Jenny's Surprise Summer & Shapes

Since our last post, Little Mister has been learning shapes more and more. Just this morning we had a breakthrough with getting Triangle and Rectangle named correctly!!! Yay!

We have been using his shape activities lots (see our recent post), and he has picked out shapes in everyday life, ALL ON HIS OWN! Love how all of a sudden he excitedly points and says "Circle mum, look Circle!" etc.

I posted a lot of the ideas we would use to learn shapes, some we have used, and some are still to be used. We will keep on with shapes until he can tell me them all without any help. Yes, it may be another month (or more!) but Little Mister is still enjoying it, so we'll keep on going :)

For the previous two weeks we 'rowed' Jenny's Surprise Summer by Eugenie. A beautiful story about a little girl, Jenny, who is holidaying by the beach at her Gran's place, when she finds 2 kittens. At the end of the summer holiday she has to decided which one to take home with her, and she decides based on the character of each Kitten. In this time, we also spent a 4 day weekend camping near the beach, and so Little Mister was able to 'get inside' the story with exploring and finding rocks, shells and seaweed etc, and chasing seagulls, and swimming in the ocean (unfortunately we didn't find any stray kittens).

We used:

Printables from Homeschool Share

Observation Ideas from Before Five In A Row Manual

Our fortnight in  pictures...

Will it sink of will it float? Daddy did this activity with Little Mister about 3-4 times through the fortnight. Little Mister loved the idea that there was a difference between things floating and sinking, pretty sure he understands the concept, just gets the words confused!

 

I can't remember where I found these colouring pictures... we coloured one in grey for Smokey and one in orange for Pumpkin, the two kittens in Jenny's Surprise Summer. We talked about why they had these particular names and about their different characters. Then we found each kitten on the pages of the book.

 

We looked through and talked about different kinds of cats, looks personalities, oddities etc. It's hard to tell how much Little Mister understands at this age (almost 2.5), but we talk about it anyway and he picks out different things in the pictures that interest him also.

We also sang cat songs and read cat poems/rhymes etc.

 

Here's Little Mister exploring the beach and building a car wash with Grandma and Grandpa. He loves to see the waves race up he beach and fill the holes he has made. It was Little Misters imagination that turned the hole into a car wash! We spent a few hours one day exploring the beach and ocean. In Jenny's Surprise summer there are seagulls, shells, crabs etc, and we did our best to find everything in the book. We collected about 30 flat smooth pebbles to bring home, which Little Mister has had a great time using as "bumpy roads" for his cars, and seeing how high he can stack them etc.

 

We spent a half hour or so watching remote-control gliders at a cliffs edge. Little Mister's first time seeing such a thing, and he was thrilled!

True bush camping. Lots for Little Mister to explore, lots of wildlife and lots of creation to just be amongst. The Kookaburras came in each evening for a nosey, the kangaroos came in also for feeding, and we even saw a Joey climb into it's mother pouch!

 Good, old fashioned, do-nothing relaxing was on the "activities" list :)

Little Mister is telling the Kookaburras to "get in cart, Kookaburra". Very cute. We think he thought they would do as they were told, like when playing with his hens and goats at home!

All in all, a wonderful fortnight with lots of fun memories :)

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Our first formal book "Row"...

We had sooo much fun :)

The first of the three weeks (yes 3!!) we read and read and read and read this delightful book.

Little Mister memorised his favourite parts with no prompting:

     "Oozy MUD!!"

     "Tiptoe Tiptoe... What's that!?"

     "Oh, no!"
     "Polar" (that's the bear?!)

I found some great printables at Homeschool Creations which we painted, then added extra bling to re-create the story...

We used green paint then grass from the back lawn on the "long wavy grass" - Blue paint then blue glitter on the "deep cold river" - yellow paint the mud (yes mud!) on the "thick oozy mud" - green paint then leaves from the back garden on the "big dark forest" - yellow paint then cotton wool and white rice on the "swirling whirling snowstorm" - and Black paint on the "narrow gloomy cave" and a glow in the dark bear which we stuck in the cave, and added goggley eyes to.

We did this over 2 days, and had lots of fun :)

Little Mister painting the "thick oozy mud"...

The (almost) finished products...

 

The blank space above each picture is for our "real-life" bear hunt! We've taken the photo's just haven't printed them to stick on yet!They're posted below :)

"Long Wavy Grass"

"A Deep Cold River"

"Thick Oozy Mud"
(a brilliant Sensory Education moment!)

"A Big Dark Forest"

"A Swirling Whirling Snowstorm"

"A Narrow Gloomy Cave" & "It's a Bear!"
(Or as Little Mister says, a Polar! He has one, and to him they are all the same at the moment :))

...and so ended the bear hunt!

Starting Out

I'm a full-time mother, homemaker and wife... and I love it. Neither my hubby nor I would have it any other way. We believe in the God assigned tasks for each of us, and want to do our very best in "training up our child in the way he should go". We believe that this includes every part of every day, and for us, this naturally includes schooling.

At this stage in life we have been blessed with one beautiful lively son and the opportunity to own a couple of acres and live surrounded by God's wonderful creation every day.

I was home-schooled myself for years 7-8 and loved every minute of it! So even though Little Mister is still just 2 years old, I am ever so keen to get started with a 'routine' of home education!!

I've done heaps of research into methods of home education and looked at many curriculum's. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that there are curriculum's for children almost from birth!

I've come to the conclusion that our education method will be rather eclectic! I always had an idea of how I wanted to do it... until I had a child! Now I see things differently :) We particularly love the idea of unit studies, or book studies. Similar to the ideas used by Five in a Row and The Little Big Book Club. We'll use any book or topic that takes our fancy and will include Bible stories too.

I've also recently looked in more depth at Montessori, and am really loving what I see!
So unit/book studies with lots of Montessori style learning is probably what will happen.

Having researched things early in the picture, I feel we are blessed that by the time our eldest child (and only at the moment!)  reaches formal schooling age, we will have a good idea of his learning style and interests. We'll also have a good idea of how on-track mum can stay :)

Would love to read your comments, tips, ideas etc.
We're new at this and anything will be food for thought :)