Number Order 1 - 10

 She put them in order, no problem.

Learning How to School at Home

I say that we're learning how to school because this is all new to us. The girls are learning their numbers, letters, colors, shapes, how to write, etc and I'm learning how to become the teacher I want to be and the teacher they need me to be. We're taking one day at a time. We're having fun learning together! Right now nothing is scheduled, everything is very random, but it's working for us right now as we learn to school.


This is what we did today. I have a plan in place to be more focused and scheduled later, but this is what we're doing now.

We read this.

 

  
We watched this, on purpose. By on purpose I mean, I don't just sit the girls down in front of the tv and go do something else, even though that's what I would like to do when I want to get cleaning done. We watch together and really focus on learning. After we watch, we go through the book, which goes over the same words as the video. We went through the book twice since Lexi is interested in learning the words.

We took a break and had lunch

Then went to the playground.
 When we got home we watched Team Umizoomi while we had a light snack.
(I love this show!)

We played SHAPES Bingo

Lexi did a self portrait and wrote her name on a card to her Great Grandparents.

I put Kaity down for a nap and did these worksheets with Lexi. I didn't get a picture of most of the finished worksheets, we were just moving too fast and having too much fun!

  
She counted and told me which numbers were missing.

 I have been so happy with how well she's learning the sounds of the letters.

  
She did this on her FIRST try, with no help from me. All I said was that the doggie can't go through walls.

  
She did need a lot of help from me as she doesn't know all her letters, but she did good and wanted to do it again.

The details on this are pretty small, so she did have a little trouble distinguishing which ones were different, but she had fun anyway.

  
This was our first time doing rhyming words. :) We'll see if she does better next time.

She loves anything were she gets to paste.

  
She had lots of fun pasting Angus the dog where he needed to go.

 That was our day! Besides lots of fun before, during and after. :)

LOVE MY GIRLS!

Number Circles

Here I told her colors didn't matter, I just wanted her to pay attention to the numbers. Such a simple concept to teach that numbers have meaning.

Kaity was nearby just watching her sister, she wasn't interested in trying, just wanted to watch, but there has to be some learning there.

Color Circles

Color Circles

I took a big piece of drawing paper from their easel and drew circles around plates. Then I wrote the colors in each circle and told her to match the colors. The second time around I had her count them as she put them in each circle.

I didn't tell her what to do with the tan ones, she just put them on the side because there wasn't a circle for those. 

She had fun and wanted to do it again, but we were on to our next activity. Numbers Circles.

Why Homeschooling is Our Hope for Our Family

So, as I'm out and about with Alexis, my 3 year old. I'm starting to get a few more questions  in regards to her being in preschool. I always just respond with, "We have preschool at home." I would say that most people accept it it, but I do get a couple disapproving looks.

It hit me recently that I should stand unashamed that our girls will most likely be homeschooled. That is, if it is in God's will for our family. I will be their teacher, I will choose what they learn and how they learn it. I will teach them things they are interested in. I will discipline them when they need it and hopefully they will LOVE school, not despise it like I did. And BONUS I don't have to miss those magical moments!

I know homeschooling will not be easy.  A lot of time will go into putting our school days together to keep it interesting for them and to make sure they learn the best they can.

I was not homeschooled, I went to public school and hated, basically, every moment of it. I barely passed history, biology, math and told little white lies to teachers to get out of doing anything physical in PE. I never had a lot of friends and for some reason was always shy and awkward. Socialization in public school certainly didn't help me.

So what's wrong with homeschooling? What's wrong with having one of the people that love them the most in this world be their teacher? Nothing that my husband and I can see!

Who knows what the future holds for us, but right now we're just having fun learning one small lesson at a time.

Handwriting - Alphabet

 This is how she's learning to write letters. She loves the pictures that go along with it.

I love how there is so much to do on one page that it keeps her interested to finish it.  There is uppercase tracing, lowercase tracing, G is for Giraffe and find the G g for each letter. Also for most of the letters there are two different graphics to pick from depending on what is more interesting to your child.

I found this on Our Little Monkeys Blog.

 

  

And here is a picture of it after Alexis gets her hands on it.

 

Of course she had to color it in a little after she traced them.

Look at that concentration!

 

Laminating Worksheets

Meet "The Laminator"

I know, a little corny, okay maybe a lot, but I have a lot of respect for my new found friend. In starting our very light homeschool journey, my girls are only 2 and 3, I have been so happy with all the amazing websites that have FREE printable worksheets for preschoolers. 

 

Little Monkey Printables 

 Education.com

Free Printables 

I Can Teach My Child 

Fun Activies 

ABC Scripture 

 

 I have been so thankful and excited that these and so many others are free, until I started printing them out. I would watch Alexis go through them so fast and then it was done and I either threw it away or saved it in her expandable file. But with most of them meeting the big round monster, I felt we were just throwing money away. With the cost of paper and ink, it was really bothering me. So as we have very slowly gotten into a homeschooling schedule, I came across this ingenious solution to going through all the ink and paper in another moms blog.

 

If you have a laminating machine, you can laminate all those worksheets that your children can work on time and time again and by using a dry erase pen, just wipe it off and it’s ready for next time.

Who knew I’d love a laminating machine SO much? Well maybe some people that know me aren't completely shocked that I do. :)

 

You can find the Scotch Thermal Laminator on Amazon.com for about $30. 

 

It came with 2 samples of the Scotch laminating sheets, you can buy 50 for $12 or you can save yourself some money and buy the Universal3 Mil Clear Letter Size Thermal Laminating Pouches that work just as good, I couldn’t tell the difference and you get 100 for around $12.

 

With this new system, I don’t even feel bad letting Kaitlyn, our 2 year old, take a crack at some worksheets, just erase and it’s as good as new!

 Exited to start on these weekly (now laminated) scripture memory cards.  :)

Until next time!