Learning and Lesson Plans

Lately, we've taken a bit more of an "unschooled" approach to school, and I've been amazed at how well it's working for both me and the boys.  I looked through tons of curriculum this summer and just couldn't come up with the right fit.  With our old approach, I was struggling to keep the boys attention and they were really getting frustrated with me. That's not to say I won't be using a lot of our old materials and working through some specific themes, but I'm amazed at how much more my boys are learning through their own questioning and play.

With the weather a bit nicer, we've been outside a lot. My boys love bubbles and we had a blast learning all of the different things you could blow bubbles through.

We tried making bubble snakes.  It was a super fun idea, but my little guys didn't have the lung power to pull it off.  They did, however, have a blast making gigantic bubbles!

This spatula made some great bubbles... loads of little ones!

Mommy got a couple of good bubble snakes out, but you really did have to blow...HARD!

Art is huge at our house lately.  The boys think it's all fun and games, but I am able to sneak in loads of learning during this time.  Our Melissa and Doug letter stamps are great for letter recognition, reading, spelling and fine motor skills.

Stone's fine motor skills are really coming along and his attention and focus continue to compound so our time spent doing "bookwork" is much more enjoyable.

He's  also really coming along with his reading and phonics.  We love Starfall (we have purchased their kinder curriculum) for language arts!

Most of our math is done in the kitchen.  Counting, measuring, fractions... we work it all in!

Cooking is also a great exercise in fine motor skills.

A little more math with manipulatives.   We use these sorting bugs a ton for math: sorting by shape and color for the littles and addition and subtraction foundational principles for Stone.

The boys have a daily chore schedule that they are responsible for.  It goes right along my my daily task lists and they usually wind up doing more than I require of them.  They are such good helpers!

Ripping, tearing, cutting and pasting... it's what we do best!

I'll continue to blog a bit about the schooling we're doing, but since we're taking a different approach I don't expect it to be a weekly feature.  Since I really began to delve into the world of homeschooling last year, I learned that being flexible to methods and curriculum is key.  Before, I thought I'd pick one approach and steadfastly stick with it for 12+ years.  This is what works for us now... I expect that our approach will change many times through the years!