Summer Homeschooling

This summer, I have started adding in some "school" activities into our daily lives to continue Gwyneth's kindergarten education. The kids and I have created a reading nook with an alphabet caterpillar (more on that later) and we have visited the library many times to exchange our books. We've done some other small craft projects, but I've been too busy to take pictures and blog about each one!

I'm trying to use more of an "unschooling" philosophy and just follow Gwyn's lead by watching for what she shows interest in and then creating teachable moments. I've decided to keep a "homeschooling journal" to keep track of what we work on and monitor any progress Gwyn makes. I've already noticed that Gwyneth responds much better to the unschooling method than when I used to try to get into "teacher mom" or "therapy mom" mode. Her cooperation and engagement are improving.

Here's my first journal entry from Wednesday:

Wed 7-16-14

During the morning routine, Gwyneth was very uncooperative. She declared "NO" many times when I tried to get her ready for the day. I had to get silly with answering "Yes" and giving tickles to keep the interaction from escalating. She was more cooperative with this response and eventually answered "Yes" spontaneously and began to help. I thought it would be good to put in place some accommodations for Gwyneth to be taught self-help skills at home. A visual schedule on the bedroom wall that shows the morning and night time routines: Wake Up, Go Potty, Get Dressed, Do Hair, Eat Breakfast; and for night: Brush Teeth, Go Potty, Get PJs On, Read Story, Sleep in Bed.

We went to McKenna Farms for Speech Therapy: 30 min with Nicole

and Occupational Therapy: 1 hour with Kacie and Carmel

Nicole worked on reminding Gwyneth to use "smooth" speech instead of "bumpy" and I will use these terms at home when she does a stuttering or repetitive speech pattern.

At lunchtime, Gwyneth asked to eat "cheese" so I took the opportunity to work on "ch" words during the meal. While she ate, I wrote on our kitchen white board the lunch-related words "cheese," "chair," and "chips" and talked about the "ch" sound as well as asking her to spell each word. Gwyn only had trouble skipping the "i" in "chair" the first time. She spelled the other words well and said "that spells ____" after each one. She was very engaged and attentive to the idea of the "ch" sound.

In the afternoon, we watched some short phonics singing videos from YouTube:

A-Z letter sounds ("A is for Apple, aa, aa, apple" etc)

A-Z phonics songs with hand actions

Vowel phonics songs with hand actions

Letter blend sounds with songs and hand actions

In the blends video, the song for "ch" was about a train that was "chugging" and saying "choo-choo." This gave me the idea to plan a train project to practice the "ch" sound.