Helping Your Homeschooler Socialize

One of the biggest myths surrounding homeschooling is that children who don't attend public school won't have a chance to socialize with their peers. We've told you a bit about why we've decided to homeschool but now I'd also love to share with you how we are socializing our kids as they learn at home.

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Traditional Preschool or Homeschool or Both?

We're about to start a fresh year of school. The questions I get most as a former teacher turned mom is, "What made you decide to homeschool?" and "Why are you sending one child to preschool while homeschooling the other?" Our choices are due to the unique strengths, needs, and values of our family but I would love to share them with you!

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Making Writing Meaningful

Since I last wrote about E's writing development, she's really taken an interest!  I wish we could take credit for anything new that she is doing, but this is almost completely self motivated.  

She constantly has a writing implement and some sort of paper in her hands.  We have made those available to her at all times (at least until D is mobile).  We've purchased new markers for her in 36! colors.  She's moved on from scribbling to writing random letters and letter like forms.

We do continue to show her meaningful ways to use writing.  She knows that we use lists, recipes, letters, and cards as a few examples.  This has piqued her interest about creating her own writing.  

You can see here how I started the birthday card for her.  She wrote her own H under mine, but decided not to trace Nana's name.

On the inside, she told me what to draw.  After the first cat, I drew the second, but asked her to finish the details of the face.  She then scribble wrote a note to Nana.  I underwrote.

She takes paper and a pen to bed with her some nights.  It's pretty adorable.

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The Importance and Purpose of Infant Texture Play

Baby D is 11 weeks old today, which is the perfect age to engage in texture play time.

Luckily for him, he has an older sister who enjoys searching around the house for things to touch him.  We discussed stroking him gently in safe places such as his arms, legs, and occasionally his cheeks.  I also asked her to only do this when Momma or Daddy says it's allowed.

The sense of touch is the first sense to develop in the womb.  Interestingly, it will also be the last sense to diminish in our old age.

Because of this, it is the primary way that babies learn and socialize.  Kisses, hugs, and cuddles are all sensory ways that babies bond with their families, driven primarily by touch, but also incorporating smell, sight, and sound. (And with eventual open mouthed baby kisses even taste!)

Touch helps babies learn about the environment around them as well as who they are as an individual in space and time.

Giving D different textures to explore will also encourage him to start reaching for and grasping objects which is the next physical milestone on the horizon.

I am laying him down for tummy time on varying textures.  We've tried blankets in a variety of materials, different carpets and rugs, and some of E's interesting dress up clothes!  We also sandwich him between two fabrics to let him practice kicking.

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Emerging Writing

E came downstairs this morning with a note she had written for my parents who live on the other side of the state.

I had her "read" me what she had written so I could underwrite.

This was an exciting development for many reasons:

- It was completely independent and self motivated work.

- E has internalized and been inspired by a lot of modeled reading and writing behavior.  My parents regularly write to her and send her packages in the mail.  She sees me writing notes and lists often.  She helps me write on her projects, adding meaningful text to birthday cards and helping me determine the initial sounds of words as I write them for her.

- I could pinpoint her stage of independent writing.  She is creating scribbles moving from left to write horizontally across the page.  Her "signature" shows some mock letters in her name.  (Sometimes her independent E has more than three lines to it.)

- She saw my enthusiasm over this note.  I underwrote, took a picture, and showed her how I am emailing it to her grandparents.  (You can see where I started to rip the note out of her notebook to mail it, but she protested.)  She then went on to write more letters for a good portion of an hour, dictating out loud who she was writing to and what she was saying to them.  I wish I had recorded this because it was priceless! She was "writing" too fast for me to keep up with her ideas.  When she saw me blogging about this, she decided to get her play laptop and camera so she could "take pictures on the 'puter and write" there, too.

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E's age: 3 years, 1 month

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Update on Our Apple Theme

September is flying by (If the rest of the fall is like this baby D will be here before we know it!) and we are studying apples.  I have found that a monthly theme (rather than biweekly) is working out best.  We have also started library story time and dance class so we are busy!

A few weeks ago, I participated in a Scholastic Magazine focus group and in exchange, we got subscriptions to Clifford and Let's Find Out magazines along with some other goodies!

I loved using the Let's Find Out magazine when I taught kindergarten, so I jumped right in to using the Scholastic Magazines with E.  This month, they covered apples, which was perfect for our homeschool preschool theme!

We learned about apple trees and how they change through the seasons. 

We have also been using Handwriting Without Tears techniques to correct E's pencil grip.  It's working so well!

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I am not being asked to write about these products by HWT or Scholastic.  I am choosing to do so because I love them as a teacher and a mom!  

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Calendar

My plan is to start home schooling a preschool program to E in the fall.  Since a new baby is going to liven things up in December, I knew I wanted to have the calendar part of the routine established by September by starting it daily this summer.

