Now that we are towards the end of pregnancy of offspring #2, I'm realizing that I'm probably going to wish that I kept a record of the homeschooling stuff that I did with Madeleine a little better. Instagram gets a lot of it, and I enjoy using mostly for tracking my day to day things, but typing things out on a computer is much easier than trying to do it on the ipad. On top of that, even though I haven't blogged a lot, Matt and I still refer back to here regularly to see what we did with Madeleine as a tinier human. I'm guessing we'll keep that up for the long run, so it's worth putting more things on here.
My basic homeschooling philosophy is to expose Madeleine to things and hope she learns something in the meanwhile. We have very low expectations for her. Pretty much we expect her to try it, and let us know what she thinks. We don't do almost any letters or numbers in our home. Most things are units based on what is going on in our lives, or something that Matt and I are interested in that we think Madeleine might like too. The wonderful thing about 3 is that they are curious about everything, so it's really hard to have something flop. I don't think anything has yet to be honest, even with the kids I babysit everyday. As long as I present it as something that I'm interested in, they are usually pretty cool with it.
What we've done so far...
Age 0-1: Survive as parents
Age 1-2: Learn how to not kill self
Age 2-3: Emotions, colors, and started with foods
Age 3-4: We focused mostly on food, but we put other things in too.
The general outline for a unit is lots of books plus an activity a day.
For food, we go to the farmer's market and she gets to pick out and pay for the food that we are going to do. Then I already have a list of books on hold at the library. We then generally make 2-3 recipes with said food. The idea behind it is that she tries new foods and that she learns that she can "not like how something is cooked" but she can still like the food. Ex. She hates pickled onions but loves onions in salsa.
The rest are pretty similar with the exception of scripts, since Matt and I rehearse with her, practice, and then make her do it. After we do a debriefing too. :D Right now we are working on speaking up when ordering at somewhere loud and giving people a bit more space when waiting in line. We don't wait in line near her. We usually are 20+ feet away because otherwise we find that people try to yell across the restaurant to talk to us instead of talking to her. For things that more complicated than Costco ("I'd like a hot dog, please."), I sometimes send her with a piece of paper, but for the most part she can do it. I also send her with almost if not exact change, so the money part isn't an issue.
And that's pretty much it. :) I'm going to hopefully start putting up the activities and books we are reading. Right now, I have the current unit on pinterest and as we do the pins, I delete them. But this way, hopefully I can keep everything together for future reference.
My basic homeschooling philosophy is to expose Madeleine to things and hope she learns something in the meanwhile. We have very low expectations for her. Pretty much we expect her to try it, and let us know what she thinks. We don't do almost any letters or numbers in our home. Most things are units based on what is going on in our lives, or something that Matt and I are interested in that we think Madeleine might like too. The wonderful thing about 3 is that they are curious about everything, so it's really hard to have something flop. I don't think anything has yet to be honest, even with the kids I babysit everyday. As long as I present it as something that I'm interested in, they are usually pretty cool with it.
What we've done so far...
Age 0-1: Survive as parents
Age 1-2: Learn how to not kill self
Age 2-3: Emotions, colors, and started with foods
- Emotions
- Happy
- Angry
- Sad
- Hurt
- Colors
- Foods
- Berries
- Brussel Sprouts
- Honey
- Eggs
- Bread
- Asparagus
- Apples
- Yogurt
- Where meat comes from
- Other random things
- Introduced butter knife
- Laundry
Age 3-4: We focused mostly on food, but we put other things in too.
- Food units
- Meatballs
- Spaghetti
- Lettuce
- Lavender
- Ice cream
- Strawberries
- Blackberries
- Tomatoes
- Pears
- Peaches
- Apples
- Bread
- Salad
- Pickles
- Cucumbers
- Soup
- Cookies
- Radishes
- Scallops
- Honey
- Emotions (kind of)
- Disappointed
- Mean
- How being tired effects how we feel
- Excited
- Patience
- Calming routines
- How our words can effect others (like calling someone fat or saying you don't want to play with someone)
- Bad choices v good choices
- Frustration
- Other stuff
- How babies are made
- How families are connected
- Blood
- Being nice to the Earth
- Rosa Parks
- Gardening
- Butterfllies
- Composting
- Microbes
- Seasons (This one is on going. All other units revolve around the seasons for the most part)
- What kind of music we like
- Making grocery list and sticking to them
- Quilting
- Forests
- Geography
- The Nutcracker
- Social Scripts
- How to act in a library
- How to order food
- How to pay for food
- How to ask others for help
- How to say and use the phrase "excuse me"
The general outline for a unit is lots of books plus an activity a day.
For food, we go to the farmer's market and she gets to pick out and pay for the food that we are going to do. Then I already have a list of books on hold at the library. We then generally make 2-3 recipes with said food. The idea behind it is that she tries new foods and that she learns that she can "not like how something is cooked" but she can still like the food. Ex. She hates pickled onions but loves onions in salsa.
The rest are pretty similar with the exception of scripts, since Matt and I rehearse with her, practice, and then make her do it. After we do a debriefing too. :D Right now we are working on speaking up when ordering at somewhere loud and giving people a bit more space when waiting in line. We don't wait in line near her. We usually are 20+ feet away because otherwise we find that people try to yell across the restaurant to talk to us instead of talking to her. For things that more complicated than Costco ("I'd like a hot dog, please."), I sometimes send her with a piece of paper, but for the most part she can do it. I also send her with almost if not exact change, so the money part isn't an issue.
And that's pretty much it. :) I'm going to hopefully start putting up the activities and books we are reading. Right now, I have the current unit on pinterest and as we do the pins, I delete them. But this way, hopefully I can keep everything together for future reference.
You are doing such a great job! One of all of my kiddos favorites was to pick different countries every 2 weeks. We would have a couple of meals from said country. The kids would research the country, find the flag, find it on the world map and tell us about what they discovered. They still talk about that. We did it for years.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like fun! She's really getting into where things are so maybe we can do that this year.
Delete