording of each word. Then the software helps the child practice his or her words. It really helped my children with their weekly spelling lists.
I would appreciate your reviewing SpellQuizzer in Our Lady Queen of Peace Homeschool. If you are interested in hosting a giveaway of a SpellQuizzer license I'd be happy to supply a free license to the winner. You can learn more about the program at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com. There's a video demo you can watch at http://www.spellquizzer.com/SpellQuizzer-Demo.htm and a community site where SpellQuizzer users can share their spelling lists with one another (http://www.SpellQuizzer.com/Community). Finally, there's a page targeted to homeschooling families at http://www.spellquizzer.com/spelling-software-for-homeschoolers.htm. I'd be happy to send you a complimentary license for the software. Please let me know if you are interested.
Thank you very much!
Dan Hite
TedCo Software
Dan@SpellQuizzer.com
Posted by: Dan Hite | August 14, 2009 at 05:01 PM