The Preschoolers Home Ed Thread

[MathsMadMummy]

Hi all, I thought we could do with a thread for posting activity ideas and so on, for those of us with preschool-age children (whether or not you're planning to HE them officially).

Today I made a papier mache mountain and we talked about the letter sound /m/. This built on /h/ which DD has been obsessed with since seeing a helicopter. We're gradually making a start with Jolly Phonics.

Been a bit lazy with 'learning stuff' lately though, as potty training has been the (very successful) project this week!

Looking forward to hearing what you're all up to with your little ones

Hello all. I just started another thread on here as I'm thinking about blogging in order to inspire myself to do more!

Any inspiration for phonics related games? DD wants to learn to read.

I thought about blogging after looking at the imagination tree as I do a lot of stuff of that type.

My dd is only 27 months but we've been watching the jolly phonics stuff on you tube. She's already learnt some of the songs and can recognise that a circle can be an o sound. We do lots of alphabet jigsaws and I only refer to each letter phonically.

TheDoctorsWife46, if you do start a blog, please do come & add the link here!

I've been enjoying reading what other people are doing, although most of it is too advanced for my 14 m.o. DS.

He's learnt to 'walk' holding onto someone's hands, and has been learning lots about gravity by falling headlong throwing balls down the stairs.

Freudian, when I was doing teacher training we had an alphabet / phonics song that went like this:

Ants on the apple, a a a
Ants on the apple, a a a
Ants on the apple, a a a
Apple, apple a.

'a' being the short sound, not 'ay'.

Then

Bees on the beehive, b b b
Bees on the beehive, b b b
Bees on the beehive, b b b
Beehive, beehive b.

I think we made up our own words and actions to it - ants were our hands climing up the opposite arm, bees were fingers looping around in the air etc.

The most important thing in phonics IMO is not to pronounce e.g. c as 'cuh', but as just the breathed out c bit. Otherwise you end up teaching children that cuh + a + tuh = cat. It doesn't, it makes 'cuhatuh' IYSWIM.

Hi, can I join this lovely thread? Some great ideas. Found the imagination Tree link really interesting - my first project borrowed from there will be to make DD (10 m) a tissue box full of little scarves for pulling out. She will love that.

My son (3yo) is really into dinosaurs and diggers a the moment so I've made him some mini indoor sandpits for them to roam in. I found a some old drawers being thrown out in a skip, carried them home and filled them with sand, then added dinosaurs, diggers, stones and he's been he's been busy with it for hours each day, and more random toys are being added all the time. Also found that the baby's stacking cups are brilliant for making miniature sandcastles for dinosaurs to demolish.

It's been snowing here today and tomorrow it may settle. I was thinking of making a snow themed play box, by adding toys to my last spare box, maybe building a little village out of blocks and cars, and sprinkling snow flour on top through a seive to see how it settles, I'm sure it will end up as an avalanche, but should be fun!

Freudian have you got any ABC books? There's a good Kipper book called Kipper's ABC, and a good Stephen Cartright one too, that one has a nice rhyming text. I think I picked them both up second hand but they're great for just browsing through and giving you a good starting point for chatting about sounds.

Then magnetic letters are a great way to start playing with sounds. You don't have to know all your sounds before you can start making words. And sounds make more sense in a context. Start out with simple cvc (consonant-vowel-consonant)words. So you can have 6 letters, say c, a, t, b, h, s and make lots of words with them. Without being too teacherly, I would just move the letters around and show her how you can build words, then change them into new words. e.g. cat can become sat and so on. Or better still, just get her to put any of the three letters in a row, and you have to read them to see if it makes a real word or a nonsense word. She'll be absorbing information about the sequence of sounds in a word, that we read from left to right, that that sounds blend together to make words, and that certain combination of letters make recognisable words. If you play the game repeatedly with the same letters, after a while she may also begin to recognise some of the words too. I echo what Angelstar said about saying pure sounds, not putting 'uh' after each letter. Hope this helps oh, and cbeebies website must have loads of good phonics games.

Hi

Can I join in here? Only just found the thread, thanks for all the inspiration from previous posts, it couldn´t have come at a more needed time for me.

I was weavering on the HE for DS, as it doesn´t seem well understood round my way, but fully encouraged to stick to my guns now.

DS 2.11 yrs and DD 6 mth. DS has been learning to wash up this week and then we´ve played shop. We spread out different items on the coffee table and take it in turns to be shop keeper/customer and count out the money together. DD has been learning to eat with a spoon today

Hello patito,

Our days sound similar, my DD (10 mo) has discovered she can scoop things out of a bowl with a spoon, very messy, but at the ame time very absorbing and peaceful activity! And my DS (3 yrs) is really into water play too. But his consists more of making tubs of water murky with slimy playdough and hiding crocodiles at the bottom ready to pounce on other unsuspecting forms of life that get chucked in the bowl of water.

I also made some salt dough and he made salt dough crocodiles decorated with coloured wooden beads, macaroni teeth and spaghetti claws. Sounds weird but they actually look amazing, if I get round to taking a photo I'll post it!

everything, your plan may prove a little tricky with respect to your son's feelings and expectations. The trouble is, there is a great deal of pro-school hype in the months before children start school. I swear, you will get random strangers in the street asking your son if he is about to start "big school" and assuring him that he's going to love it. (Nobody, of course, will mention that there will be days when he may not want to go, or that he'll have to leave his teddy at home, or that the lovely play equipment is only available to him at certain times.)

If you aren't in a position to intervene at this stage and tell people that he won't be starting school - or at least that you haven't decided whether he'll be going - he may well get swept up in that enthusiasm too. Then when you spring it on him that he won't be going to school after all, he may be gutted and feel very left out.

