Monday, January 21, 2013

We're two weeks into homeschooling and things are going very well. We've had our moments of resistance, but overall Kasen's been quite receptive to sitting down and doing things. (It also helps that he's discovered MarioKart and Mario Galaxy on the Wii but isn't allowed to have any screen time until after school is done for the day.)

Today, he finished Level 1 of All About Spelling!

He was quite exited to put his first sticker on the progress chart!

Since writing seems to be a weak spot, I've been trying not to push it, but I do have him trace the calendar page or color something each day and he's definitely showing improvement.

Today we talked about Martin Luther King, Jr., and I had him do this simple coloring page. He did fabulous on the shirt and tie, started getting bored at the shoes, then definitely bored at the face and hands. By the time he got to the suit, he very dramatically proclaimed, "Mommy! There are SO MANY twos! I'll NEVER be able to color ALL of them!!" So I told him he didn't have to color it perfectly and he settled on giving MLK a "swirly suit" as he called it.

 
Having Martin Luther King Jr. Day fall on today made for a great segueway for when I sat down to fold laundry, turned on Dr. Phil and saw that Obama was being inaugurated. We talked about what that means and how it was pretty neat that it fell on today with Obama being the first African-American president. When Maddie saw Joe Biden walking in the parade, she asked, "who dat?" and I said, "Oh, that's Joe Biden. Can you say 'Joe'?" and clear as day she said, "Zho!" It was adorable and she was quite proud of herself. Kasen thought it was hilarious because she has just recently really started talking.
 
Of course, Maddie wants to join in when Kasen's doing school so she got a coloring page today, too. She adores her stuffed Violet dog and the LeapFrog cartoons that have Violet in them, so I printed off this picture for her to color. She thought it was the coolest thing ever and was all excited to color "Bi-wuh" as she calls her. I asked her to color her ears purple, then her eyes orange and her foot green and she did just that - with her own added touches, obviously. :)

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1 comment:

  1. Looks like fun!

    A quick question - you said writing is a weak spot, which is totally normal at that age. Have you tried muscle memory training for writing? In short you practice forming letters huge (air writing with a finger) regularly. Do it big, small, short, tall, fast, slow, etc. Then move to using a dry erase marker on a board. Then pencil on plain white paper. Then large lined paper, etc.

    I learned it from Peterson Directed Handwriting and have been trying to get the habit going again for my next round of little ones. Peterson Directed Handwriting even uses word cues for each stroke (because there really aren't very many strokes between all the letters, and you can learn similar shaped letters in a row to expedite learning). If you want the basic info let me know and I'll see if I can find it on their site files to send you the links. An extra bonus - it gets some wiggles out!

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