… when they are not out gathering garbage– I mean treasure, from the woods
I have put a bit of thought into how I am going to transition from homeschooling one child out of three, to homeschooling three children out of six. Part of the trick seems to be finding ways to keep the younger children occupied while the older children work. Keats will be in kindergarten next year, and Seth will be in second grade. While Moses is Keats’ age, I am not sure if he will be ready for kindergarten work. Catholic Heritage Curricula’s kindergarten lesson plans include plans for preschool as well, so I hope to be able to use that for both Keats and Moses. I have no idea what I will do with Samuel and Larkspur. Anyway, here are pictures of my kids engaged in some activities that they enjoy-and I hope to use these along with others to keep those children not currently receiving lessons occupied.
Keats love these little perler plastic melting beads. These are great for teaching little ones to follow a pattern, and if you have them use the tweezers, they work on their pincer grip as well-which is great handwriting prep.
Here the kids are all playing with Varialand. This is a set of 80 painted wooden squares that the children can piece together into an open ended scene. This is a super cool game, which can be played as a group where the children take turns adding a picture to the scene. An individual child could also spend a lot of time creating scenes on his own. I would have LOVED this as a little girl. While my boys do like it, I think little girls who love stories and make believe would love it.
Both Seth and Keats love to color mandalas. While you can buy books of them at the craft store, they are also available to print for free on the internet. I started with a book for each boy, but when Keats got a little obsessive with them and wanted to color them literally all day-I went the free route and started printing my own. Another great art activity for kids who like that stuff is making homemade scratch off paper. My kids do this with blank unlined index cards and oil pastels. The first step is to completely color the index card-my boys typically use lots of colors for this part. Once this layer of color is applied, and second coat of just one color is applied on top-typically black, but any color will do. Then the kids use toothpicks to scratch designs onto the note cards. The top layer scratches off, but the bottom layer remains and all the colors show through where the toothpick scratches. My boys LOVE doing this-and it is cheap and easy. I am not gifted in the crafts department-I don’t go for organized craft activities with lots of steps. But, since my kids, especially Keats, love art I have to provide them with artsy activities.
And the best activity of all…reading of course! Seth started the year reading a little-but not willingly. You know that very slow painful early type of reading that kids do when they are just starting to put it all together. We started first grade using level C of the Little Angel Readers. I have required Seth to read aloud to me for a few minutes each day. Gradually he began reading on his own over the course of the year, so I stopped giving formal phonics lessons after we completed level C-just continued to have him read aloud to me. He wasn’t reading entire books, but typically parts of field guides or other non-fiction books with information that he wanted. I wondered how and when (or if) he might transition to reading fiction, just for the pleasure of a good story. I read both Seth and Keats the original unabridged Pinocchio at bedtime a few weeks ago, and they loved it. Towards the middle and end of the book Seth started “sneaking” chapters in to get ahead during the day. The daunting task of reading an entire chapter of a long book didn’t occur to him, because he was so engrossed in the story. Had I suggested he read such a book on his own, he would have refused. Once Pinocchio was finished, we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Seth also loved this book and started sneaking chapters during the day. Once that was finished, I decided that I wouldn’t read any more of the Chronicles of Narnia aloud because I think Keats is too young. These are great for Seth because he can grasp a good bit of the symbolism (I pointed it out throughout the lion, the witch and the wardrobe)-and he is nearly 8 years old. I would like to save these for Keats when he is old enough to get more out of them. Anyway, I do own the whole set and Seth was very interested in reading the second in the series. I agreed to read him the first chapter of Prince Caspian and then he read the rest on his own in a few days. I can’t tell you what a blessing this is. I feel like this opens a whole new world for Seth. He is a child who needs to be occupied-and now when he is out of sorts and not capable of playing, I can sit him down and give him his book to read. He is now reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but I am going to need some help figuring out what to give him to read when he is done with this series.
Larkspur. I don’t know what to do with this girl. She is truly a mess. In this picture she is displaying one variation of her “naughty face.” (She had also recently drawn on her face with a pen.) If I were to post pictures of what she does to occupy herself, they would all be of the messes she makes. She also raids the cabinets for baggies and likes to bag things all over the house, or in the yard. I pretty much have to keep her right by my side (she is two after all-but this is not the same sort of two my boys ever were) which is challenging when it is time to teach the other children. I hope I can make some progress in teaching her how to occupy herself constructively over the next few months.
I'm not good with routine, either. I agree kids need it, so it is a fight for me. When I homeschooled I had the kids do some on-line classes (obviously yours are too young yet), but that helped a lot since I am so scattered.
Thanks Annie! No I don't have academic expectations of Moses for this year-my biggest concern is maintaining order, and giving the kids structure. I do have the responsibility of keeping Seth and Keats on track-mostly Seth though b/c of his Asperger's we have to keep some routine or he will fall apart, and the easiest way to do that with him is with school. I also think that during the hours of the day that I have Seth and Keats doing schoolwork that I need to have some sort of easy work for Moses to do, as he may want to do school work as well. However, I am not a schedule person, not a routine person-and am actually sometimes way too laid back-and I think I need to be able to provide my kids some routine that they can count on. Raising Seth has taught us to roll with the punches for sure-I think that will help me a lot when Moses and Samuel come home.
One of my favorite homeschooling books was "Better Late Than Early". I firmly believe that we worry about "school" too early, and when I adopted the kids from Russia and discovered that they don't start kids in school until they are at least 7, that clinched it for me. Sergei came to us at 10 and had only had two years of schooling, but his work was vastly superior to the other third graders. Obviously he "fell back" a bit as he had to transition from reading in Russian to English and so forth, but he had been doing extremely well in reading and writing as well as math – and all that without preschool and kindergarten!
Thanks Jen! I am not expecting Moses (and of course Samuel is too young for school) to really do school work this year. I am switching to a much gentler curricula for Seth and Keats so that homeschooling them won't be as stressful and I will have maximum time for Moses and Samuel (and the new baby.) I will have easy things for Moses to do if he wants to-which I suspect he may since Seth and Keats will be. One of my big concern is not neglecting my bio. kids needs this next year, because I know that I am going to need to spend a LOT of time helping Moses and Samuel adjust to our family. I am so glad that I will have you to turn to for advice!
Ginny, It sounds like you have great ideas for next year already. I'm sure the boys (Moses and Samuel) are going to love your family and your treasure hunting ground! I found that all of my good intentions for this year needed to be lightened up A LOT and that we just had to spend this year learning how to be a family, teaching our new kiddos about everyday things (things the avg. 3 year old knows about), working on basic obedience (OK, this has taken most of our time) and just bonding as a family. In fact, our new children weren't even ready for books (even easy picture books) for about the first 7 months or so – NOW, they LOVE books and are starting to want to learn to read. I guess I would just caution you to NOT get too down on yourself if everything doesn't go according to plan – give yourself and your family A LOT of flexibility and time and be willing to adjust to what comes with each new phase (there are a lot of them the first year!!)I'm sure you will do great!
Ginny, you have great ideas. I want to check into those sites. We also love perler beads. And I can't get my kids enough books from the library. They are lost in a book at almost every spare moment of the day.As for Lark, she will soften up. She reminds me of my Tissy when she was little. A little ball of fire, she was. But she is turning out to be one of the sweetest kids. Keep training her (just steer her in the right direction). Don't give up.=)
Crystal I am actually rather lazy and disorganized! I recognize that this is going to need to change or else my family is going to descend into chaos this fall.
You are an inspiration to me! You must be very organized. I am even praying about homeschooling our kiddos again, maybe?