READING: The Beginning

I had high hopes for this teaching to read manual, which follows  Classical Education route, because we kind of hoping to follow this way of learning,  losely.

However, sadly, it doesn't seem to work for us.  Now, our Oliver is quite keen on repeating things generally, perhaps even too keen at times. However, the little rhymes in the book, which are to do with vowels,  consonants and other things which Oliver can't relate to as of yet, has no imagery in his head for, just doesn't make for easy repetition here, let alone remembering.

It didn't seem much point in pushing the agenda for the sake of it, so , at least for now, we'd just left it and stuck with the cards. The cards work well with one exception ( more about it in next post )

 Our next step will be to venture into Songbirds Phonics , so we are covering about 1/3 of all the alphabet to go with the sequence of the phonics. 

'Wormy' Sausages.

Today I was going to write a bit about Acrobatics, Oliver started going to, and which he suddenly  reported to really enjoy, after a bit of a shaky start.  However,  Jo-Jo was running around like headless chicken,  so I never got a chance to take few discreet pics.

So, instead, I'm going to say a few words about the benefits of 'wormy' sausages, as per pic below. I first spotted this idea on Pinterest and wanted to try it ever since.  So, on the day, when my children collectively or individually said 'no' to everything I could possibly think of , the 'wormy' sausages' time has finally arrived.

Oliver felt a bit apprehensive at the idea of eating 'worms', but on seeing this pasta, decided to overlook this whole talk of worms, like it never happened. It seems sensible that he should count out 5 'worms' in the making before inserting it into the each piece of sausage, and off we went.

O needed some help with counting but by the end, got quite at home with it.  Well, not 100% but much better.  What surprised me that he did not, for a second, get bored! And so in they went. Oliver asked Jazzlyn, if she wanted some 'worms in sausages', and although aged 13, she is mostly very very cool, she accepted this interesting dinner and even asked for more! Now, was it her saying that 'Pinterest things didn't work'?

So here we come.  Dinner done.  Cooking lesson?  Kind of , at least.  Chemistry?  This got me thinking. Is boiling spaghetti chemical process or not?  I mean, can they be returned to the previous state, the 'as before' chemical composition?  If not , than , yes, it's chemical reaction, But then, I'd seen enough pasta dried hard to the plates the next day, looking brand new hard, if misshapen , so, probably no, no chemical experiments here, after all, just some mathy cooking.  

Great time had by all.  We didn't count the peas. 

WRITING: 'Ladybird' Wipe-Cleans, Good Value for Money.

And here goes, the new writing book.  Though it looks less fancy, it made more sense to me.  For starters it has loads of letters per page, so more flow, really. Just letters, hardly any drawings on main letter pages , so I assumed O will get a bit bored, but no such thing, I think he probably found other stuff a bit distracting. So far so good.  The pen's not great, will try the old one next time.

I noticed O took to wiping out some of the letters if he didn't like them , and tried to do them again.  I assumed he was being a perfectionist, but no, he explained that he wanted to make sure that he will 'still get all 5 rides, ice cream and candy floss' on the Carters' steam fair this weekend!

Note to self: If someone is coming over, like nan, not even playdate or anything like this , finish all study, even if just a bit, beforehand or your child will have trouble concentrating.  Silly me.

Another thing. Someone in the pub we popped into for a drink asked him if he knew what letter 'it was' in the paper, so he said Capital 'S' , the lady said something along the lines 'Oh nice, what school are you going to?' to which O looked a bit confused', as did we , as it was the first time for us , the newly homeschooling parents.  We not home-schooling evangelists of any sort, we just choosing to homeschool, that's about it.  We said to our son to tell people that he's going to school next year, thinking that it will either sink in or be easier to explain, when he's not quite such a completely newly made little boy.  But then he looked really worried and said he didn't want to go to school , few times over. Since then , once , he commented , when I told him that we going to 'go and do some reading now', he said quietly , as if to himself,  'we going homeschool'. Why on earth did we think that the whole logistic  of it was just going right over his head?

WRITING: Usborne Wipe-Cleans , not Convinced About the Bonus Phonics

I've decided to record our Home-schooling venture in a blog.  It came about a week or two after we actually started, so the all I'll be posting will be slightly in retrospective, but hey , at least it will be on record...

First thing we did was to go and shop for some wipe-clean writing books , the wonderful tool young years' educators got themselves these days.  (Never any of these with our now 13 year old, they would have been a find, much as would the whole Home Education idea, coming to think of it!)

I'm sure I'll find some essential flaws in these wipe cleans with time, maybe when dear Oliver is swapping from them to normal paper writing, but for now, what's not to like?  Economical, neat and tidy, not to mention all the fun pictures and shape-letter ideas.

There are endless wipe cleans on the market.  I got a bit overwhelmed there in Waterstones, I must admit.  The first wipe cleans out of two we bought so far are  ' Usborne' Phonics Book 1' Oliver loves it.

I managed to convince my little home schooled to hold his pen by 'pinching' close to the bottom of it mainly with 3 fingers , and rest both , the side of his palm and his elbow on the table. It helped him to get SMOOTHER LETTERS with immediate effect. Though it didn't seem all that natural to him initially, he soon realised that it's just easer .  Not many letters to write per page, had to wipe and do the chosen letters' rows over and over again, which kind of works against the flow a bit.  Didn't use the phonics facility either.  We do phonics in our reading time, and, besides,  it seemed distracting.

With this homeschooling while also having a job which I love, if something has to give , it will be the school records, so, reluctantly,  I will now round up this post.  In the next one, we will be using another wipe clean , different in format and , slightly in content,  by 'Ladybird'