Reading & Writing

Selena has been asking for her Curious George game. Actually what she wanted was her Curious George puzzles. We put two different puzzles together, she does very well at putting these together with very little help. She then told me a story about each puzzle.

Selena’s Story:

Curious George is flying his kite. The kite is yellow. Curious George is in the sky. Curious George is walking in the sky. He is a flying monkey. Curious George is smiling. He flew up in the sky. The End.

Selena’s Story

Curious George is playing ball, baseball. Curious George has a bat and a cap and a ball. Curious George is going to hit the ball with his bat. The End.

The love how natural her little stories flow, she is really toning in on the sequencing idea. The only question I asked her to get these stories was, “What do you see in the picture?”

She has been doing a lot of work on her writing skills. I would say that she can now write over half of the alphabet, upper case, and is discovering many of the lower case letters now.

She prefers to do her writing this way now and has lost interest all together in the Kumon workbooks. She also practices just on paper with her crayons or a pen. She is also working on learning writing her numbers as well in this same manner.

In the evening it is not unusual to find Selena and Papa snuggled together watching baseball.

The Home School Hop #5

If you haven’t checked out The Home School Hop, you really should, it is a lot of fun, and a great way to discover new home school blogs. Kylie at Our Worldwide Classroom hosts this weekly blog hop, so go on over and check it out!

This week’s theme is “What’s Your Style?”

I know that there are fancy names for all sorts of different styles. I am a person that does not like labels, so I don’t refer to anyone style. I teach within what feels comfortable to me, and try to use teaching methods that will achieve success for Selena. If I were to refer to a particular style or styles I would have to say I am somewhere in between them all. After homeschooling my older children I have already learned that learning is as individual as the student is. My job as a teacher is to learn my child’s learning style and teach accordingly.

I do order a complete curriculum every year. Do I use it all? No, I do not, but I do like having the resources at hand for inspiration. I never expect that we will work all the way through a workbook or textbook. I don’t think it is always necessary for the countless hours of such repetitive work that is found in workbooks or textbooks. Yet, I do like to have these as resources for new concepts.

I really prefer to teach to my child’s interests. While I love to do themes, I have discovered that Selena is not. Her learning style is once I know it lets move on! Themes do not work very well here, as generally by the second day Selena is sick of the theme and detaches from her school work.

I love to use life experiences to teach by, I feel sometimes these are the best ways to learn for anyone, however I feel the structure of having assignments that are due in a particular time frame is in itself a great tool that will be needed throughout life. I also am a firm believer that learning is a 24/7 event, therefore I home school year around, with breaks from formal learning as deemed needed on either my part or Selena’s.

With all that said, I guess my style is a blend of “School at Home”,  “Relaxed or Eclectic” “Unschooling” and “The Charlotte Masson” styles.