You don't necessarily have to go public in a big way about your home ed intentions, but I think it is worth giving some thought to the impression your son will be getting. At the very least, you might prefer to be vague about school in his presence: "Oh, I don't know, we haven't decided what to do, he might not start in September, you know they don't have to go until the term after they are five..."

You might mention HE to your son in casual private discussions. You wouldn't have to be explicit about this being a possibility for him, but you could read him some books which feature home educated children, mention occasionally that by the way some children don't go to school and here's what they do instead, and meet up with some local home educating families. Then I think he'd be less likely to feel the rug had been pulled from under him if you later announce that he won't be going to school when he thought he was.

Saracen so true - DS1 just turned 3 and I have had several casual conversations recently which have included "he will go to school next year then?"

I have mentioned to close friends with children the same age that I am considering HE as lots of discussions have been started about pre-school/after school provision/holiday childcare and I got tired of trying to stay out of it or be vague.

We have enjoyed starting to attend some local HE meet ups (at museum/park) with other pre-school and young children and hoping this is the start of making some real HE friends for DS and I.

Im mostly quite open about wanting to HE DS, Im pretty vague about the reasons as there is so much pressure and people just seem baffled as why Id actually choose to have my kids at home full time. I live in a smallish village and there is free education from 2 yrs, so when Im out he´s constantly asked if he ill and why he isn´t at nursery.

He´s been having a couple of difficult weeks and has been quite naughty due to being over-tired and abit of sibling jealously I think. One of the father´s from the playground asked would he not be better disciplined if he went to nursery .

Anyways back to what we´ve been up to, we made a spring poster today. We make a poster for the kitchen wall every new season. Its got flowers, sheep, the sun and rain. He´s still v. much into washing up

Patito love the poster idea (shamelessly stealing it)!

Poor DS1 has not had much interaction this week with me or other children as baby (8weeks) is ill with chest infection so its been tough. He has done really well finding things to entertain himself with but I am still feeling guilty!

Hi

Wondering what everyones been up to recently. DS and I made papier maché eggs for our Easter egg hunt. I hid them on easter Sunday and we then decorated them together.

Thought Id make a start with letters, so printed out A a for DS to cut, stick and colour, didn´t catch him in right mood though and only got half finished. Will try again another day.

We´ve been spending quite a lot of time at the beach recently destroying building sandcastles and finding horrible slimy creatures in the rocks.

Ooh. We dyed hard boiled eggs by soaking them in a food dye/vinegar mix and decorated them :) My 4 year old and 21 month old loved doing it.

My 4 year old has been really into drawing/writing recently too. He's even started making phonetically plausible spellings i.e. Finli for Finley. proud mum face

Hello all (again!) just remarking my place to read later :)

I suppose I HE my dd, just 3, but have never thought of it that way! She will start at preschool 2 half days a week in Sept but I have resisted pressure to send her before then. I suppose I have a foot in both 'camps' as it were as I am a teacher too, although currently on mat leave. I also have ds, 5 months.

I find www.nurturestore.co.uk a very good source of ideas. Really want to do the water wall soon!

We have been mostly learning about what food it's a really bad idea to eat when you are recovering from a tummy bug

Lots of playdough - hardy perennial here, and the children like helping to make it [domestic goddess]

and, pre-tummy bug, lots of enjoying the park in the sunshine. that's probably where we picked up the tummy bug, actually. Grrr.

I have finally got around to buying a page a day diary (reduced from £15 to £1 :) in Paperchase if anyone is interested) so I can start to note the things we are doing. We cover so much (or DS1 (3.2yr) does anyway) and I forget it all otherwise with 3 month old DS2 to deal with as well. We have now definitely decided that DS1 will not be going to school next September (hurrah) so I want to start notes for my own use and for countering the inevitable opposition we are going to face from the family (we havent told them yet though although my side of family knew we were considering HE).

We have been spending a lot of time outdoors, as DH on holiday from work so easier to manage baby too when we go out - have planted strawberry plants and been to some National Trust properties where DS1 found that knocking sticks together makes a good sound so he found lots of different ones and made a stick xylophone in the woods!

DS1 recently got a Thomas poster with pictures of all the engines on so he has been wanting to count them a lot and has mastered the 11-20 numbers really quickly and is now going on from there.

Oh dear re tummy bug ommmward hope all better!

Oh yes we made playdough for the first time this week too - why have I not done that before!!? So much cheaper than bought and easier for DS1 to manipulate too. He loved adding the colour. Salt dough next on the list to make.

We have also cut out lots of fish shapes from card and decorated them with glue/glitter/tissue etc. I then stuck paperclips on and drew "treasure" gold coins on the back - we are going to use them as a fishing game and then count up how much treasure we have caught!

good couple of days here. Went on a walk in our area - we are really lucky to have lots of footpaths and streams near us, and a little wood. We took a 'creature peeper' with us - basically a bug box with a magnifier. Managed to catch a few things including a gorgeous red dragonfly! Let them go after obviously :o

Also we've done some adding with trains (how many red, how many green, how many altogether etc) and lots of building with my beloved wooden bricks :) she's rather in love with the semicircles and bridge shapes and how they fit together. I've also noticed that when building houses she is now veering towards symmetry more. It's amazing that children just discover these things for themselves, it's so much better than just being told what to do.

I'm reading a book called 'guerilla learning' by Grace Llewellyn and Amy Silver, it's really making me question my views on education.

A couple of you have mentioned blogs. How is that going? I'm considering starting one to keep track of what we do. Would any of you mind providing links so I can have a nosy?
Thanks!

Errrrm well we ended up not doing it in the end

Have been taking more photos, and doing more 'keepable' work iyswim, just haven't had the time or energy to upload any of it!