It's day four and we are still talking to each other. After I had made the decision to home school, I read a book that looked at the pro's and con's of home schooling. The list of con's was a bit longer than the pro's, which was a little disconcerting. But, I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, so I tried to keep the positives in the fore front of my mind and not let the negatives shake my resolve. One of the 'con's' was the pressure home schooling can place on the parent/child relationship. So how to address that? Easy, Mummy is always right! Well, maybe not all the time, but come on, there has to be some advantages to being the grown up.
At this point, I would like to say that although the pictures I post are of a happy and industrious Sam, we do have a battle of wills prior to each learning session. I will make an effort to capture these moments too moving forward. I don't want to be accused of false advertising and that home schooling your children is Nirvana. It is obviously not. But, I will say that my first week is proving to be enlightening and less stressful than I thought. (Watch me eat my words at day 14!)
Today we started off at the park again. It was such a beautiful Spring day and this time I was prepared - morning tea and drink bottle for Sam, coffee in a travel cup for me. When we arrived, a group of Mums and their children were preparing to depart. Most of the children were school age and in uniform. This seemed to upset Sam a little. Once they left, it was just Sam and me. I soon realised that he liked having other children around. After a while other Mums and their children arrived and Sam brightened. This was an interesting observation. While home schooling has many benefits, Sam really does love socialising, even if it is just parallel play. Mental note - we need to ensure we keep connected with his school friends and peers. Luckily, we have two birthday parties lined up for school friends, this weekend and the weekend after, but regular play dates must be booked.
I have to admit that at the moment I am flying by the seat of my pants. I have a pile of educational materials to play with and lots of ideas, but I'm really coming up with each learning session as I go. My 'office' is a spare room undergoing renovation (on a tight budget) and the kid's play area is stacked with boxes and furniture that will go back onto that office once I've finished painting it and getting my husband to build the shelving units. He loves me so much.
Well this is how our day panned out. and I have to say that I was very proud of Sam. Once we got over the avoidance hurdles, he was completely engaged in the activities.
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| Sam showing off his muscles. |
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| Climbing like a monkey. |
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| Tracing skills in the morning for the fine motor skills. Zig zag, wavy and box lines. I read about using a highlighter pen and it worked a treat :) |
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| This puzzle game is about matching pictures with the word/starting letter. |
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| Today we read 'The Gruffalo'. A great book. I got in trouble for taking this picture because he wanted to read the book. So impatient! |
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| Lunch break. |
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| Afternoon session focused on Maths, but I threw in some fine motor skills with this cutting exercise. |
Next was tracing numbers and number words 1 to 5. Again, the highlighter came in handy.
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| And to finish up our Math session, another puzzle game. This time Sam had to match to pictures, E.g. 6 x Zebras with the number. This games goes from 1 to 20 so perfect for Prep level. Sam loves puzzles, so this game works a treat.
Our school day ended with a speech therapy session. Our lovely speech therapist and I had to tackle some typical Sam avoidance tactics, but once we got him on target, he did really well. As I write this blog, he has fallen asleep on the sofa and hubby is putting him to bed. Tomorrow is another day. What will we learn?
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