The advantage of home schooling is that there is no set time table or curriculum, so we can adapt learning to Amy's specific needs of the day. The day after she learned how to send an email, she said she ate chips (crisps) for breakfast. This lead to a discussion of the food groups. To corroborate my hastily compiled chart, I got Amy to use a search engine to find an article on food groups. Amy was quite keen to work on the internet again. Her reading ability is not good enough yet, to really search through the various options, but just to get the search engine to search was in itself is a good beginning! (She printed the chosen article and we'll get back to it, when the need arises to talk about food groups again.)
The day after we practised international time i.e. that 16:00 is 4:00 pm., her mom emailed that she would be seeing her at 16:00. I don't think Mom even thought for a minute that for a child who has only been reading time for about 6 months, 16:00 does not automatically translate into 4 o'clock. Fortunately, we had been practicing how to convert international time to "ordinary" time and vice versa, so Amy could work out when he Mom would be coming home!
The point I am trying to make is that by concentrating on the specific math's and reading needed for life skills like reading the calendar, the weather forecast, the clock, recipe measurements etc., the child is motivated to master them. Once the child turns on his/ her own motors there is no saying how far one could go. Finding that what you learn and practice in the classroom, is actually used in the shops, in the kitchen, in the car etc. makes you feel you belong in the real world.
Homeschooling is great! Thank you God for giving us this opportunity!
A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!
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3 comments:
I think teaching to life skills are so important too! Jacob still struggles with the days of the week. If I say, "You are going to grandma's on Friday." He always asks me how many days away that is. So I make him say the days of the week and we count it out. But, it isn't automatic for him yet. Same goes for the months of the year, time and other life skills. I guess from what I have read this isn't unusual.
Also, I wanted to know if it would be okay if I posted your blog address on my blog, so that others can reap info. from you.
Let me know!
Dear Jennifer
You are welcome to post our blog. I would appreciated interaction with other home-schoolers – we can benefit much from each other. I found teaching the calendar takes a long time, but if one reviews the calendar daily it helps. Last year I found that only 1 out of 12 children in my special class knew the days of the week (Not Amy!). I then gave them each a sheet with the days of the week on it and every morning we repeated the rhyme (Monday, Tuesday etc.) orally, whilst the children pointed to the different words as we said them. This established a link between the spoken words and the written words – the written words also provided visual cues for the sequence and most children learned the “rhyme” in no time. We did the same with the months of the year, but we sang the sequence. Next to the names of the months I had the corresponding numbers and I would ask questions like “Which month is number 11?” Every day we also checked the weather and each child drew the weather symbol on his / her calendar. We regularly looked up everyone’s birthday and marked it on the calendars. Amy now knows the different sequences very well, but she has to listen carefully to questions such as “What day is it today?” “What is today’s date?” With homeschooling, it is easy to watch the weather forecast on TV, so she has to look at it, read our city’s min and max temperatures and predicted rainfall. She records these predictions on her calendar and also reads the thermometer in the class at noon to see whether it corresponds more or less. At the end of the month she finds the coldest, hottest day of the month and we record these on Excel charts, so that by the end of December, we will be able to say which date had the highest temperature etc. I hope to let her look up and record sunrise and sunset too, in the near future to make her more aware of the different seasons (and time) She understands months, but is still a little unsure about weeks, so we regularly count the weeks till a specific event like someone’s birthday.
Does Jacob understand the clock yet? I started teaching Amy to read an analogue clock last year: first to find the hours on the clock – also when there were no digits on the clock. She had to learn to follow the clock clockwise – she was inclined to read it anticlockwise as well, i.e. 1:05 and 11:55 were the same to her. Then we practiced counting in fives – on the number line and on the clock. Now she reads 10:45 etc with ease. She is very aware of time. We also work out international time e.g. 16:00, 19:00 etc. We have not yet started with quarter past, half past etc., but I think she is about ready to start to learn that, and I hope to start with that after Easter.
Have fun with calendars and time!
Let me know how you are progressing!
Wonderful ideas about the calendar! Jacob can say the days of the week and months of the year but beyond that I doubt any connection. I will be printing off calendars today! I also am going to use this with my 6 year old.
Jacob can tell time to the 5 minute marks. He still struggles applying it to every day, though. We are working on it and I'm sure with time it will become easier for him.
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