Unschool-ology

Unschool-ology
Unschooling: Living Without School; Living Free Range-Freedom to Learn What One Wants When One Wants

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Week 39: Nursery Rhymes

Last week's topic was nursery rhymes. We did a lot of fun activities with this one. We all really enjoyed it.


Tuesday: (We moved Bible lessons to Tuesdays, that way we don't start a topic, and then have the Bible lesson in between activities.) This week-we started over with Creation. We went outside and talked about all the things that God made. We came back inside and read the story of Creation. 


Wednesday: We were supposed to go to Story Time, but it was storming really bad, so we didn't get to. Since I did not have Brennon Wednesday because my Mom was off work, Samantha and I laid around all day. We sat in bed and read books for hours. It was so much fun. I was glad to get some one-on-one time with her. We went to the library after the storm passed. Samantha loaded up on books. She was so excited. For her lesson, we read a Nursery Rhyme book called, "Lucy Cousins Book of Nursery Rhymes." And listened to the "Nursery Rhyme Rap" by Dr. Jean. 


Thursday: We did the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" rhyme. I wrote three words and drew a picture to go with each word on an index card. The three words were "Spider," "Rain," and "Sun." As we said the rhyme, each person held up their word as it came up. We did the rhyme fast, slow, forwards, and backwards. We swapped out words. They had a good time. 


Friday: Friday was our art activity. We colored Humpty Dumpty eggs, and then dropped them on the floor. (I thought they would LOVE the activity, but they were really hesitant. They ended up really enjoying it, but at first they were like..."Eh...I don't want to get dirty." lol. 


Saturday: We did our cooking activity. Muffins for "Do You Know The Muffin Man?" 


I talked to one of the ladies at the co-op here in Catoosa county. I am waiting to hear back from her about sitting in one day soon to see how it works. She said if we like it, she will schedule us an interview and sign her up for the co-op-to start the preschool in August! I cannot believe my baby is that old already-old enough for school! WHAT?! I don't really want to put her in preschool to learn, because I don't think she NEEDS it, but more for getting around more kids in a structured environment, and it is only a few hours a week, so it is more like a giant weekly play date. I hope to hear more about it soon! 








He was like, "Uh...are you sure about this?"

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

More Links and Getting Ready

New Sites I Have Found: 

http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/

http://www.letshomeschool.com/ This site has all kinds of cool articles about fieldtrips, socialization, homeschool groups, even curriculum!

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/trips/FieldTrips.htm This site is A to Z fieldtrips for every state!

http://www.mothergooseclub.com/rhymes.php (A Reference for me really. I need it for next week's lessons. But it has all kinds of nursery rhymes by category.)

Medicine is working. New year has begun. And I am ready to jump back into Samantha's education. I have been questioning weather or not I am tiring Samantha out on education and not letting her learn through play or if I am just helping further her interest in learning. After reading article after article and thinking about all we have done in the last year alone, I have decided that we will continue doing what we are doing because I truly believe that we are making memories and just having fun. She is learning so much about the world around her and enjoying herself at the same time. I never force her to do activities and she gets excited about the calendar we go over and the books we look at. Nothing is too formal. 


Samantha starts back "school" next Tuesday. That will give me time to get her lesson plans started for the year. Today I have just been looking at articles about preschool homeschool benefits and such. We are defiitely not starting anything formal until Kindergarten though. Tomorrow I will probably go over her topics for her unit studies some more and see if I need to add or subtract anything. For the most part we will keep last year's topics and do more complex activities now that she is older. I am also continuing to do more reading about homeschool how-to's, tips and advice, and different topics like socialization. Hopefully this will give us a better start and this year will be better.