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Angie Mc
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Home educating moms of littles, share your experience teaching and learning with your young children! Vote for as many options that fit your situation.
If you have time, share more. What do you like about home educating your young children? Do you teach them as you were taught? Do you teach the same matter that you were taught? Do you follow their lead and adapt your teaching to their needs? What is your favorite educational activity that you do together? Tell us more!
Thank you.
Love,
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Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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Angie Mc
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| Posted: Nov 03 2010 at 7:06pm | IP Logged
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My little guy is busy, busy, busy, and loves to just hang out with me, his brothers, his dog, and his toys. I have a daily goal for him to
read (look at books on his own and have others read books to him)
write (draw pictures, color in coloring books, complete mazes, etc.)
math (play card/board games, count, measure, legos, manipulatives, etc.)
So call us self-designed, basic, informal  .
Love,
__________________
Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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Mackfam
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All the time, we...
...READ!!!! My littles and I have always enjoyed rich picture books as well as meatier read alouds. There is always reading! Sometimes these are my choices, and sometimes these choices are based on their interests and I enjoy the freedom to be able to do that!
...PLAY!!! My littles enjoy exploring and playing, and I enjoy granting them that time and the freedom to do just that! One of my favorite things about learning with littles is their natural sense of wonder which is infectious!!
Sometimes we...
...Use Montessori presentations and activities. These are chosen by the child. Sometimes they choose to work with materials I've presented...and sometimes not. And both are fine!
...Do fine arts projects. I don't stress about this - sometimes we have an art/craft project...and sometimes we don't. My littles enjoy this time and if we aren't doing a planned craft/art activity they will be found coloring, painting, carving with clay, scissoring strips of paper, and gluing. A particular favorite for my little people is to stamp alphabet stamps (or other stamps) on paper and make little books.
...Learn fun songs. I'm not good at arranging this and I'm glad my oldest dd has taken over this part of our day because the littles love this!!! And, I do like hearing, "...round and round the Mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel..." as sung by my cute little 2yo!!
...do Math work. Math is very informal in the early years for us. We find math opportunities in informal ways on an almost daily basis and this works very well for us until the elementary years.
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I design and map out our general plan and a reading list, but we happily divert our attention to other pursuits and passions when needed. My little people thrive on READING TIME and PLAYING TIME!!!
I particularly enjoy the freedom afforded by designing our own plan/curriculum which allows me to follow their interests at any time...and return to our gentle little plan as needed.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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Angel
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| Posted: Nov 04 2010 at 8:18am | IP Logged
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I voted informal and other.
We often do longish project-type learning. It's not really curriculum and it often is informal, but it's different than just reading and providing opportunties to play. (Which we also do, of course!) Lots of hands on art and outside time.
In fact, the art is something we're struggling to re-include since we moved to this house.
I do use workbooks for handwriting and math and phonics, in addition to Montessori materials for those same things, but we also use those in a pretty informal way.
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Angela
Mom to 9, 7 boys and 2 girls
Three Plus Two
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JennGM
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Mackfam wrote:
All the time, we...
...READ!!!! My littles and I have always enjoyed rich picture books as well as meatier read alouds. There is always reading! Sometimes these are my choices, and sometimes these choices are based on their interests and I enjoy the freedom to be able to do that!
...PLAY!!! My littles enjoy exploring and playing, and I enjoy granting them that time and the freedom to do just that! One of my favorite things about learning with littles is their natural sense of wonder which is infectious!! |
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I am very informal in our approach, and my basic "plan" is like Jen mentions above. I have a 7 yo and almost 3 yo. Right now my almost 3 year old is working on puzzles, but they are included in our play area.
I have to admit that I am not always rigid in school time for my 2nd grader when I see the boys playing productively together. I hear little things like big brother teaching his little brother the alphabet, building things together, etc. I consider that learning on so many different levels.
Reading is huge, huge, huge here. Little brother usually enjoys everything we read together. Picture books, chapter books...the whole gamut.
