Life Skills: Apple Tree Scissor Practice

Along with regular educational preschool/K basics, I've also made a list of things that I call "Life Skills".  Anything that falls under the category of "things a person should know in order to function in life" is listed here.  Obviously at the moment the list is comprised of things that are within the learning and physical capacity of a four and three year old.  For instance, every time we are at a playground now, we practice swinging on the big kid swing instead of putting them in the baby swings (my kids are very small for their age, so we have had to wait on a lot of gross motor skills over the years).

Right now we are also focusing on learning to use scissors.  We introduced scissors with a discussion of how to carry and hold them and how to definitely not and why.  Then we practiced the right finger placement for scissors (the best way to accomplish this was to lay the scissors on the table with the thumb part facing down, so the kids could just put their finger and thumb in the right place by themselves). We spent a couple of days last week just having them snip and shape PlayDoh with no confines or real guidelines just to get them used to the skill.

This week, we graduated to paper cutting with a fun Apple Tree craft that not only practices scissor skills but a few more fine motor skills such as gluing and pasting.  I printed off a free tree template ahead of time from Best Coloring Pages for Kids, then cut green and red paper into easy to cut strips. The kids then snipped and pasted their "leaves" and "apples" to their trees. Simple and fun  practice of an important skill..

Materials:

Tree Printable
Green and Red Strips of Paper (more green than red)
Children's Scissors
Glue Sticks

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Science Experiments: Buoyancy and Density

Every week we do school, we plan on doing a preschool/Kindergarten aged-appropriate science experiment to help everyone dip their toes into the different studies of science.  At this stage we can also introduce the concept of the Scientific Method, so that forming a hypothesis, testing, observation, etc, become second nature before we're even at the stage of using those words to describe what we are doing.  The husband is the designated "Science Teacher" of the family to not only get him more involved on a regular basis with their education, but also because he is the more Math/Science-minded person in the family (we're fortunate that we balance each other out that way).

For our first experiment, we used a family day trip to the shore as the perfect place to study buoyancy and density.  From home we brought two buckets, a gallon of fresh water, a bag of items to test, and a chart for each kid to fill out during the experiment.  During a lull in the crabbing that was going on, my husband gave them a basic description of Buoyancy and Density (which was not entirely foreign to them as they were familiar with some of the concepts from watching Blue's Clues: Boat Float - we supplement with this particular show a lot you'll see).  Then they guessed and we tested  and recorded the buoyancy of each object in the fresh water.  Then we filled the second bucket with salt water from the bay and we repeated the experiment - this time seeing if the outcome was the same or different.

The experiment can be done studying only buoyancy with fresh water at home.

Materials:

2 buckets

Water

Sea Water

Recording Chart (we hand drew one)

Something for writing results

Items to test (ex: wooden block, screw, quarter, spoon, plastic spoon, matchbox car, bath toy, etc)

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The Best of Intentions

(Printable: Finnegan and the Hughes)

Early September, and we are beginning our attempt at homeschooling.  I do feel very prepared - both to give my kids more and more if they want it and less and less if they are just not into what we're doing.  This year my older two are 3 and 4 years old, so I'm not too worried about cramming them full of information.  If anything a big driving force in keeping them home was because current preschools and kindergarten programs are oddly intense and work focused with only a little time in between for play.  We are also a low- to -no-tech family, so hands on, organic playing and learning is the priority. (There are a lot of very nice play-based preschools as well, but they are either not in our area, not in our price range, or are just WAY too time consuming for this age.)

Our schooling this year is mainly focused on our preK aged four year old since she is chomping at the bit to learn everything.  As of right now she would easily test into Kindergarten for level of reading, letter recognition, number recognition, basic math skills, memory, writing skills, and knowledge of basic concepts such as "patterns" or "opposites".  Socially and physically she would be no where near ready (small for her age and more introverted), so I'm thrilled for the opportunity to be able to teach her at the level she at in an environment where she is comfortable. I'll get into more depth in other posts about curriculum choices, supplemental stuff, and extra-curricular activities, but for now here is a quick run down on how we plan on doing school (at least for this semester):  

I picked up a Kindergarten curriculum book from Sam's Club while out grocery shopping that covers letters, numbers, colors, shapes, basic concepts, early math, and writing practice.  I then tore every single page out of the book, dividing and regrouping parts until I had a handful of worksheets covering a little bit from each part of the book for each week (setting aside pages I thought were more advanced for next semester).  I put it all in a binder and attached notes any time I thought of a fun supplement to the concept.  I originally purchased a lesson planner but hated it so much that I choose to just rip out the weekly planning pages and use them in my binder (which is now the official lesson planner).  For my three year old, I purchased the preschool book also at Sam's Club and just rip out a few pages that are similar to whatever her sister is going over that day.

The four year old has also started "Learn to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", and she's just loving it. I expect to get through the rest of the book by the end of the semester (we took a break during the summer) and be an independent reader of very simple books by Christmas.  For science, I found some great links online for experiments for preschoolers and copied down each one into my "Extracurricular binder".  We'll be doing one experiment a week with my husband during an evening before or after dinner (he's the math/science one of the family -we are fortunate to have every subject of interest covered between the two of us).  I also comprised a list of "Life Skills" (that I keep adding to whenever I think of something) that ranges from knowing their address and taking care of their own hygiene to learning how to swing at the playground alone and how to use a ruler.

I went a different route than most of our friends and choose not to buy a Christian curriculum for our family, mostly because I didn't want to really use any really set curriculum for such a young age. Because of that, I had to seek out another way to not only teach the kids more Biblical principals and stories on our own.  They already read two chapters a night from The Jesus Storybook Bible (restarting it again whenever they reach the end), so they have a good grasp of the basic salvation concept and who the main players are.  I found a great link for teaching about "Biblical character" that goes over various traits, what they mean, how we use them, and verses about them.  I then plan on matching each trait to a specific person from the Bible so they can learn more about these names and stories they already know about.

As for getting out and about and being active, I fortunately write for a travel blog that takes us to museums, zoos, aquariums, exhibits, events, cultural and historical locations, and more constantly. We have the opposite problem of most of needing to mindfully make time to just be at home and not on a field trip.  We've also enrolled the oldest child in soccer for the fall which gets the 3 year old extra playground time while her sister is chasing a ball with a pack of other 4 to 6 year olds.

So let's see where this year takes us!

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