Learning Ordinal numbers

Posted on February 25, 2014 by ofamily

We have been learning about ordinal numbers over the last week.  We started off with a simple page from Pinks Maths book – Shuters Premier Mathematics.  Pink with her love of all things animals enjoyed this as she had to figure out what colour fish was where in in the line.  This naturally lead to some fun playing with our toy animals placing them all in line.

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We then did some more hands on activities.  I had some animal pictures left over from the 3 Dinosaurs zoo pack so I wrote the ordinal numbers from 1 to 10 on the back of different animals and pink had to cut out the animal and stick them in the correct position. As simple as it may sound but as soon as she gets to do some cutting and sticking the ideas seem to become more real for her.

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She was so proud of the finished product that a few days after making it, she fetched it to help her do another worksheet.

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We also did another sticking activity.  On the bottom of a piece of paper I wrote some positions and an animal name and Pink had to read it by herself and find the correct animal sticker and put it in the correct place on the line.

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Making date balls with the kids

Posted on February 21, 2014 by ofamily

Both the kids love baking with me.  It has actually gotten to the stage that I am no longer allowed to bake anything by myself, as soon as I start getting a mixing bowl out one of them will go and fetch their step so they can reach the counter top and join in.

We first started off baking with Pink as a way of making food less intimidating. We first used lots of baking mixes and just got her to mix everything together and help me spoon the mixture into muffin trays.  This very quickly became a favourite activity for her and we went on to try “real recipes”.  Pink has a very high sensitivity to touch and finds normal things like rain painful so we have tried to choose recipes where she needs to really use her hands.  This does mean that sometimes she gets overwhelmed and I need to finish the baking but she always participates and always has a taste at the end.

One of our favourite recipes to make (apart from the naturally obvious cup cakes ) are these date balls. 

Both Kids love helping me to measure out all the ingredients and it is such a wonderful opportunity to discuss whole verses half and other quantities.  (After we had finished baking the kids took the measuring cups and had great fun filling the different size cups with different beads and buttons).

The first time we tried these she was very reluctant to use her hands to role the sticky mixture but now she will happily roll about 5 or 6 date balls before rushing off to eat one of them.

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And the big bonus is the parents end up with something yummy to much on.

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Homeschooling sick days do exist !!

Posted on February 18, 2014 by ofamily

So what do you do when the kids and the parent who homeschools end up sick.  If the kids where in school it would be simple you would all have a sick day but somehow because you are homeschooling you feel like you need to do something.   Both kids are miserable and I have flu and yet this morning I still got up and prepared their table with some homeschooling activities.  Why ?  Why not just acknowledge that we are sick and need a sick day ?

As I was sitting on my couch feeling sorry for myself and missing my bed, I thought about it and promptly removed the activities from the table (it can keep until we all feel better) and told the kids that today they could just play,relax and do whatever they wanted.  I thought I would have had two couch potatoes on my hand, not sure if I can really get through another viewing of Planes or Cars right now, but  the whole morning the two of them have been upstairs playing with their toys having a blast, a lot of sneezing and coughing but still having fun.   I have managed to catch up on some me reading (ie non-homeschooling reading) and have actually managed to finish a cup of tea without it getting cold.

So yes even us home educators need a sick day every now and again.

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Foxxy crazy !!

Posted on February 16, 2014 by ofamily

Pink has gone completely Fox crazy lately.  It started off when they watched just a little snip of a CBeebies program called Abadas, they loved the songs and the characters.  Pink loved the fact that the fox (Ela) has a “special nose” that means she can smell things better than lots of other animals.  She immediately related this back to her having super senses (when we talk to her about SPD we talk about super senses so that she sees it as positive).

Link in case you have never heard of Abadas

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/abadas/

This new love for Abadas has resulted in lots of colouring in of the Abadas pictures (just this by itself would be enough for me to love Abadas as Pink does not naturally like to colour in).  And prompted a quick study of foxes.  I found a picture for her to colour in – she had to make sure that she used realistic colours for this picture and we talked about what makes a fox special.  Then she stuck her picture in her new animal book (she loved this idea so much that she has given me a list of animals which we need to do each week) and she wrote out the key words in the page next to in.  She managed to sound out a lot of the words but did need some help with the longer words like nocturnal.

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She also found some small pictures of foxes in among the other homeschooling packs that we do and cut them out and stuck them onto her fox page.

So once again the BBC’s good programming has resulted in some fun learning for the kids.

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Homeschooling my way

Posted on February 13, 2014 by ofamily

I had another one of those conversations with a mom who does not know that much about homeschooling.

Conversation goes like this :

Other mom “so why aren’t your kids in school ?”

Me ” We homeschool ”

Other mom ” oh you must be a teacher then ?”

Me “No I am not a qualified teacher just a mom who teaches her kids at home”

Other mom ” Ohh I see……… but how do you know what to do ”

Me ” well you can find out everything these days on the internet and we tend to follow the kids lead in what they find intreasting ”

Other mom ” That must be nice but you need to be rich to homeschool ”

Me “no we are definately doing it low cost, you can get lots on the internet for free”

So what are my must haves for homeschooling without breaking the bank – here is my top 10 (in no order)

1. Computer / Internet / Printer access.

2. You need to enjoy spending time with your kids.

3. Access to a good library.

4. A  nice playground / park for those days when you have nothing planned but you just need to get out of the house.

5. Basic art stuff (there is a lot can you do with just some paper, paint, a pair of scissors and glue).

6. An imagination or the time to go through Pinterest to find activities for the kids to do.

7. Access to a kitchen so the kids can bake (they learn so much by baking with you).

8. A spouse/ partner / good friend to support you when you get burnt out.

9. The  normal puzzles and kids games that you would probably have around the house if you where not homeschooling (snakes and ladders / dominoes are great for teaching Maths).

10.  Lot of tea / coffee and chocolate, you need something for those days when nothing goes as planned and you wonder why you are doing this.

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