Writing: Starting on Revising Letters by Memory and Writing as 'You Hear It'

It's been a long time now, that Oliver has been copying written letters and words, not even sure anymore without looking back, but good 6 months, I would have thought.  He's now pretty good at it for his age, perhaps still unsure with some ( letters ) but almost flippant and over-self assured with other.

This week, for that reason, we went through the letters which he remembers on call.  Seems about half of them without a prompt and the vast majority with the prompt.

The surprising thing is in many cases he would struggle with the most common and, as I thought , familiar to him letters, yet write without hesitation letters that he's barely written,  like both 'W' 'w' s 

Still.  I think he'll soon get around remembering how to write all of them as per need. I suspect that the difference in sounds and letters is still bit of a problem.  For example, we agree that he writes 'a' and he writes 'r'!  Could it be my accent when asking, lol.  Anyhow. We working on it.

We are also working on  writing words as per sound.  For example I ask him to write 'mum' , 'dad' 'cat' and so on, simple words.  O was struggling with the whole concept, quite a bit, but even by the end of the first lesson, it got a bit better for him.  Expecting, this is going to be a slow one.  Not surprised though , writing words on hearing is HUGE! With the way English phonics work, I feel for him already, I really do!!!

HOLIDAYS: Home Schoolers Like Us Love Those Like the Next Guy!

Holidays.  Always fun, great break and yet,  nice to get back in a routine ( see how much has been forgotten! ) It works for us having holidays/ weekends as in school. These are normally fill of gadgets and screens, full to the bream, as per requests.  By the end of both Oliver gets bored and is ready for a change.  This at least, unlike the unexpected  twists and turns of O's learning curve is quite predictable.  

( O's learning curve?  I hear you ask.  How about Jo's ?  Well.  He chips in with numbers and colours sometimes, but otherwise is left to his own devices, pretty much, at his grand age of 2.  Except for SCIENCE.  Oh. does he love science! 

But all of that in a separate post. 

While we on the subject of science, though, we were going to take a trip to the Science Museum in London, as Oliver heard some robots are were being exhibited there, but put it off over the holidays due to crowds.  Perhaps next week.  Will be nice and spacious.  The beauty of Home Schooling! 

Discovery centre is the first on boys' list of 'to dos'.  Can't say I blame them, it's fabulous. 

WRITING: Learning to write numbers

Oliver wants to record this own 'mental math' or at least take part in it ( ticking being his fave, of course), so we went through writing numbers. It was nothing like starting letters, as he's now getting used to writing in general.

He had trouble with '8' until we decided that it's just 's' with two dots joined. Another problem was '6',  we tried few things and settled on the 'racing track' route, where he starts like he does with 'a' but turns off before the 'first point of stop'

I was really surprised how easy it was for him to write 3, 9 and 5, not sure why these letters in particular , and, of course, his fave number by a long shot was '4'.

I think we are going to write numbers for a couple of sessions and then he can just go with a flow with these.

Numbers: Writing down mental maths

Still doing mental Maths, Oliver seem to have gotten the pattern of adding and subscribing by counting up or down, now, it's all settling nicely in his head.  He sometimes uses fingers to count with bigger numbers ( mine, when I offer ) but generally prefers to do it 'in his head'.

This is the first time I wrote down what he's doing during our number session, marking what he got right  and wrong.  He loved seeing that he's actually getting things 'ticked off' and now that's what we are going to do.

Home Schooling: Non-Core Subject Books to Try

Will try to tap into some non-core subjects slowly.

 Tried 'How Things Work' and O loved the idea of it, but in practice he was a bit young, I thought.  These are nice books with just a right amount of information / right presentation for the beginner's level, so I figure that I if he's not ready for any one of them, we'll just wait 'till he is and won't rush. The next one for us to try will be 'See Inside Your Body' as O loves the body parts jigsaws in the Discovery Centre, so he might find it's something he can relate to. We'll see.

WRITING: Just writing words...

Last few times we tried to write a story with Oliver, he really enjoyed the idea and was very keen, so I was going to, kind of let him get on with it, but I found that he couldn't quite keep up with all that was going on in his head.  Well, it was still useful, but would have been much more so, had he been less hesitant a writer.  So, for that reason, I'm now getting him to write down some words, instead.  One line of each word.  I'm hoping that this would teach him how to combine different letters automatically, without thinking, get in a habit of writing and stop him forgetting the letters that he doesn't use very often.  Another benefit that I can see,  is that if we echo the words he encounters in his reading it might help him to learn the patters e.g 'like - bike' and many many more.