Hanson's Ridge
February has been quite a month for homeschooling. For one thing, every week I've had two to three doctor's appointments, some of which require a decent drive. I've been working on finding a rhythm and it has been challenging. On the other hand, I've stepped back from a lot of commitments. DC definitely needs more days at home with free play and rough housing. We've continued getting outside as much as possible. The picture above is the Henry Hill House at Manassas National Battlefield Park. We did a preview hike before hosting a hike there for our preschool outdoor playgroup. AW loved pretending she was in the jungle or on a bear hunt. The weather here has been wild: the day of the preview hike, we were freezing. The following week, for our group hike, we had a lovely picnic with no coats required. We've tried to take advantage of every nice day by playing outside. This month's theme in AYOPS was Hearts and Valentine's Day, with Love as the character trait focus. We made Valentines (which I haven't mailed yet, oops!) and painted canvases in preparation for some later artwork. We also had a "flower shop" afternoon, based on an activity in AYOPS. I bought flowers at the dollar store and stuck them in a foam floral block that had come in one of our Ivy Boxes. Then I pulled out our Melissa and Dough play money and a toy cash register. AW assigned a value to each type of flower, from a penny up to a dollar, and I wrote the price and the name of the flower on an index card. Then they took turns "paying" for a flower each. AW had to find the card and tell me the price, using the initial sounds of the flower names to identify the correct card. Then I stepped back and let them use it for free play. Mostly they just liked the cash register toy, because it makes noise (I'd been drawn in by a cheap register at Wal-Mart and regret not getting the plain wooden one from IKEA).
We used conversation hearts to make patterns, practice attribute sorting, and make graphs. AW and I used the hearts cards from two decks of cards to play Hearts Memory (practicing numeral recognition). She really liked that game and played it a little by herself as well. For sensory play, I made rose-scented pink playdough and we made heart "cookies," decorating them with white bean "sprinkles." Both kids love playdough, and it keeps them occupied for hours. She enjoyed counting out the beans as well. We attempted making marbled paper with shaving cream and food coloring, and it took forever to dry but I think it's going to turn out alright. That sums up all the AYOPS activities we've completed so far, but that's not all we did. We read fictional books about Groundhogs and Groundhog Day, and the kids watched Punxsatawney Phil on YouTube. The Ivy Box book this month was The Secret Birthday Message by Eric Carle, which involved a secret code of shapes. We studied geometric solids (cubes, prisms, spheres, etc), made shape collages, and learned to use geoboards (stretching rubber bands over pegs on a board to make shapes). The geoboards have been another popular item this month. Finally, the kids are completely obsessed with puzzles, and I've been giving them unlimited puzzle building time. DC loves the 12 piece wooden Melissa and Doug jigsaw puzzles, while AW has been working on puzzles with up to 60 pieces. She's also done at least one continent puzzle with roughly country-shaped pieces. DC loves puzzles so much that he slept with his alphabet puzzle at nap time today. Sometimes, I lose sight of my homeschool vision and worry that we aren't doing enough formal school. Then I remember that they are four and two, and they do something that blows me away, and I relax. DC's counting skills are incredible and he's starting to recognize letters. He's picking all that up from sister and from daily life, because we don't do any of that formally. He does have a series of Star Wars board books that cover counting, colors, and the alphabet, and I think that's having an impact. I know several homeschoolers whose core curriculum is "reading lots of good books," and I think there's good reason for that. We learn a lot from reading books as a family, and from discussions about science and social studies in the car, at the breakfast table, and throughout the day. Note: You may notice a shortage of pictures this month, and it will likely continue over the next several months. Himself is using the camera for a time-lapse photography project: the construction of a new house next door. My phone, funnily enough, is a little less convenient for uploading photos to the blog. I do post on Instagram, although some of those photos are duplicates of those here.
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AuthorHi! I'm Stephanie Hanson. I live with my husband, Himself, on Hanson's Ridge in Virginia. Archives
September 2017
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