How Learning Looked

It’s been a month since I talked about what we’ve been learning. So I thought I’d a recap for myself, and anyone interested.
There was lots of note writing/drawing/painting going on. Tuesday can fully clean her own brushes now, yay! Lots of the notes were on this little boogie board, which we love.

I find it around sometimes with little things like this. I tried to explain to Tuesday about punctuation, but she said she was ready for bed. No doubt she’ll figure it out on her own, as she did all this. We got this board for our flight with Bennet at an airport gift shop and it was such a hit.

Over all there are lots of doodles going on. I particularly liked this set I came across.

And this love note to her sister.

We played with letters this way too. I have been wanting these wooden alphabet pieces for a while, so when the Wooden Wagon was having a sale I picked them up. They just looked so enticing. Tuesday did have fun playing with them this night (while Bj and I tried our hand at Leonardo sticks), but hasn’t touched them since. I think I need to put them out in a different way for her. I love all the Grimm’s wooden blocks (the coasters might be my all time favorite), but Tuesday isn’t much of a builder, despite repeated attempts to get her into it.

I used our Montessori sound drawers with their miniatures for this “game”. I don’t think I’ve used them much since this sorting exercise a year and a half ago. This took quite a long time, and I think I could revisit simple sorting before attempting the whole alphabet again (though she did have fun alphabetizing these cards – that’s easy for her now – and doing this overall, some sounds were frustrating). Looking back at that old post makes me a bit wistful for the Montessori method, but it just didn’t work out in practice here. I think some of it might more with Bennet, but Tuesday is more project focused.

Bennet wasn’t left out of all the letter fun. We stamped with these old sign making stamps in fresh play dough. As you can see we also used a LIBERAL dose of sparkles. Bennet has learned how to operate one of the garlic presses completely independently, she loves it!

My mom had Tuesday for an afternoon and Bennet and I used the one on one time to stamp. She loved it. I recommend the ColorBox my first ink pads. They are not 100% washable, but the color is good and they are easy to use. I don’t believe they are archival, so this is more of an experience type of project, I recycled the results.

Bennet wanted a workbook like sissy. She likes the Kumon cut and paste books. She motors through them so I think I need to make some homemade type sheets like this.

Painting, another project both girls can do. I love projects they can both enjoy!

Games with Tuesday. This Monopoly Hotel game is so great for Tuesday’s age and skill level. It’s fun, she can read the money amounts, she knows what the cards do. Bj or I played with her quite a few times, but now she can easily play against us on her own. And it’s not another super boring kids game. The one bad thing: worst game box EVER. Trust me, you’ll toss it. I found this at good will for a couple bucks unopened. I get almost all our games there, if they’re duds I just donate them back. I highly recommend this system. Just make sure you have all the pieces (or they are easy to order). I asked Tuesday what she had to say about this game, “It’s fun, but not hard for one five year old. ” hehehe.
I posted a picture from our week in the life but we have also been playing with a regular card deck. Tuesday loves a game called “garbage” which is great reinforcement of the numbers 1-10. “War” helped her understand the order of cards (I found this “politically correct non violent” version at Goodwill, but the cards were too big and unweildly, so I donated it back. We thought it was pretty funny though).
We play A LOT of games. I inventoried all our games by age/ability and added the amount of players needed. It’s kind of an insane list. I think we have around 115 games. I can blame that partially on homeschooling. Games are so great for teaching so many things!