Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Sensory Salads!

Monday was a sensory day!
 
 
 
We had quite a bit of fun yesterday! We haven't yet played with tissue paper so I pulled it out and gave it a shot. They both enjoyed it so much.
 
First we took the tissue paper and using water and paint brushes, made our own little art works. Little B really went to town with it but Gage was a little less interested.
 




I don't usually post about our meals but lunch was very fun to make and the kids got involved in the process as well. I saw a friend post this on Facebook not long ago that she had made it for her kids and I thought it would be a great way to spice up an otherwise boring meal.





 
Usually Gage wouldn't be into a pasta lunch but both he and Little B ate it up. I'm not sure if they found the coloring interesting or if they were just excited about having helped with it, either way they both ate it without incident!
 
I thought since we had already pulled out the tissue paper and had some left over we would incorporate that in our second activity for the day. I did something I called a sensory salad. I am not sure if this is a thing or not but that is what I call them.
 
My goal for these were different for each child. For Gage my goal was to not only have him explore soft, but to also sort colors and describe textures.
 




For Little B I just wanted her to discover soft. I gave her some tongs and let her go to town.





                                         Looks like they enjoyed themselves doesn't it?



Until tomorrow!

 
 

Monday, September 16, 2013

"Homeschooling" age 3

Gage has always had a want to learn new things, I honestly hope that it won't fade. I am not sure if it has to do with the fact that from a young age he was learning sign language and watching learning shows or what but I am definitely proud of it.
 
As far as his education goes, I am not leaving it in the hands of the school district. I will be homeschooling both boys. Since Gage is only 3 I am starting him off with an unstructured environment. We are going to learn through living if that makes sense. This means we will be doing a lot of hands on activities. He will learn through games and activities. I want him to enjoy it and have fun doing it.
 
With X and R being back with us Gage has even more fun learning. Luckily they are all roughly on the same level. Last week we pulled out the file folder games again. I have games for all subjects and they are mostly adaptable to all ages.
 

 
We have games that teach shapes and shape sorting.
 
Games that teach counting like this one where you have to put buttons in buckets.
 Farm animal counting.



 Letter matching uppercase with lowercase.




 On the more structured side of our learning routine, I recently got The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. A lot of this is stuff Gage already knows but makes for a good review. It also has a section to teach vowel pairs and sight words. I definitely feel like this is going to be an awesome resource to help teach Gage how to read and am so excited to get farther into it.

 
With so many curriculum options out there it is hard to find one that I think I am going to absolutely love. What makes it even harder for us is that it seems so many curriculums have a bible study section to them. I don't want to pay for something we won't use so I may end up having to pay slightly more for the curriculum we choose down the road. Luckily as of right now we are sticking to non-structured learning.
 
Here is a link to
We got the PDF version and use it on our iPad but I believe there is a paper version you can buy as well.
I will periodically post updates on how it is working out for us.