The calendar poster was about $3.00 at our local teaching store.  I put it on our freezer, which is a pull out drawer under our refrigerator so it provided lots of room at E's level for our work space.  I highlighted the weekends so we could differentiate the days when Dadda works from when he's home.  Every day, we count the dates already on the calendar, add the next one, sing The Days of the Week, and discuss upcoming events using the words tomorrow, this week, and weekend.  As the curriculum and E grow together, we will add more parts to our calendar time (seasons, graphing weather, counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, pattern of the day, months of the year, etc.)

I made the magnetic dates with my 1" button maker.  I also made some recognizable magnets for places we regularly go and people we see.  

I love that counting the dates is teaching E to go from left to right and where the next line starts when one ends which are important skills for reading.  By the time she is ready to pick up an early reader, this will be a habit for her.  She is also getting daily one-to-one counting (touching each date as we count), number recognition to 31, and days of the week.  For quite awhile now, we've talked about upcoming events, but this makes it more concrete to her.  Yesterday after using the calendar once, she could tell me that tomorrow we were going to the library and the next day we were going to Nana's house.

Calendar time is a small, concentrated, vital burst of math in a quick amount of time.

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Toddler Attention Span - What's Appropriate?

Since our Play & Learn Classes began in March, I've had several questions about what is appropriate for toddlers and pre-schoolers' attention spans.  Today I'm going to try to address this question, but my answer won't be a clear and specific time frame per age.

When teaching kindergarten, I could say that 5-year-olds, for the most part, were capable of sitting and engaging in an adult selected activity for 15 minutes when allowed to participate in verbal and physical ways (passing a puppet, listening to others, clapping syllables, singing a song, etc.)  Toddlers are harder to define for a variety of reasons.

Anytime we start discussing what is "typical" we have to remember skills are on a continuum.  When you visit you pediatrician, s/he gives you a range of words your child should be saying, weight and height is on a percentile, and skills develop at ages that vary by several months.  During early childhood, children are growing and changing at such a rapid speed that it is impossible to put milestones on an exact timeline for individuals.

Also, at the age of 3, a child's brain has formed twice as many connections as an adult's.  Many of these synapses will be used or eliminated during the years of elementary school.  Connections that are frequented more will strengthen and grow while other passageways will die away due to lack of use.  So we have to remember that your toddler's mind is BUSY, just like their bodies.  That's why adults are often exhausted while they run circles around us.

Lastly, aside from the variability of each child and the fast paced way that toddlers' minds work, we also have to factor in that each child is geared towards personal interests.  What is rewarding to one might not be interesting to the next, just like with adults.  E has the attention span to do multi-step arts and crafts, but isn't as likely to focus on building with blocks at this point.  She will set up elaborate pretend homes and meals for several people (or dolls or animals) and assist you in cooking for much longer than she'll participate in gross motor activities.  There is also variance in how long she'll dedicate to an activity on any given day.  Bath time length changes day to day and lasts much longer if she has her Daddy with her because she didn't see him all day, versus Momma who is trying to fold laundry or reply to emails at the same time.

That last variable is a clue to what we can do when we want to engage our child's attention for longer periods of time. Children are naturally self directed, but if we are engaged with them, they will stay dedicated to an activity for longer.  One goal at our Play & Learn classes is to communicate to parents how much their undivided attention, even for a short amount of time, leads to more intentional play and learning in their child's day.

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Creating Beside Your Child - Recycled Flower Art

I had a whole post ready to write about spring, flowers, Earth Day, and recycling. Yet, when I sat down to do this project with E, I ended up learning so much.

When we had new cookware shipped to us, I saw these packing pieces.  I knew I had to keep them to make something out of them, but what?  Spring = flowers of course!

Here was my dilemma:  I always strive to provide E with activities that are so fun that they engage my attention as well, because then I know that they are sure to be a hit with her!  So I was super tempted to create one of these flowers myself.

At first, I felt a bit silly and selfish to be taking her materials to make my own art.  But then I thought, we encourage parents all the time to play along side their children.  We are advised to eat dinner together, read together, do everything together.  Why not create together?  Splat Studio advertises that their preschool classes allow parents to have materials to work along with their child, which was a huge draw for me.  I decided to make a flower, too.

While we were working something happened.  I was using Do-a-Dot stampers while E chose paint.  She started mimicking my stamping motions on her flower.

If I would have suggested she try that, her two year old stubborn streak probably would have resisted.  I would never have taken her materials to "show" her how to do it on her own flower because that feels like disrespect to her as an individual and artist.

Yet, by creating beside her, she had the freedom to make the decision to do it like Momma or in her own way, neither of which was wrong or right.

I was talking to my mom about this on the phone and she brought up how this is the way animals learn how to behave in nature.  The mother chimpanzee doesn't take something from its baby, say "No," and show it the proper way to do something.  Instead, the mother performs an activity as she's always done and the baby follows her lead and imitates her.  It's such a natural way to learn!

So I want to encourage you to create art beside your child.  Get messy with him, buy extra materials for yourself so you both have your own space, and have fun creating masterpieces but also memories.  You can also ask your child if you can work on one project together, but respect their answer.  Collaboration is a choice.

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