August just crept up on me.
Staying at my parents' house in California really made me lose track of time... and date.. or month. :)
I love the care-free time me and kids are spending here but I can't say I wasn't excited to see the Not-Back-To-School blog hop all around the blogsphere.
I never planned to send him to preschool since I always wanted to homeschool him but since he was very delayed in speech and lacked social skill, we thought it would be better to send him. His speech improved tremendously over the 6 months of school last year and even more over this summer. It is safe to say that I'm not worried about his speech anymore- although his pronunciation still needs a lots of consistent work.
He's still very young and I never plan to make (if that is even humanly possible) him a genius or ahead of his peers. The reason I plan 'homeschooling' or series of activities is just to feed his curiosity and boredom.
He enjoys doing activities with me and I enjoy planning and carrying out my planned activities with him so it's a win-win situation for both of us.
There is a vague goal I would like to achieve this year; I would like if Sweet Boy will start to read by the end of the school year. So I plan to do phonics and sightwords this year. He already knows all the alphabets, upper and lower cases, and some of their sounds. Therefore I think it is in order to do some phonics rather than repeating alphabet again.
Reading/ Writing :
* I have made changes to our plan (8/30)
We have decided to go with the Reading the Alphabet from This Reading Mama.This curriculum was included in the Homeschool Omnibus 2013 and I think it will be a good starting curriculum for Sweet Boy.
All the lesson plans are included so less work for me to do.
1. We will continue to read a LOTS and LOTS of BOOKS! - he loves being read to and I occasionally find him 'reading' the books out loud from his memory.
We will pick 1 book per week and do lots of themed works around it.
- Tot books and packs from 1+1+1=1
- Fold and Learn projects from FIAR
- Literature Pockets from Evan-Moor
3.
I got the Phonics set and Sightword set both with flashcards from Zulily.
They were about 65% off and came out to $60 so I thought it was worth to try.
5. Story Time before bed- We are locking down the habit of reading 3 books Sweet Boy picks before bed. It's working great! I always wanted to make the bedtime story time a routine but it never happened because Sweet Boy had no interest in books. Getting really into books is the best thing that happened in this summer.
Math :
1. I would like him to be able to count to 100, so I got the Hundreds Board, montessori style. Currently he counts to about 25.
2. Gabe (also known as 'gift')
Gabe is a set of manipulatives that teach children how things are made from dot to line to surface to shape.
I see that it's making a come back to US under the name of Spielgaben.
I have the complete set and a teaching certificate which I solely achieved to teach my kids myself.
It is very popular in Asia and have a standardized and structured curriculum which I will loosely follow and offer lots of open play time to Sweet Boy. I will either do 2 30-minutes sessions a week or 1 long session a week. Gabe is made of 10 different sets (plus 2 pre-gabe boxes) and Sweet Boy has already finished the lessons for the 1st box of Gabe.
 |
| One of the lessons for the 1 Gabe. Sweet Boy learned that mixing primary colors make all 3 secondary colors. He LOVED this lesson so much that I might repeat it once more. The colored yarn balls on top of bottles are parts of 1 Gabe. This picture is taken from my Korean blog, hence different watermark on the bottom right. |
Added on 8/31 : We are also going to do weekly activities using the Mathstart books. I got half of the series on eBay and we will borrow the rest through library. I hope to use these books along with Gabe.
Science:
Sweet Boy is very into nature and science lately.
He has been asking me 'why the sun goes down' about 17 times a day for last week or so.
1. Everyday Literacy Science, Pre-k by Evan-Moor seems like a good place to start.
I got few workbooks from Costco last year and I quickly learned that ones I like are all from Evan-Moor. The Science one looks fun as well. Sweet Boy LOVES workbooks.
2. We will also do many projects from the Science is Simple book.
Korean:
I am still hesitating about teaching him his native language largely due to his speech-delay. He's finally picking up English and I wonder if teaching him a second language will be a burden on him or confusing. He understands most and speaks little bit of Korean. We will see how it goes.
Maybe I will wait one more year and teach both kids at the same time.
Bible:
He has his weekly bible reading schedule from Sunday school. We will follow the schedule and try to memorize a verse per month.
Once again, he will be attending the special program in public school 5 days a week from 8 to 2.
We will do one subject a day and may even skip depending on his condition.
Happy Girl (17M)
There is no curriculum for her obviously. However, I will set up weekly tot trays and activity boxes for her.
I will follow Montessori method and we will do lots of open plays. Sweet Boy has done lots of tot trays and simple Montessori chores from young age so she will follow the same step.
I hope to spend more time with her because she definitely gets less attention from me when she is with Sweet Boy. She is very bright but has mind of her own. So... I will have to see what her learning style is.
So, this is how my honeybees will spend the next year!
I already can't wait till next summer ;)
...){kind=link}
Post a Comment