Preschool, Second Week

Ok, so I'm glad I already consider myself eclectic in my approach.  I'm fine-tuning what goes into our preschool curriculum as we go.  This is precisely why I wanted to start homeschooling early, way before any stress of accountability loomed over my head, so that I could iron out the details and have the freedom to try different things and abandon what wasn't working.

LANGUAGE ARTS

So first off, all academic pre-writing activities have been shelved. We are focusing instead on read alouds, love of books (including proper care of books), exposure to different topics and a wide range of vocabulary in all three languages, and basic letter recognition.  This last one I'm keeping just because I think exposure can't hurt, but I am not trying to get worked up about younger kids already knowing many (if not all) of their letters by name and/or sound.  So what, I say.  She is operating in three oral languages and picking up sign language.  There is no way we can compare her to her monolingual peers at this point.

The second week of preschool, the letter of the week was "Dd", which she assigned to Dino and sort of called the capital letter dinosaur's letter.  Throughout the week, though, she was noticing and pointing out "capital B" (from the previous week) everywhere - on food, in print, her toys - and was very excited whenever she saw it.  I followed her lead by also pointing out lower case "b" occasionally, as well as the letter of the week "Dd", but I think the two sound too much alike right now.  She started looking for "her letter" on her own, so "Nn" became the letter of the week for week three.

I stopped reading from the Bible after a few attempts.  She wasn't liking my reading aloud while she played, and at times, she preferred to sit and flip through a book on her own, narrating the illustrations or even reciting memorized bits of text.  I think this is a good sign - shows that she is taking ownership of her books and the ability to access the information on the page.  Potty time seems to be the best time to do read alouds, as she asks for it, and those books seem to be her favorites.  (I keep smaller books in a container next to her potty, while the larger books are in her book rack in the play room.)

MATH

So we are counting together every chance we get, and she initiates counting as well, but there is still no direct one-to-one correlation between the number she says and the number of items she indicates.  So she might point to one finger and say "one", then point to the next finger and say "two, three", then say "four" with the third finger, go back to a finger she had already counted, etc.  It seems like she likes to count up to 10, no matter how many actual items there are.

As far as activities, we did work on sorting pompoms in an egg carton, though Natalka wasn't really wanting to put them in their own rows.  We also did a shape sorting activity, which went a bit better.  We focused on the square, circle, and triangle, and I gathered some household items, toys, flashcards, and had her put them by the correct shape decal.  Even though we technically still have a number and shape of the week, that is mainly for the purposes of putting those flashcards on the refrigerator, which we can review periodically throughout the week.  I'll be working on more activities that focus on shapes and counting in general, rather than sticking to the number/shape of the week.

SCIENCE

This past week we had a great nature study.  On Friday, we got into the right frame of mind by reading a book on farm animals and doing the corresponding puzzle.  On Saturday, we visited my sister's farm, and Natalia got to pet a goose, watch sheep get fed, and rode a miniature pony for a bit.  She didn't want to leave, and a tiny toad came to the rescue by distracting her enough to enjoy yet another aspect of nature, right in her hand.  Lucky for the toad she didn't smoosh her though!  She got a couple of home-grown squash from her auntie for the road.

 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Ok, so it turns out Signing Time will need to be something we budget in, as only one full 30-minute episode is available on YouTube, and it no longer runs on PBS.  However, Natalia loves this series, and has been asking to watch it again and again.  Generally, she'll watch the "Welcome to School" episode for 10 minutes or so, practice the signs, and be done.  Or she'll want to see some of the shorter clips they have.  She has internalized several new signs and uses them throughout the day, which delights both her parents, but I think her dad in particular.  Some of her newest signs include: crayons, pencil, paper, backpack, pay attention, and the signs for the names of the two kids in the video (Alex and Leah).

CRAFT & SENSORY

Since realizing it's too soon to push academics, I've decided instead to focus on crafts and sensorial experiences.  This week's crafts included an unexpected tie dye design on paper towels, created using melting ice cubes with food coloring.  This was a bit messy, which is how we ended up with the artwork, bc I was bringing in paper towels to help absorb the melting water.   At the end, she even created her own activity by rubbing the different color ice cubes on the black and white butterfly designs on her placemat, thereby coloring them.  You can see in the photo below how she has her rag ready to go in her left hand for clean up to prep for the next color.

