Playing at homeschooling

Describe your average homeschool day and give new homeschoolers an idea of what to expect!

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AnnetteR
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Posts: 39
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:14 pm
Location: Minnesota

Playing at homeschooling

Postby AnnetteR » Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:54 pm

My son turned four earlier this year. He had been in a preschool program so I have chosen to basically continue building on the foundation.

We have no set schedule, rather I work off of his interests each day. I will randomly test him to see what he might be interested in working on. He's typically up between 5:30 and 6:30. I allow him to watch a couple programs on public television, afterwards he'll usually sit down to eat. Then the day begins to take shape.

I do not use a curriculum but rather have bought a variety of preschool activity books: dot to dots (alphabet or numbers), upper and lower case letters, counting, shapes, phonics, mazes, adding, subtraction, animals, the united states, craft books (learning to master cutting) and books with a variety of activities. As well as working from selected books my son will typically spend some time drawing and doing free writing, lots of large muscle and small muscle activiy, and reading.

After he's finished a single activity I like to find something around the house or something else he's familiar with to incorporate into his studies. When he was learning shapes, after working in the book, I'd have him go around the house finding things of a particular shape. To my son it's a game and though he no longer works in the book he still likes to play "what shape is..." or "where is a ...".

I don't know if it's my son or my style, but my son will gladly spend the entire day learning - playing educational games, watching educational programs, and working from educational materials. I do make a point though of telling my son during certain acitivities that I consider him to be in school and that he needs to either sit nice or use his pencil nice (he still likes to go wild and scribble on everything sometimes - which is fine when we are not doing "school")

Because everything is a learning opportunity in my mind, schooling doesn't begin in the morning and end in the afternoon. Learning doesn't have to be tasking or daunting or even work - it can be fun and I make a point of keeping it as fun as I can while keeping it on a level where my son still learns something from it. Cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning - these are all opportunities to learn. There are shapes associated with everything. Everything has a numerical value. Combining things often have a clearly visible effect - what happens when you add laundry detergent? What happens when you mix the ingredients for pizza crust? How many cans of peas do we have? What letters do you see? What numbers do you see? What do you think...? Learning is an all day adventure, though my son freely chooses to have down time and sometimes I even insist to be left to have a little bit of quiet time.

The day most often ends around dinner time for me, though my son often chooses to play educational games after dinner.

He's in bed by 8:30.

Make no mistake, he's not doing educational activities 24/7. He often takes time out during the day to play with toys and he does have opportunities to play with other children.

I don't think there is any easier or clearer way to describe our day.

jan
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Posts: 78
Joined: Fri Jun 02, 2006 6:18 pm
Location: wv

HELLO!

Postby jan » Sat Aug 12, 2006 6:05 pm

I JUST READ YOUR HS DAY AND IT SOUNDS WONDERFUL AND LIKE YOU ARE ON A GOOD TRACK!
GOD BLESS YOU!

AnnetteR
User
Posts: 39
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:14 pm
Location: Minnesota

Postby AnnetteR » Tue Aug 22, 2006 2:53 pm

We will be beginning a more structured form of homeschooling in mid September: 3 half days of work at a table (from after breakfast until lunch). We will be using workbooks, "Take It To Your Seat" activities (which my son loves), and crafts. Alternate days I want to do activities activities away from the table, similar to what I have been doing: nature walks, trips to the zoo, lessons while grocery shopping, etc.

We will work from workbooks but I'll not schedule a specific time or day for math, language arts, reading, etc.


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