Homeschooling Archives

Building Fine Motor Skills with Play Dough

January 21, 2013 by Selena Robinson 4 Comments

In case you missed our previous post about my homeschooling resolve in 2013, one of the things I’m focusing on is being less “boring” around my kids. So, I’m trying to add in more art play since everyone loves art in our house.

Our boys, Roo especially, really need to work on fine motor skills. And I wanted to help him improve those skills without making it into a chore he’d hate.

To make the day less “school-y” and more fun, we decided to work on building fine motor skills with play dough! Talk about something that’s not a chore at all, right? 🙂

Image: nadezhda1906 / Dollar Photo Club

Building Fine Motor Skills with Play Dough

I’ve actually had these Play-Doh sets for a while but we haven’t played with them nearly enough over the years. One is the Barnyard Pals playset and the other is the Sweet Shoppe playset.

When we work with play dough, I like to have the kids use tools to shape it and manipulate it. That way, the kids can work on using their hands to grasp, pinch, and move small bits of dough. Fine motor skills ahoy!

As you can see, this is not an activity that requires any direction from me whatsoever. I just bring out the set and hand out the canisters and let them get to it. 🙂

Roo was content to sit and make Play-Doh ice cream all morning.

Pooh used multi-colored Play Doh to make some pretty colorful dreadlocks on a plastic pig.

As someone who has dreadlocks, I was only moderately offended.

Tigger made a blue mohawk on her purple rooster.

Pretty sharp, huh? I think I’m raising a house of future hairdressers.

Once we were finished, it was time to reinforce fine motor skills by….cleaning up! I’m only half kidding. Trying to get all those tiny bits of dough up is actually a pretty good skill builder. 🙂

How do you help your kids with building fine motor skills? Let us know in the comments!

ABC Letter Hunt for Preschoolers

January 14, 2013 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Today ended up being ABC day in our house. While I didn’t set out to work on letter recognition today, it just kind of…happened. But that’s homeschooling for you! 😉

Pooh and Roo, in particular, are at the age where they’re interested in learning the alphabet. And I’ve been wanting to teach them to “spot” letters, so it was a fine day for an ABC letter hunt!

Our ABC Letter Hunt

At the library last week, Roo picked out the book “The City ABC Book” by Zoran Milich and we read it last night before bed. It’s a really cute book, showing how you can find the ABCs in common city signs and buildings.

I don’t think I would have ever looked at a bicycle path marker and seen an uppercase “Q”.

Naturally, we had to spend today looking for letters in our house. Tigger spotted this uppercase “O” right away.

Pooh found a lowercase “r” – the nozzle on the lotion bottle. (That was a pretty good one, if I say so myself.)

Tigger noticed an uppercase “X” in our bookcase.

I found lots of uppercase “H”s in the crosshatches of our board game chest.

And Roo found an uppercase “C” in our nursing pillow.

Have you had an ABC letter hunt with your kids? What letters can you find around your home? Let us know in the comments!

Keep on learning!

Starting the Homeschool Year Right

January 7, 2013 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Well, it’s a new year! And it’s a great time to look ahead to our homeschooling goals for 2013. I’ll be writing more about them in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, we’re making some big changes in our school routine.

I think one of the things I like best about homeschooling is the freedom to change curriculum and teaching methods whenever I notice that something’s not working for our family. It’s often a lot of trial and error, but hopefully we’re getting to some kind of routine that works for ALL of our children.

In 2013, we’re starting the homeschool year right by…drumroll…asking for our kids’ opinions!

Starting the Homeschool Year with a Kids’ Interview

Usually when I plan a new homeschool year, I sit down and think about what I want the kids to learn in the next grade. I never thought about asking them for a review of what we already did the previous year before! Turns out that asking them for their honest opinions about the previous school year can be really helpful.

To get the kids’ input on last year and the new year, we did a post-2012 interview with all of them. I used a free “Year End Time Capsule” printable from Today’s Mama as the basis for our interviews. It’s really an opportunity for the children to express their favorite things about the year and what they hope to do in the coming year.

Some of the gems from our interviews:

Roo (age 3) – Favorite thing to do: “Stay up.” Why? “Because I don’t like being in the bed so much. It makes me feel bored.”

Pooh (age 4) – Favorite thing: “Coloring pictures.” Why? “Because I like looking at stuff. Toys are boring.”

Tigger (age 8) – Favorite book: “Ramona and Her Mother.” Why? “I like Chapter 2 and it has lots of girls in it. The whole book was mostly Ramona and her mother and Ramona did a lot of things with her mother.” (Hint, hint.)

After hearing their responses, my resolve is: Less boredom in 2013!

When I asked Roo what his favorite part of 2012 was, he said “The Rocking Clown Game”. It’s called Coocoo the Rocking Clown and it’s a great game for very young children and older kids.

The goal of the game is to place the colored cylinders on the clown without tipping it over. Yes, I have ours sitting on an Usborne book for balance. (Don’t judge me.)

As you can see, the more cylinders, the more likely it is that Coocoo will start rocking…

and fall over!

Our kids literally played this game for hours. They absolutely loved it. You can’t tell by Roo’s expression, but he’s saying “Cheese”. Trust me.

What are your educational goals for this year? Feel free to share them in the comments!