I'm Back!!

So I've been back for a couple of weeks really, having a nose around... and have done a few posts on my other blog.

Today I really wanted to post here though.

Over the past months the home ed had kind of slipped for  a while... Not being of school age yet it was not so much of a big thing and we were mainly doing things if he showed an interest. For example after meeting with a local home ed group, I realised that he is intensely curious about the human body. Since that time we have spent many hours looking through my university anatomy and physiology text books... I am fairly confident he is more knowledgable about the inner workings of the body, than many much older children. I personally didn't do anything on these subjects until at least 11, for him that would be such a waist! Being able to learn about what interests him is one of the reasons I loved the idea of educating him at home.

Anyway... with January and "compulsory school age" around the corner, I figured it was about time I started back up with the daily "lessons." Not in a regular school day sense. More like, after we've finished our breakfast we spend however long doing a few bits n bobs.

The amazing thing is, while he's just been enjoying himself over the last few months, the phonic sounds he learned earlier this year have settled in and he can now easily blend the sounds together to read phonic words! Wow, that was a long sentence... hope it made sense! He could sound blend before, but now he doesn't even need to think about it!

To cut a long story short, it seems that things I'd prepared and bought ready for when we "officially" began, may now be redundant as he has already passed that level!

I am so proud of him I can't even put it into words!

The best thing about it all is that he didn't know he could do it either! He is so proud of himself and is really enjoying being able to read the words. Consequently I can do much more with him before he gets tired or bored and actually wants to do it!

I really could not ask for more :D

It's a sign!

Shoshone's got two more signs under her belt :-)

The other day she signed bath time for the first time, which is basically rubbing your hands on your torso as if washing. And today she signed bird, supposed to be your first finger tapping your thumb in front of your face like a beak, but she did it more like "duck," which is all of your fingers instead of just the one. This one was a surprise as she just did it, commenting on the storks at the beginning of Dumbo... I know Disney again! Plus I can't remember the last time I showed her that sign!

She's getting better and better at cruising round the furniture, crosses the gap between the sofa's and goes round corners... still very slowly, but it's progress :-) And she's learning how to get down from standing, phew! Yesterday she climbed all the way to the top of the stairs, all by herself, with me behind her of course! She did it really quick though, which was pretty surprising and worrying, at that speed she could be at the top of the stairs before I even notice she's gone. MUST GET THE STAIR GATE DOWN!!!

Can't remember if I mentioned this before, and I apologise for the subject, but it's big progress... Wiyot has recently been going to the toilet all by himself. He has been doing most of it by himself for a while, but always wanted someone to go with him... make sure he didn't fall in or something?! Now he just take's himself off to the toilet, even turning the light on and off and getting tissue. He doesn't wipe by himself yet, I'd rather supervise that for now :-S On a more pleasant note, he also dresses himself too. My baby boy is growing up fast :_)

Update...

So thought I'd share a little bit of Shoshone's progress. She's been doing baby sign language for a while now, her first sign was milk (imagine a milking a cow action), followed by drink ("fancy a cuppa" action) and also sleep/bedtime (classic prayer like hands at the side of your face). The bedtime one was particularly impressive as I hadn't signed it to her for quite some time and then she suprised me with it by using it to tell me that her teddy bear was sleeping!!! Could not belive it, she did it a few times before I really belived she was actually signing about her toy... Wiyot used to do a few signs, but never like that!

Anyway, not long after she learned the sign for more (one hand taps the back of the other) as well as eat (kind of pretending you're holding a sandwich and putting it to your mouth) but usually she just does the more sign. The latest one she has done is our own sign for "all gone." All the others are based on British Sign Language, however when Wiyot was a baby he developed his own sign for all gone and it's just stuck. Our "all gone" is like turning your palms upwards, the way you show someone you have nothing in your hands... Here's a pic of Shoshone demonstrating... think it was the first day she signed it :-)

All the junk behind her is some of our home education stash, lol

Last week she started pulling herself up on the furniture, and is now crusing along, very slowly. Also caught her climbing the bottom step (time to get the second stair gate out!!) and trying to get onto the sofa, funny girl! Only problem is she loves to pull herself up, but hasn't quite got the hang of getting down :-S She just stands there fussing and shouting till I go to help her out... I've tried showing her how to do it by moving her legs or letting her drop slowly to a sitting possition, Wiyot has repeatedly demonstrated for her, but she still hasn't quite got it. Oh well, soon I hope!!

