This week at Erin School

February 10, 2012 By 2 Comments

We’re four weeks in to our home schooling journey and starting to find it difficult to fit everything in, especially on the days that follow really bad nights with Abi. Of course this means that the house work is suffering which isn’t a problem for me seeing as I hate doing it anyway.

Erin's photo of her measurement lesson outdoors

This week we’re working on:

  • Days of the week
  • 1+ addition
  • Phonics letters and handwriting n, c/k, e, h, r
  • Sight words at, has, do, up, a, we, are, I
  • Measurement (learning to use a ruler)

Some days our progression has been incredibly slow and frustrating. Erin will pretend she doesn’t know things she knew a minute ago and getting through lessons without me loosing my temper has been difficult. Other days she’ll breeze through it all in under half an hour–she’s only in prep/kindergarten/reception so we’re not doing a lot by way of formal learning–and we may even be able to include extra things in her day like puzzles or painting.

Things I’ve noticed:

  • Abi wants to “be like Mike”. She copies everything her sister does.
  • Erin learns best in the morning, preferably early–while I prefer to be asleep.
  • Presenting learning tools in a plastic tub can mean a lot less mess.

Things to remember for next week:

  • We need more activities to keep Abi occupied.
  • I need to figure out a workbox variation that works for us.
  • Sit down lessons need to happen in the morning.
  • I’d also like to include life skills in next weeks schedule.

So that’s us over the last week, what are you and your kids up to?

Filed Under: General

Beach unit planner

January 30, 2012 By 3 Comments

Duration

Month of February

Learning outcomes

  • We will discuss the wildlife that lives in beach areas.
  • Erin will discover and list all the things that wash up on the beach.
  • Erin will learn about the different types of beachside areas.

For this unit we’ll be using At the beach! A unit study purchased from Currclick

Multimedia materials

Books to read

Greetings from Sandy Beach Australia at the Beach Australian Guide to Beaches and Rockpools

Activities to try

Foil fish art
Make your own jellyfish
Coral Reef – not technically the beach, but I bet it could be altered to suit.

Sensory tub ideas

Sand/Polenta (corn meal)
Sea star plastic toys ($1 Big W)
Rocks
Spoons for digging

Field trips

Redcliffe beach
Brisbane Botanical Gardens mangroves

Printables

Enchanted Learning
A day at the beach worksheet

image credit

Filed Under: Themes

At the farm sensory tub

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today I finally managed to set the girls up with their “at the farm” sensory tubs. I set each girl up with farm animals, rocks and a base of porridge oats and sat them both down at their table.

I’m very pleased to say that they had a ball. Erin played with her animals for over an hour while Abi attempted to consume her tubs content–she even had a go at the rocks! I think I may have gone wrong when I equip her with a spoon for digging…

At one point Erin informed me that her pigs was getting hot so I asked “What are you going to do to keep them cool?” To which she replied “Turn them with a spoon”. Okay, not quite the answer I was expecting!

More ideas for a farm animal thematic unit

Filed Under: Themes Tagged With:

Llama Llama mad at mama

January 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Most kids hate shopping (except mine who seem to love it, way more than I do) and Llama Llama’s had enough!

Llama Llama Mad at Mama

Llama Llama Mad at Mama is the best book title I’ve ever heard! It rang through my head for days after I first heard of it and still does since reading it with the girls just now. If I was to be entirely honest I’d say that I may have enjoyed this book by Anna Dewdney more than the kids, but that’s kind of what I look for in a children’s book when, in all likelihood, I’ll end up having to read it over and over again to feed Erin’s obsessive reading habits.

Filed Under: Reading

Farm animals unit planner

January 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

Duration:

3 weeks

Multimedia materials:

Fun animal facts – video

Books to read:

Activities to try:

Sensory tub ideas:

I’ve had a little bit of a set back, so far I’ve been unable to find cheap plastic farm animals or even horses. If I had managed to find the plastic animals I would add them along with the following to a plastic tub:

  • Porridge oats
  • Cardboard tubes
  • Balls of green tissue paper

Field trips

Serendipity Farm – info via Brisbane Kids

Printable worksheets

Over the course of January I’ll be updating this post with links to more information about the activities we did for this unit. I’d also love to hear from anyone with more information or printables for farm animal unit studies that they’ve done, so drop me a line (or leave a comment!)

Image credit

Filed Under: Themes

Fun facts about farm animals

January 7, 2012 By 1 Comment

This video is only two and a half minutes longs, but there are some interesting facts about farm animals that may be a bonus to your farm animals unit.

Filed Under: Themes Tagged With:

So I made play dough

January 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It didn’t work out, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. I know where I went wrong, I forgot to add the salt until the mixture was almost finished. All I can say is, this is why I don’t cook food often.

Like I said, the girls still enjoyed it, but it was a bit sticky and had a funny smell–all from salt added too late?

Filed Under: General Tagged With:

What we’re using

December 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

In 2012 Erin should be entering prep (preschool in other states, kinder in other countries, whatever you call it, it’s the year before you start first grade), rather than sending her to one of the local public or private schools we’ve decided to teach her at home.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been pouring over sites offering curriculum, read reviews on various learning systems and weighed up the pros and cons of buying texts to follow over the next twelve months. Overall I’ve discovered that I’m not too keen to use texts, especially at Erin’s age–4 or 5 just seems too young to be doing too much book learning. On the other hand, I have no idea what I’m doing, so getting a few books can’t hurt…

This is what we’ve settled on

At least for the first half of the year…


Jolly Phonics

I’ve been told that this is the only Jolly Phonics item you really need you can take photocopies and whatever else from the book without buying the pupil book or flash cards etc.

School Zone

These are probably not the first pick of most home schoolers and they’re most definitely not designed to be a complete math curriculum. We’ll be using Maths Basics 1 in conjunction with many other things, supplementary worksheets and the like.

We’ll be combining the above with extras like:

  • Outings.
  • A monthly theme.
  • Art and craft.
  • iPhone apps.
  • Online games.
  • Homemade worksheets.

Our plan is try to keep things as fun and engaging as possible while reaching our education goals for the year so that Erin will be interested in what’s she’s doing and, therefore, easier to teach.

Wish us luck!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Synthetic Phonics

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Synthetic Phonics is a system of teaching children to read by breaking the English language into the 42 sounds that make it up. This system is being introduced into schools across Australia, replacing Analytic Phonics which broke words into their constitute sounds (breaking words down into their sound groups). This method of reading can take up to three years to learn, where as students taught the synthetic method pick up reading much quicker. Better yet, the number of students who have previously been unable to read by the end of grade one has decreased.

Phonics in the news

Synthetic phonics a sound start to reading
Two-thirds of children in phonics pilot test fail

Image credit: ooh food

Filed Under: Reading Tagged With: