Hanson's Ridge
One of the activities in September's AYOPS checklist is "pond play," with water beads and a frog life cycle play set. The water beads have been hugely popular with both AW and DC (and Himself, to be perfectly honest). Today, AW actually discovered a toad stuck in our watering can. We rescued the toad and were able to gently touch it a few times before it hopped away. AW asked if she could use the water beads for her marble scooping activity, and I said yes. Both kids loved this fine motor activity. We also did an AYOPS art activity this week, based on the work of glass artist Dale Chulily. To be honest, I didn't really turn this into an artist study. We didn't talk about Chulily at all, just enjoyed exploring liquid water color with coffee filters. We continued working on projects from this month's Ivy Box (The Lonely Firefly). This included talking about the parts of a firefly and labeling them. We did a literacy tie in by searching for words with the same first letter as the guide. Today, AW asked to spoon marbles again. She and Himself got to talking and ended up doing a spontaneous experiment on displacement and buoyancy. They started by spooning marbles into a bottle to see how much it would take to overflow the bottle. Then they extended the experiment with an apple and a block of wood. I think they had a pretty good time. And this is one of the joys that I hoped for in homeschooling: spontaneous learning experiences growing out of planned activities. She asked to glue pictures into her science journal.
In other news, AW has once again been asking to learn to read (complaining about me not teaching her to read actually). I do intend on following her needs, but it cracks me up. I posted the following in a Facebook group: "One of our big motivations for homeschooling is the early push for academics in school. DD is 4, and we were planning on doing a very play based pre-K year. But she keeps begging to learn to read, and complaining to people that I'm not teaching her to read. I had Logic of English in mind for the future and I don't really want to start this year, but was wondering if it would throw things off to buy just Doodling Dragons and read that with her to start." I posted all the explanation because I always see veteran homeschoolers chiding newbies like me about jumping into academics too early. But almost all of the comments were about how I needed to teach her how to read because that's what she wanted. What AW doesn't realize is that we are working on literacy skills all the time--she's watching me track text with my finger, we do silly rhymes and clap syllables, and we read read read all the time. She already knows all (or almost all) her letters and sounds. It's just that she's learned so organically that she doesn't think I'm teaching her. Which I actually think is kind of cool. We finished out the week with a trip to the Baltimore Aquarium in honor of AW's fourth birthday. Both kids were completely fascinated, and the adults had a good time too! (Note: I had this post in draft form for awhile, so it's going up much later. More in the next post).
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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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