Even a BAD Homeschool day can be GOOD

The past couple of days I've been battling a humongous migraine.... it is absolutely no fun. Yesterday I was good until the afternoon, and I was fine to let the kids read, play Legos, and watch Christmas movies while I rested. When I woke up feeling bad this morning I knew they couldn't just fend for themselves all day, so we had to get creative!

The kids did their math laying in my bed while I loosely supervised. Grammar, First Language Lessons and some read alouds were accomplished this way, too. The fable in First Language Lessons was "A Bundle of Sticks" -- amazing how I used the lesson later when the kids were playing a game to illustrate getting along. If you want to show the same to your children, have them watch this little video I found:

I came downstairs a while later and found the kids playing a game together - and as I sat and listened to them I realized what a great time they were having, and the math concepts they had to use to play the game (since there are some missing pieces and they needed to make sure they each had an equal amount!). When they argued (as they will inevitably do, I referred back to The Bundle of Sticks Fable.... perfect moment! So, I contend that even on a BAD day of homeschool, we will accomplish more than a day in public school.

We love the game, Mr. Mouth! It really takes a lot of skills to get those little flies in the frog's mouth.

I love the intent look on my little guy's face.... he really enjoyed this game.

So, the big lessons for today in our homeschool were:

• it's good to take care of mommy (Miss B brought me tea and toast this morning)
• we can change our routine and it's OK
• learning to get along with your sibling makes your family stronger
• we are lucky to have each other and so blessed to be able to educate at home
  

This post is linked to Teach Me Tuesday, at a Bokros Kind of Life, and also to the Hip Homeschool Hop. Check out these two blogs today for some great ideas!

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Loving First Language Lessons

When I was a brand new homeschooler, a friend of mine suggested I take a look at First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind (Volume 1 & 2) to use with my five year old son. She loaned me her copy to look over, and shortly after I purchased my own copy. After looking on the internet, I found some printables to go along with this volume over at Homeschool Creations. We have been using the book for the past couple of weeks, and so far I really like it. What I love is that my five year old is picking up on things, but it's also a great review for my nine year old daughter when she listens in to our lessons. Homeschooling is great like that!

This week I noticed that my son was constantly pointing out nouns to me - and yes, he was pointing out pretty much everything! He gets the distinction between common and proper nouns as well. When I needed a chunk of quiet time to read aloud with my daughter, I had my son do an activity to solidify this concept.

I'm sure you have lots of these around your house (I save them for these occasions):

I told my son to cut out pictures of nouns.... and he came up with a lot of things to cut out! All on his own he went to the costume catalog and starting cutting out pictures of super heroes. "Here are a bunch of proper nouns, mom!" I was so happy to hear him make the distinction on his own.

I gave him a couple pieces of paper, a glue stick and wrote "Common Nouns" on one piece of paper and "Proper Nouns" on the other piece. He arranged them all very carefully before he glued (he's my type A child):

After about 30 minutes he had completed his work:

Without any effort, he has also memorized the poem "The Caterpillar" by Christina Rosetti (also in the book). We didn't even work on it; we just repeated each day during our lesson and all of a sudden he knew it. I haven't yet read The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, but I have it reserved at our local library and can't wait until it gets here!

It struck me today not only how much I have yet to learn about this thing called homeschooling, but also just how blessed I am to have the opportunity to learn!

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