The final product spent the night drying and hardening on the window; we're putting it in her portfolio to see if it keeps.

We also had a sensory art with home-made edible paint.  We watched a video on how to make it, and Natalia asked to do it even before I had a chance to suggest it, so we mixed food coloring with cool whip, and she had a good time finger painting for a good 20 minutes.  Her creations are currently on display in her room.  We froze the remainder for a future use.

 

Since this is coolwhip based, not sure how long we can keep it...

MUSIC APPRECIATION

This week we listened to Chopin during meal times.  We watched a few performances as well.  And I realized this wasn't going to work, as it involved too much exposure to the laptop, which was only reminding Natalia of the other things she could ask to watch.

ART APPRECIATION

The same goes for art.  We focused on Leonardo DaVinci's "Mona Lisa", "The Last Supper", "St. John the Baptist", "The Anunciation", and "Vitrusian Man", but none of these compared to the interest she had shown to the very first piece of art from last week (Boticelli's "The Birth of Venus").  And again, since we were using the laptop to bring up the images, she started asking to watch other things instead.  (The good news is that she usually requested Signing Time.)

In my last ditch effort to save Art Appreciation, we also watched several videos of people painting a landscape and two portraits.  I'd say these were moderately interesting to her at best. I would still like to use classic art exposure, but it will have to wait until we budget in postcards that they make for this purpose, so that this can be separated from screen time.

SOCIALIZATION

Another jam-packed week for socialization.  Monday, we went to Walmart together, Wednesday to Safeway, and the skills we practiced were walking on the right side of an aisle, watching where we're going so as not to run into people, saying hello when addressed.  I also try to have her help at check-out time, by having her put something on the conveyor belt and hand the cashier money (we are trying to go back to the envelope system, which will have the added benefit of letting Natalia have real world experience of the money-for-goods system that we use in our society).  She was upset about Daddy going to work every day, so this will also tie in nicely when it finally clicks that we only get money thanks to Daddy going to work to earn it.  It's still a ways off, but it's never too early to start teaching money management.

Returning grocery cart.

Friday, we went to a music class at the library, which was a bit of a flop.  She wanted to sit at the computer instead after the first song.  She did laugh, and dance, and participate, but she had the computer on her mind the whole time.  Plus, the other kids were mostly a few years older and their dancing was putting their limbs awfully close to her face on several occasions.  We ended up leaving a few minutes early, and she got a couple of minutes on the computer (which meant I brought up a Word Document and let her type large colorful letters).

We also met up with a lady whose son is Natalia's age (who also has six year old and 6 month old daughters).  There was no chance of looking at any books to check out, as she made a bee line for the two dinosaurs sitting on the table in the kids' corner. She read one book to them, but the rest of the time it was all about her sitting next to me on the sofa playing with the dinosaurs, while the little boy kept bringing me books and putting them on my lap and wanting me to comment on them.  It was a bit chaotic and reminded me why I am questioning the benefits of these gatherings.  The adults really weren't able to have a proper conversation, the kids didn't really interact, and I couldn't get home fast enough for some much needed peace and quiet.  There was another, bigger girl, there who at one point came up to take one of the dinosaurs that Natalia had let go of, but she only dropped it on the floor and went back to her seat.  It looked like she was bored and wanted Natalia to come after her, so I tried to encourage her to go play with her, but that wasn't happening.

She also had lunch Saturday with my parents and Sunday with Oscar's mom, and we went to church and Lowes as well.  All in all, I find our every day outings to be much more conducive to teaching proper social skills - like eye contact, responding when being addressed, etc., than putting little kids together in a room and spending the entire time correcting their behavior.

PHYSICAL FITNESS

This was another great success, as Natalia spend a good deal of time in the hotel swimming pool after visiting my sister's farm.  Saturday evening, she was exibiting incredible trust in Oscar and doing all kinds of bouyancy experiments I've never seen her do before.  Sunday morning they went again after breakfast.


I think by the end of August, I will have ironed out the major wrinkles and have a pretty good curriculum in place.  The goal is for preschool to be running smoothly, with activities prepared and ready to go in advance, so that there isn't much disruption between baby brother's birth and the end of the calendar year.