Wiyot's now read two books, both Ruth Miskin one's but we've kind of tailed off for the time being... Really bad I know, cos he'll probably forget some of what he's learned...

My problem is I struggle to find the time to do things! I don't know how other mom's do it, doing all the home ed stuff, as well as the general home owner stuff, plus anything else that they are interested in (ie I'm a crafter and am attempting to sort out the garden...). At the moment all my time seems to be taken up with just the basics. Food, cleaning, changing nappies, tidying, washing and when it's not raining while Shone naps we go into the garden...

Blah, blah, blah... getting off subject!!

Any way thought I'd share some of Wiyot's arty creations. Here's some paintings we did a few weeks ago.

The bottom two are mine, the rest Wiyots. His bumble bee in the top right was really cute, I cut the face off in this pic, I'll have to take another one.. It was going really well, nice and pretty, but he gets all carried away with the story behind the pictures he's drawing and they tend to end up looking like scribbles... With the bumble bee he decided it was raining, you can see the big fat rain drops coming down, lol.

Guess what this one is, I was so please when he told me what it was I had a little tear of joy :_)

Mickey Mouse!!! Wicked!! The pink one is to do with another pic he was doing... His Nanna getting an X-ray (she broke her arm a few months ago and Wiyot still talks about it!), the pink dude is the Doctor.

If you got the last one, bet you wont get this one... (the yellow one)

It's Walle (from the Disney Pixar movie). Bellow Walle is Wiyot, Zurg (from Toy Story) and Daddy... I know there's a bit of a theme here... bet you couldn't tell we're Disney fans!! Walle was the first toy Wiyot bonded with and we took him to see the movie at the cinema for his birthday :-) He took the toy everywhere with him, until his head fell off... I sewed it back on, but I guess it lost it's shine after that. I can still see his sad face when he came to show me headless Walle :_(

Now for something a little different...

This one blew me away, I was cleaning the bathroom at the time and had to run to get the camera to capture this creation...

Mommy, "ooOOoo that's a nice castle!"
Wiyot, "No, it's the Great Sphinx!"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG, and I can totaly see it too, lol, brilliant :-D

So you might think we've moved on from Disney, but you'd be wrong... He learnt about the great sphinx from Little Einsteins on Playhouse Disney! lol.

Hmmm, that's all for now, just wanted to share these with you :-)

Not been doing much lately...

I have a tendency to take on so many projects that I can't possibly keep up with them all...

For the last few years I've had the desire to grow my own veg in the back garden. So as well as all my other ongoing projects I've finally made a start on this one. Think I might start another blog about my adventure... Anyway, think it will provide some good projects for Wiyot and Shoshone. Plus it will, hopefully give them more of an idea where food actually comes from.

As for the HE, Wiyot read his first book last week and did so with no trouble at all. He's also been busy painting and drawing and constructing various things with Stickle Bricks and Duplo. He's also suddenly become very independent and wants to do everything by himself. Getting dressed, brushing his teeth, helping me with the laundry, washing up the dinner plates, etc. don't know whether it's all come from a couple of the Montessori techniques that I did with him? He's been learning Cantonese with his Dad too :-)

Gotta go now, when I get chance I'll blog about the books I bought for him, as well as the Montessori one I got from the library.

Math buttons

Yesterday I decided to do a little math exercise I found here. We had 10 buttons, I would take x amount, Wiyot counted how many were left on the table and then had to work out how many I had in my hand. Wiyot absolutely loved it, we played for ages. He especially liked it when I either took zero buttons leaving all 10 on the table, or took all 10 leaving nothing.

After playing for a while I decided to change it a little bit by adding our number cards that we'd made some time ago. I also made some new one's as we didn't have a zero card and needed an extra 10, I also made a + and = card. Then we did the same game but Wiyot also had to find the right numbers and make them up into a sum.
Wiyot enjoyed it so much I had to call an end to the game, lol.

He then wanted to play it again in the afternoon. I decided to
change the game to a Montessori exercise I found in a library book. In this one he had to count the buttons into cups. You're supposed to do it with 11 cups labeled 0-10, but I only had 6 so we had to do it in two stages... Think he enjoyed this too as he liked playing with the buttons. As a bonus we got to discuss "too many" and "too few" when he got it a little wrong... Think he was having trouble counting the larger numbers in his hand. I also asked him things like which cup had more buttons, etc.

