My 3 year old (guess I need to change my blog name) was a little sad that she didn't get to go to school. The 6 year old gave her a detailed explanation that her mommy would "home school" her. She talked about it everyday last week. Her aunt gave her a lunch box and she has a fuzzy, pink backpack. I gave her a notebook and she is ready. She's even dressing herself everyday and doesn't want help. One day last week she even played school and drew an A on the chalk board. Now both boys are in school and the 3 year old asks me every day when we are going to start homeschool.
We've started over with the letter A. She has two As in her name so the interest level is really high. We just use whatever we have and I go the direction she associates with. For instance, I made some really thick letters on the white board with bend-a-roos, wax coated strings. I wanted her to rub a crayon on paper over the letters. She couldn't quite get the hand of holding the crayon for a rubbing. I thought this would be a great exploration of the shape of the letter, but she didn't seek the missing pieces of the letter. So I rubbed the letters and with her amazing writing grip traced the letters with a different color crayon. Then I wrote words and pictures that both started with the letter A and had As in the words. Apple, Banana, Alligator, and Quack, Quack (that's what she calls her collection of duck toys.) We sang "Apples and Bananas", "Three little monkeys", and a Quack, Quack song to the tune of "I'm a little pile of tin"
I'm a little swimming duck,
I got 2 eyes and lots of luck,
2 webbed feet and feathers on my back,
I don't sing songs I just quack, quack.
Honk, honk, waddle, waddle, waddle, quack, quack, quack, (sing 4 times)
For some reason, 3yo thought of the rain and flood song when she was trying to do the crayon rubbing. So "rain" became another word to write and sing about. "The wiseman built his house upon the rock" She told me in her 3yo way that she didn't know the words at the end of the song. I hope to demonstrate the song with real sand and water some time. It involves a brick and some toy buildings from our wooden train set. It really works. A watering can or a garden hose with a sprayer provides the rain and the house on the sand falls every time.
The second day, we make new rubbings of the letter A and wrote the 3yo's name. I then wrote her name vertically and came up with an animal that starts with each letter. I drew the picture for each animal, but she just didn't get it. She just doesn't know the other letters and doesn't care that they can begin other words.
We read the Bearstein Bear's A book. And I could tell she didn't understand that those objects started with the same letter as her name.
We reviewed the previous days paper, which was made on a paper roll and she loves carrying it around and calls it a treasure map. We sang all the songs and looked for the A in the words.
At church, my daughter loves to play with the velco folder that my sister made with three letter words and pictures. She also loves the one I made with her and her brothers' names and faces. But she doesn't care for the other velcro folders a made, one for A, one for H, one for E. She doesn't care that all those pictures start with the same letter.
I think I'll make more three letter velcro folders. She enjoys matching the shapes and it might also help her brother learn to put words together.
