Week 2

On Monday morning we had appointments in town so we held off on doing any school until the afternoon. I decided since it was sunny, a little chilly but sunny we would take school outside. Monday’s emphasis was on reading, so I grabbed all our supplies and lead Selena out to find a nice spot on the grass where we could sit and study.

Selena read two full pages out of her little phonics book, we discussed how she needs to slow the pace down just a bit and pay attention to the words on the page. The second time around of reading she did just that and did a much better job of reading.

I thought this would be a good time to look at some writing skills. Selena has rediscovered her chalk board. We practiced a few basics like drawing circles, lines, squares and triangles. Then I wrote the first word CAT. We discussed how C is actually a half circle and how each letter used one or more form of the shapes we had just practiced. Here are her attempts.

Then we did the same thing for the word HAT.

The lower case h really stumps her so we agreed to use the uppercase h.

At this point we talked about letter placement in a word. Selena quickly corrected the placement of her t in hat.

I truly had more in my lesson plans, but I guess you know the swing and sunshine truly was a distraction. Before we could get too involved in playing though, I said it was time to come in and get our household chores done. As we cleared the table of all of Selena’s art work I found this picture.

Selena explained to me that this is a picture of her with an owy on her forehead and that she was upset because she fell. The first thing I noticed was the neck, she is moving from plain stick people.

As I am typing this out though, Selena is sharing with Papa and practicing everything we did today and more. I guess you could say she is doing a little bit of homework.

Prewriting Skills

Friday I had planned on going to the library to get new books, but when we awoke to discover our coastal area was under Tsunami warnings and advisories, Papa decided to go in later since we knew people evacuating the coast and low lands would be coming into our town, using the roads that he needed to use to get to work. He also wanted to be on the safe side by watching to see what the wave surge was going to look like before starting out, since he does have to drive nearly to the coast to go to work. By doing so he had to take my car instead of taking the van pool. That meant we did not get to the library.

I have noticed through Selena’s attempts to learn to write, she disregards all the arrows showing her where to start and which direction to go in to make certain letters. I thought it would be a good day to just look at these arrows and discuss what they meant, locate the back side of the arrow, or the starting point, and which direction the arrow was telling her to move in. She did great as far as telling me which direction she was to go, but didn’t quite understand the starting point. I went on line and found a graphic with various arrows, which I printed off, then enlarged.

The first thing we identified with the top two rows was the back side of the arrow, or the starting point. When Selena was able to identify this spot easily, she was then prompted to follow the arrow.

We then just had fun with the bottom two rows, where Selena exclaimed that they just told her to go back and forth. Great observation! I plan on doing much more practice in this area, as she prepares to truly start writing. While she is able to make many letters already, some do get rather confusing for her, which is expected at her age, but I do believe fully understanding what the arrows are there for, and how they easily direct her on which way to move her pencil will make her writing experience less confusing.

Papa asked me hasn’t she learned about arrows just in our driving, and then I reminded him that in our town, just how many arrows do we have, when we don’t have one way streets, everything runs North and South, East and West. He suddenly realized that we do not really have many street signs with arrows on them, so of course this would seem like a new concept to her.

Selena’s First Letter

I don’t normally post so many posts in one day, but I thought this was something we just had to share. Selena asked if she could write a letter to her friends who live in Virginia. How could I resist?

You will have to click on it and make it larger to be able to read it. Selena knows how to write almost all her letters, due to lack of confidence, she does ask that I just cup her hand, more for stability with the pencil I believe, but I in no way help her form her letters at all. The only thing I did was correct her one o in the last sentence, and wrote her name for her. Selena doesn’t like to write her name on her own, I think because of it’s length.