The Best and Worst of Times
My gracious! It's already Sunday. I feel like last week was gone in the blink of an eye, and I have not been able to get online because we had a bit of a storm that took out our internet for 3 days. Anyway! I'm back now, and I have lots to show and share!
Our second day of homeschool was a pretty rough day for Eli and I. I was thinking about how I could write about it and remembered that I set out to write this blog to document our successes AND our setbacks. So this would definitely be considered a day of setbacks. Hopefully you'll be able to learn from my mistakes and avoid some of these issues all together!
I woke Eli up for breakfast and devotion time, and he was still pretty sleepy. I normally don't have issues with him when he is sleepy, but today like I said, was a day of setbacks. :) He ate his breakfast pretty slowly, and he was already set on doing his own thing rather than learning at the table.
Once it was time to begin our prayer, pledge, and memory verse, the tears began! He just was not interested in participating, and I realized that it was because he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. Right at that point I decided that we would have an altered schedule for the day. I do not ever want him to hate learning, and if I had forced him into our regular schedule, it would've been a negative experience for him.
Here's what we ended up with:
10:00am - 10:25am Playdough Letter
First of all, this activity definitely took more time than I allotted for. I'm positive it was because we worked on 2 letters, it was Eli's first time doing the activity, and we were having a rough morning. Other than this minor setback, Eli absolutely LOVED this activity. He loved how the playdough felt, and he couldn't get enough of rolling it around in his hands. He also did extremely well with forming the letters with the playdough.
This activity helped with his letter recognition, prewriting skills, and fine motor. I could see his little fingers working to form the playdough to fit the letters.
10:25am - 10:30am Toothpick Punch
Notice the time on this activity: Mom's first mistake alert! I obviously neglected to test out this activity before having Eli try to complete it (of course this was set for our nice, tear-filled day of setbacks).
So here's the story: I purchased a dry erase board at Dollar Tree and placed the letters P and L on the board for Eli to punch holes into with a toothpick. I modeled the activity for him, then let him go wild with the toothpick. Needless to say, he was very excited to try this activity. Unfortunately, about 6 toothpicks later, mom realized that the board was not soft enough to punch the toothpicks through. My fault! The good news is that when you are making preparations to complete this activity, you now know to purchase a bulletin board that is soft and not from the Dollar Tree :)
10:30am - 10:40am Scissor Practice
Overall Eli did pretty well with this activity. I'll let you know that he has not had tons of practice with scissors AT ALL, so instead of actually cutting paper we just worked on how to hold the scissors and how to squeeze them. It was a workout, but he did well either way!
These are the scissors we have for Eli to practice. They are Fiskars brand, and we bought them from Walmart.
10:40am - 10:50am Color Sort (Notice we skipped numbers)
Since Eli refused to pay attention during number identification (even after a shake break), we moved on to our color sort. This took some preparation on my part. I'll go over that first, then I'll discuss how we completed the activity.
At Dollar Tree (obviously my favorite place to go), they sell dip trays that are separated into 3 sections each. I purchased 3 trays and hot glued color labels to the bottom of each section.
The trays look like this:
And they looked like this after I glued the color labels:
I had red, orange, and yellow in one tray; green, blue, and purple in the next; and black, brown, and pink in the last.
After I glued in the labels, I used my Cricut to cut various colored pumpkins. Eli used these to sort by color. He was having a bit of trouble with brown and black, so I made sure to have those included in the activity. Toward the end he thought it would be funny to place the pumpkin in the wrong colored section to see if I would notice. It was pretty dang cute.
10:50am - 11:00am Letter Search (the end of our day)
At this point, Eli was completely done. We began the activity, but he was not in the mood at all to complete it correctly. I decided that we should take a lunch break, have a nap, then get some outdoor time.
Here is the activity in case you want to try it. It's super cute!
Letter Detectives
So basically my day didn't go as planned, but after typing this I realize that it could've ended up much worse. I love my little boy, and I'm totally okay if his stamina isn't perfect each day. He's 3, so I am almost expecting it. After a really good nap, we had an awesome time outside riding his bike. What a good end to a somewhat hectic day!
First of all, this activity definitely took more time than I allotted for. I'm positive it was because we worked on 2 letters, it was Eli's first time doing the activity, and we were having a rough morning. Other than this minor setback, Eli absolutely LOVED this activity. He loved how the playdough felt, and he couldn't get enough of rolling it around in his hands. He also did extremely well with forming the letters with the playdough.
This activity helped with his letter recognition, prewriting skills, and fine motor. I could see his little fingers working to form the playdough to fit the letters.
10:25am - 10:30am Toothpick Punch
Notice the time on this activity: Mom's first mistake alert! I obviously neglected to test out this activity before having Eli try to complete it (of course this was set for our nice, tear-filled day of setbacks).
So here's the story: I purchased a dry erase board at Dollar Tree and placed the letters P and L on the board for Eli to punch holes into with a toothpick. I modeled the activity for him, then let him go wild with the toothpick. Needless to say, he was very excited to try this activity. Unfortunately, about 6 toothpicks later, mom realized that the board was not soft enough to punch the toothpicks through. My fault! The good news is that when you are making preparations to complete this activity, you now know to purchase a bulletin board that is soft and not from the Dollar Tree :)
10:30am - 10:40am Scissor Practice
Overall Eli did pretty well with this activity. I'll let you know that he has not had tons of practice with scissors AT ALL, so instead of actually cutting paper we just worked on how to hold the scissors and how to squeeze them. It was a workout, but he did well either way!
These are the scissors we have for Eli to practice. They are Fiskars brand, and we bought them from Walmart.
10:40am - 10:50am Color Sort (Notice we skipped numbers)
Since Eli refused to pay attention during number identification (even after a shake break), we moved on to our color sort. This took some preparation on my part. I'll go over that first, then I'll discuss how we completed the activity.
At Dollar Tree (obviously my favorite place to go), they sell dip trays that are separated into 3 sections each. I purchased 3 trays and hot glued color labels to the bottom of each section.
The trays look like this:
I had red, orange, and yellow in one tray; green, blue, and purple in the next; and black, brown, and pink in the last.
After I glued in the labels, I used my Cricut to cut various colored pumpkins. Eli used these to sort by color. He was having a bit of trouble with brown and black, so I made sure to have those included in the activity. Toward the end he thought it would be funny to place the pumpkin in the wrong colored section to see if I would notice. It was pretty dang cute.
10:50am - 11:00am Letter Search (the end of our day)
At this point, Eli was completely done. We began the activity, but he was not in the mood at all to complete it correctly. I decided that we should take a lunch break, have a nap, then get some outdoor time.
Here is the activity in case you want to try it. It's super cute!
Letter Detectives
So basically my day didn't go as planned, but after typing this I realize that it could've ended up much worse. I love my little boy, and I'm totally okay if his stamina isn't perfect each day. He's 3, so I am almost expecting it. After a really good nap, we had an awesome time outside riding his bike. What a good end to a somewhat hectic day!
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