So I have read many places that "homeschooling is a lifestyle." You don't just teach at the table & then stop learning once "lessons" are over. In the few days we have been doing this, I have noticed myself making more of an effort to tell Dylan things that relate to our lessons. Since we are working on the letter "A," I bought apples & avocado at the store so we could talk about what letter they started with.
Today we did our Bible reading out of my Bible. I like Dylan's First Bible, but I think it is important for him to start hearing the Word from an actual Bible. We read Genesis 2:4-17. This is the story of God creating Adam from the dust of the earth. Dylan was not very interested in sitting, but once we had a talk about how this is God's special book to us & we need to be respectful, he did better. Still not great, but he settled down a little. We have been talking about our character trait of "Attentiveness." Being attentive is not something 2 year olds are programmed for (anyone with little ones knows that), but it is an important characteristic to have. We want Dylan to be able to sit through church relatively well & not disrupt everyone around us. We want to be able to go to dinner & have a conversation with him being too crazy. I don't think it is too much to ask from him, but I do think it will take some training from us.
On to Language Arts - one of the things that I decided needed tweaked & reevaluated was teaching both upper & lower case letters at once. I think it is too much to cram into one week, so I think we are going to spend 26 weeks doing the upper case, then take 26 weeks doing the lower case. I think it is just too much for a 2 year old to understand that both "A" & "a" mean the same thing. So I removed that from our list of things to do & decided we would focus just on upper case "A" this week.
Today we wrote the upper case "A" & talked about words that start with "A." Our word today was "apple," so Dylan colored a picture of an apple & I taught him the sign for apple. He seems to be catching on. I have thought for a while that Dylan has an aptitude for sign language (picked up on signs fast as a baby & one day started signing things we hadn't worked on in weeks!), so I probably should have done signs with him sooner. I am hoping that sign language will be a blessing to him in the future & that it might help with foreign languages in the future.
During reading time we read a book called A is for Amos. It was more of an ABC book than an "A" book, but it was cute & Dylan liked it.
For math we counted to 10, read Brainy Baby 123's & counted crayons. Tomorrow I had planned to start adding 1+1, but I think we need to keep focusing on the counting for now.
Our Art/Music/Game time did not work out the way I had planned. For art, I had a book planned (besides the normal coloring time during the day), but it never got read. We also had a playdate scheduled, but it got canceled when my friend had to work, so that was rescheduled for next week. We did get our music done - singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Dylan loves that song, especially the verse about the baby. It's adorable to watch him pretend to rock the baby. We also tried "Old McDonald" again & he liked it better than Monday.
Derrick did science with Dylan tonight & read him chapter 2 ("Hey, Big Guy") from his Apatosaurus book. Derrick liked dinosaurs when he was young, so it is really sweet to see them enjoying it together. Derrick could teach him more about dinosaurs than I ever could. I have figured out that these type of books are great for teaching science. I like doing one short chapter & that being it. I am already trying to figure out what to do next week...bears? Bugs? I'll have to check out the library soon to see.
Can't see what Wednesday hold for us!
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