NOTE: When we learn letters, we learn the letter sound with the name. If you were to pick one or the other, learn the letter sound before the name as that's more important. We call the A an "A (letter name) /a/ /a/ (letter sound)" etc...

• Write letters randomly on a white board or chalk board. Usually I'll write like 3 c's, 3 f's, and 3 r's. Say a letter like "f" and have the student find all of the "f's" and erase them all. Continue until the white board is clean
• We have foam alphabet pieces from Lauri (My Father's World carries them). Spread some of them around on the floor depending on how many they know. Have them jump to the letter that you say. Or have them jump to whatever letter they want and say what the letter is. If they're right, they pick it up and give it to you. If they're wrong they leave it there to try it again. They're done when all the letters are picked up.
• Have them push the letters out and do the puzzle, working on learning a few of the letters.
• Take a favorite story book and after you read each page, have them find a few letters on each page.
• We have a great game/activity called "spell time". You can tell them the letters to find to fit into the cards, or just have them find letters to make their own words on the board, or have them start trying to sound out some of the letters.

Learning #'s and counting:

• I really like the number puzzleboard by Lauri - count the holes on one puzzle piece and find the correct # puzzle piece to match it with.
• Number erase game - make the numbers 1- 12 on a white board. Have student roll 2 dice. Count the total of both dice and have the student erase that number or any combination of numbers that when added equal the total of the 2 dice. If you roll doubles, you can double the total of the 2 dice - i.e if you rolled two 3's, you can erase 12 or any combination of numbers that equal 12, or you can just erase 6 or any combination of numbers that equal 6. You keep erasing #'s until you reach a total that you don't have the numbers to erase left. I gave the full instructions in case you want to use this with older children. For using with preschoolers, they count the #'s on the dice and I do all the math to tell them what numbers to erase.
• We have hopscotch foam pieces - spread around the pieces on the floor and have them jump to the number you say, or jump to any number, pick it up and say what it is. If they get it right, they give it to you. If they get it wrong, they leave it there. Continue jumping until all #'s are picked up.

Other Misc.

• Art appreciation - We use the "Come Look With Me" series and look at a picture occasionally
• We use the pegboard and pegs for counting and patterns (make towers of red, yellow, blue, red, yellow blue...)
• Do puzzles - especially the kid puzzle on the My Father's World preschool page
• Do lacing toys
• Use pattern blocks with pattern pages to put them on, or just make "pictures" with them.

Letter Learning

I have 4 year-old twin boys who  I do school with for about 10 min. every morning. One of them was having a difficult time remembering his letters from one day to the next. When I teach letters I teach both the letter name and the sound it makes at the same time - i.e. the letter d I call a D, /d/ /d/ (for the letter sound). I finally found a method for teaching him his letters. I noticed that he is very imaginative in what he thinks each letter looks like pictorially. So we have come up with pictures of what each letter looks to remember the letter - i.e. the letter W we call W /w/ /w/ wiggle (because the line wiggles back and forth), a j is a J /j/ /j/ Judah likes candy canes (it looks like a candy cane upside-down and our 2yo Judah likes them). Now our son who was struggling to remember his letters has almost all of them memorized!

Unused Educational Books

Since we moved recently, I've been going through books that I've been unpacking. Some I've been selling and others I've been thinking that I should probably read or use soon! I've also been thinking about what I'll plan on teaching for next year with my kids and how to organize things. In the past I've used My Father's World curriculum which I really do like quite a bit. It's been nice to have everything laid out for me to do without much planning and it really is planned in a way that I could see myself planning things.

Lately though, I've been thinking about branching out on my own and doing more of a little of this and that. As I've been doing this and as I've been unpacking and thinking about this, one idea I've thought of is to try to do "school" for as long as I can with mostly the books/materials I have on hand! I have many odds and ends of things I've collected over the last few years that I've intended to use but haven't really used. It's easy when at a homeschool convention to pick up something that looks really good and is really good, but not get around to using it. I have lots of different science and nature books, a couple of history books, and other things. I may still need to have a regular math curriculum that I use, but other than that, I could probably teach for quite a long time using books I have in my house!

I'm excited to teach my children without being stuck to a schedule - to be free to do as the Lord would have me do with them. I do know that I need to take some time to do some specific planning in order to make this happen and not get lazy and just not know what to do with a child. May God bless us as we seek his way to teach each child!

Computers and Kids

Computers can be great tools for our kids to use, especially if used in great educational ways! When my children were young, I got sucked into buying a lot of "educational software" that's out there. We had the Jumpstart Preschool program and Reader Rabbit preschool programs etc... My kids loved them and they were cute and I'm sure the kids learned some from them. BUT, they can be very addictive and I found my kids needing that entertainment stimulation in their computer time. It became hard to control the use of it and was often more like entertainment than education.

While reading a book by Steve Maxwell called Preparing Sons , I read his suggestion to limit computer use to things that are truly educational in their learning to use a computer and do computer skills on the computer. We started limiting and cutting out entertaining educational programs and have had our kids use the standard computer programs that come on the machine - the Microsoft Paint program, Home Publishing program, and Word program. The results have been GREAT!

Just tonight my 8yo ds finished writing his 2nd "book" on the computer. Both of them are his own made-up Curious George books (our kids are into the Curious George books right now). He uses our Home Publishing program and inserts pictures he gets from the clip art or off the web. His last story was 12 pages long with a decent story line and plenty of illustrations. Here's an example of one of his pages.

Oh - I do use one educational program for school. I use Quarter Mile Math for drilling math facts. There is a little entertainment in it in that you're racing a car against other cars (which go the speed of your former scores). But there's just that one game. The whole program is you racing cars (or horses) against your former scores and no other bells and whistles. There are tons of math facts it drills on as well. So that's my one program I do like and use.