Sunday, February 12, 2012

"school" these days

This past week Camille was constantly asking if we could "do school." And while I still hold true to my belief that young children learn best through play, I wanted to offer her some more school-y options.

She's very much into practicing writing right now, and especially loves when she gets to use dry erase markers. She can write upper and lowercase letters pretty well, thought there are a few she still has some trouble with. I also heard great things about the Explode the Code series and bought the beginning workbooks for her to work through.


I also bought a book called Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, as it came highly recommended from several people I know. I think we will start it sometime in the next couple of months. But for now, Camille gets some phonics experience through a program called Reading Eggs. She loves playing the phonics games, collecting golden eggs, and hatching a new creature at the end of each lesson. We are currently have it under a free trial, but I think will stick with it as long as she is still enjoying it.

We've also been using pom-poms for lots of things lately. Levi likes to use a spoon to scoop them out of a bowl into a muffin tin. Or he pushes them through a hole I made in a lidded leftover bowl. Camille took over the other day after Levi was done and sorted each color into a different muffin spot.


Then while she was napping I quick made and printed a graph for her to fill in. I showed her how to do the first two, and then she zipped right through and completed the rest of the graph. after that we talked about what we know about the pom-poms from looking at her paper. She thought it was really fun and was excited to show Aaron when he got home that night.


And what does Levi do while Camille and I are doing school? Mostly he just wanders around the house looking at books or playing with toys. Sometime he sits on my lap and watches or "helps." But when he's really quiet I know he's probably up to no good. Or, in this case, secretly snacking.


Yes, we are enjoying this new season of school at home. It's fun for me that Camille is enjoying doing school work. And it's also nice that as soon as she is ready to be done we can move on to something else. No pressure, just a little directed learning here and there.

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, I agree, kids learn best through play! Just curious, have you heard of the Waldorf Schools? They are really big out in California. I went to one k-8 in New Jersey and loved it. Looks like you guys have a fun!

Unknown said...

Excellent shots...Thanks for Sharing
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