Taking our lessons online

Phew! When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was to mentally plan the activities to be done with my children. Previously, I merely looked for the site my boy have been using through my fb, but somehow it disappeared. I searched through my pinterest and finally googled for phonics lessons, shifted through the many list of phonics programmes being offered and phew! I found it. Now I figured that posting the list I'm using would be a safer bet. So, here is the list.

1. http://www.readingbear.org/ - I loved it for it's flexibility to choose and repeat lessons.
2. http://www.abcfastphonics.com/
3. http://www.progressivephonics.com/
4. http://www.starfall.com/

Not much of a list. But these are the ones I frequent. I might add on to the list as I discover more that we liked.

Since I am doing this, I might as well make a list of our arts lessons online.

1. http://www.kinderart.com/
2. http://eduart4kids.com/
3. http://artforkidshub.com/ (our favourite)

The Ultimate Guide to Everything!

I am very impressed with the generosity of bloggers who worked hard to compile wonderful lists of ideas and resources of various topics. I found this list over at GranolaMom4God. If you ever have any questions on any areas of homeschooling, or even just afterschooling your kids, there sure will be something there that might be able to enlighten you. I am definitely going to spend a lot of time going through some of the topics.

Montessori Inspired Movement activities

Living Montessori Now has a great post on Montessori inspired movement activities. Head over to check it out.

Learning sounds

I found LessonSense from The Homeschool Den. This is definitely a place I will go back to, when I want to teach my children to recognise sounds.

Wow... TED-ED

This http://ed.ted.com/ leads to various of wonderful educational videos from various subjects.

Musings and Learning Big/Medium/Small

            I have long realised that I cannot do the same activities with both my kids, on the same day. I mean, the activities may be suitable for them, but they have different level of concentration and 'willingness' to attend to the activities. Most of the time, Jay is the enthusiastic learner and finished all that I planned for him (sometimes even asking for more). On the other hand, Joy's set of activities will keep on piling in her basket. If she only did 1 activity today, all the rest will go to her basket, to be continued next time. The problem is, activities keep on piling in, as I prepared more and more activities for Jay. I always prepare 2 sets of each activity, if I think Joy will be able to do them. I don't want to prepare one activity 2 times. Most of the time, I consider myself only planning for one, preparing for two. Jay is way ahead of his sister, and paving the way (activities) for her. Recently, I made another change in my approach. I have reverted back to my earlier approach with Joy - Folder games and laminated worksheets. However, the pile of activities will still have to be done. Slowly. But surely.

This is an activity I do with Jay the other day. I wanted him to learn to recognise the English words for 'big,medium and small'. He already know the words in Chinese.

 I read the English words to him, asked him to help me spell them out loud, and match with the Chinese cards.

Then I gave him pictures of different sizes to sort. When he is done, and I checked, he paste them onto the paper with the correct label. Big and small is easy for him, but he needs reminding with medium sizes.

# I'm going to do this with Joy soon, but she needs real objects to start with.

Excuse me for the absence.

This week is the first week of school after a 2 week holiday. I have not been doing anything with the kids, partly because things have been busy at work, but mainly because I am planning to reshuffle my 'afterschool' plans. After sending Joy to my parents for the weekends for about 2 months, I learnt more techniques on how to teach her, and Jay has been improving in his vocabulary, life skills and maths. (he can even do simple subtraction mentally!) I am planning to incorporate more of science and written language for Jay (perhaps in terms of unit study) and of course continue with my previous goals for Joy (but modifying the materials). The plans will only be a rough guide for me, as I fully know that I need to follow their pace. Sometimes they are quick to understand, but sometimes they need more exposure to certain topics. I've taken out the many books I've read and forgotten, - on how to modify learning materials and how to teach children who needs special attention. There's lots of materials to prepare and I need to modify materials for Joy. (It won't do Jay any harm too, as he is still young, and the modified materials are more fun than the typical textbooks and workbooks approach). I don't mind preparing the materials, as both the kids will be using them. They are more or less in the same level of preschool. My approach for now is to prepare materials for the next 2 weeks, have 4 days of 'school' at home, and use the extra 2 days to catch up on anything that we missed. I plan to schedule in time to prepare materials for them at night, after they sleep. I'll see how things go when I start this approach tomorrow. Hopefully I don't get too tired!

Curriculum plans

I can't rest until I come up with some kind of 'solutions' or plans. So while the boy is sleeping, and I am resting with the girl, I came up with various ideas on how to modify their curriculum plans, yet again. So, here is the tentative plan. I might change my mind, in future, based on how they are adapting to it.

Joy

Language
- Start teaching sight words.
- Sight words include 3 languages - English, BM and Chinese. I think she will have more exposure in English and Chinese and just the minimum for BM. ( I can't totally ignore BM, as this is so required in her future education locally)
- She will still be exposed to phonics and such. She will get to do Get Ready For The Code A, which is just a relaxed approach to phonemic awareness. ( I am not forcing her mastery in this - in fact, there's no way of assessing her, unless she opens her mouth and sound the words, are there?)

Goals
- To use as a mode of communication (PECS)
- Can participate in reading alouds by pointing to the words.

Maths.
- Continue with counting (1 - 15), number names, matching sequencing, patterning, classification, number bonds within 5, equal, not equal, less/more, and addition within 5
- Work on more difficult visual discrimination worksheets.

Science
- Continue with colours and shapes (names and drawing)
- boy/girl
- body parts
- big/small
- long/short
- wet/dry
- rough/smooth
- tall/short
- Hard/soft
- light/heavy
- hot/cold
- push/pull

Handwriting
- Handwriting worksheets from letter of the week,
- Practising Chinese strokes and simple Chinese characters.
- Tracing/writing sight words and homework from school.

Fine motor skills
- Colouring with colour pencil
- play dough
- Puzzles
- educational games

Jarrett

Language
- Alphabets - Letter of the week (from COAH, 1+1+1=1, School express)
- Pre-primer Sight words
- Nursery rhymes, poem
- Phonics (Get Ready for the Code)

Starting Goals
- Recognise and write own name. Recognise own Chinese name, and family members' names.
- Recognise and write uppercase and lowercase alphabets
- able to read simple story books (point out vocabularies learnt)
- recite poems and nursery rhymes (Chinese and English)

Maths
- Continue with counting (1- 20), number names (recognise and write numbers 1- 20, spell names orally 1-10), matching, sequencing, patterning, classification, number bonds within 5, equal, not equal, less/more, skip counting, counting backwards and addition within 5
- Visual discriminations.

Science (same as Joy's)

Others;
- colouring with crayons, colour pencils, painting
- creativity in building blocks
- sequencing stories, telling stories based on pictures