My Baseball Loving Boy
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 7:18AM 
I'm joining the ABC meme today ~ what fun! Today's letter is B. The thing that immediately pops into my head is Baseball! My six year old is OBSESSED with baseball. I'm here to tell you: You can take a subject that interests your child and turn it into a YEAR LONG study. We're all learning more about the game, the players, and having so much fun together. If you stop by my house any given afternoon, it's likely you will find my son playing ball with friends outside, or (if friends aren't around) he will be playing an entire game by himself!
First, some pictures of my ball player. Then, some resources for other baseball enthusiasts!
When it was evident GMan was obsessed with the sport, we gathered lots of resources to use with him. The first thing we did was a lapbook about baseball. From there, we began collecting lots of baseball cards - he loves to play Topps Attax, both online and with his dad as the board game.
I got online and ordered several baseball readers - if you search Amazon you will find them (many of them were Step Into Reading books, which I love). I also had inherited some Matt Christopher baseball books from my nephew. These are wonderful stories, which a beginning reader can handle alone - and of course they make great read-alouds.
As we started First Language Lessons in the fall, I noticed my son was a little bored with writing common and proper nouns -- but guess what? When I got out the Atlanta Braves program with the roster of players and asked him to copy those proper nouns, he was thrilled! I kid you not - he can now spell each team member's full name!
To get all of us involved, we are working our way through a series of baseball card adventures by Dan Gutman - the first we read was Jackie and Me. We also are avid baseball watchers, so my husband got the MLB TV for our iPad and it allows GMan to watch any game any time - how cool is that??
My daughter loves the sport, too (whew) -- and at one of the first games this spring we got a crash lesson in scoring. I'm thinking about ordering some scoring pads and having us all score a few games as practice. My oldest sister is a baseball fan and loves to do this!
To me, this is a prime example of interest led learning, which is the most meaningful learning there is. Homeschooling allows us to go off on this huge tangent and create some wonderful memories for all of us! 