I made some Montessori word cards as well which he had a quick go at. He looks at the picture eg a cat and then has to work out the letters that make up the word by saying it out loud. He did most of them really well, think he struggled on "web" thought the b was a p... Will add pictures of them another day.

I ordered some books for him the other day, they arrived while we were playing with the buttons. Am looking forward to using them next week :-)

The paintings from yesterday :)

As promised, here are the paintings that we did yesterday.

Here's Wiyot's, he decided he wanted a sad turtle... and also wanted it to be a bumble bee, hence the legs that look more like wings :-)



And this one is mine, lol. Wiyots crinkly water effect definitely worked better than mine.

Still haven't found the site where I got the idea from, which is a bummer as there was loads of art projects on there. If and when I find it I'll add a link. Basically we drew the turtles onto water colour paper and then painted with water colours over the top. Trying to make sure it's nice and wet, you then cover it with cling film and scrunch it about to create the pattern. We then left them to dry for about an hour before removing the wrap.

EDIT: Ok... was just perusing the blogosphere and happened across the site where I got the idea from. It was here at Art Projects for Kids and is the Sea Turtle Painting :)


And here's a little picture he drew the other day. Think it was as I was doing the breakfast, I'd given Shoshone some crayons to scribble with and, as kids do, Wiyot decided he wanted to draw too... I grabbed an old letter for him and then he did this really cute pic. I'm sad I didn't get better paper for him now :(

Anyway, it's Daddy, Mommy, Wiyot and Shoshone, in that order.


Daddy thought it was very funny that he was one of the littlest characters, lol.


Wiyot remembered his "or" and "air" today, woo hoo, as well as his tricky words and I've taught him one more "we" that was all for the education today as we were out visiting a friend.

Much better today

I don't know why I tried doing some education with Wiyot on Monday, I knew I wasn't in the mood for it... feeling very touchy and a very short fuse, and it never helps to put him in the right mind for learning.

Anyway, yesterday went much better. He still struggled with "or" and "air" but grasped the sound blending again, which was good. I decided to just stick to one beginning sound of "f" and changed the second sound... They weren't all real words, but I just wanted him to get the idea of blending again. Doing made up words means he can't guess either, which is good.

Again today he got stuck on "or" and "air" but I've done spot tests throughout the day and he seems to have got them now...

Decided to teach him a couple of tricky words today, his first ones. I chose the and you, not sure if there's meant to be a particular order you teach these, but hay ho... Think he's remembered them though, we'll see when I check again tomorrow.

We also did some sand writing, he did really well with it. He tends to be quite resistant to writing, but had very little hesitation to writing in the salt, so that was great.

And last but not least, we got out the paints and did a lovely turtle painting that I found on someones blog. I'll try and find a link to it and I'll post some pics when I get chance...

Phonics.

Did a bit of phonics with Wiyot today. Wasn't a good day for it, he wasn't in the mood and consequently didn't know some of the ones he's known for quite a while and seemed to have completely forgotten how to blend the sounds to form a word.

Not sure how he compares to other kids his age and I know it means nothing really as all kids are different. But I think he's doing really well with it all.

I've been using the Ruth Miskin system with him. Think we started mid January... he already knew all the letter names and most of their sounds, we've had to re-teach some of them though as we were saying them "muh" instead of "mmm" as they recommend. Makes sense really, makes it easier for the sound blending...

Anyway, he knows all of his Set 1 Speed Sounds (m a s d t, i n p g o, c k u b, f e l h sh, r j v y w, th z ch qu x ng nk) and is now learning Set 2.

So far he knows:

ay: ay may I play
ee: ee what do you see?
igh: fly high
ow: blow the snow
oo: poo at the zoo
oo: look at a book
or: shut the door
air: that’s not fair

He was struggling with the last two today... Maybe it'll sink in during the night and he'll wake up with a more positive attitude, fingers crossed!

A new blog...

Not sure how often I'll be blogging here...

I'm hoping it will be a place for me to share our home education adventures. The kids aren't at "compulsory school age" yet, so technically they don't have to do anything formal.

But I'm sure many of you know, home education doesn't start at 5...