Videos, audio books and stories, and music play a large role.
I've just reincorporated our easel into the kitchen to encourage more drawing and writing, and it's been great for both boys. I found a little note yesterday reading:
Mommy Daddy.
Not only touching, but so encouraging for me when my son before was allergic to all writing and coloring!
I'm also finding there's a lot of osmosis learning by little brother. When we start lessons, he wants to sit by and participate in some way. I gave him paper, crayons, white board and markers (if we're not using). He listens, and participates when he can. He had great fun helping out with the Venn Diagram in our RightStart Math. He still talks about that. 
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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violingirl
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I try to have an atmosphere of education around here- there are books in every room, we read a lot every day, we ask a lot of questions and find the answers together. We make a lot of things too. :) The best answer that would describe us would be "doing lots of projects, mostly spontaneous, a few planned" 
With my 5yo we have a formal 30ish minutes to work on reading-related work and a bit of hand writing. I give him a new math lesson once or twice a week and then he works with those materials through the rest of the week.
I do provide a framework to our reading (like we have books about 1 continent each month; this month is Australia) and projects grow out of that. But our "formal" time is pretty short. We read about science topics that come up and art projects seem to grow spontaneously from our reading. If I feel like we haven't done a certain thing in a long time (like painting or clay or something) I will plan to pull those things out.
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Erin
DS (2005) DS (2007) DD (2012)
Mama In Progress
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Grace&Chaos
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| Posted: Nov 04 2010 at 9:57am | IP Logged
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I voted for informal atmosphere and design your own. I never have a set bullet point day but just a skeleton for the year and hopefully all will be taken care of.
violingirl wrote:
| I try to have an atmosphere of education around here- there are books in every room, we read a lot every day, we ask a lot of questions and find the answers together. We make a lot of things too. :) The best answer that would describe us would be "doing lots of projects, mostly spontaneous, a few planned" |
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I have to admit this describes me with the littles. In our family room/kitchen area I keep all our "educational" toys (they are used while the girls are doing school work and focus on certain skills). These are mostly puzzles, pegs, magnets, arts/crafts materials, chalk ...
I do have books in every room of our home, but our reading is not so spontaneous. Our book baskets have a purpose (not always executed as planned). I start reading and hopefully all the littles listen and we usually sit on our living room rug. Sometimes it seems that they take turns and one will bring me a book to read (by himself, so he can sit on my lap without his brothers being around  )
I loved doing my version of the alphabet path (my kids loved this). We're doing it again with two different dc. This helps me get them to master things such as numbers and letters. (it really serves the purpose of keeping me focused) An eventually move to phonics.
While I have tried and written in other post my attempt to getting a system down - I haven't  . I seem to just follow my dc on this. We started 100 easy lessons this year but quickly stopped. It served its purpose though. My ds picked up on the say it slow, then say it fast and is now blending. I have taken a CM approach of using both phonics and introducing site words to him. We are making flashcards as we go along.
The rest of the time is spent playing indoors and outside in our yard. 
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Blessings,
Jenny
Mom to dds(00,03) and dss(05,06,08,09)
Grace in Loving Chaos
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Erin
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I voted 'informal atmosphere' and 'self-designed curriculum' as that covers it best.
My daily goal at bare minimum is to read some picture books and have dd6 practice her phonic sounds and read to me.
On a good day we manage some 'table-time' of Montessori type activities and a Nature 'search' in the garden.
An excellent day would include craft/art.
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
Seven Little Australians
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LucyP
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My daughter is 3.5 and she joins in with circle time and with our daily main lesson if it is something she can particpate in - so when we did compass work, she came on the walk and had a map to "colour in", and when we did about cave paintings she dictated her ideas about cave art to me, and did a cave painting in a cave under our table, but I am trying to teach her numbers or letters yet - she has learned colours, shapes and how to count from life, and will not do more until she is 4 and a half at the soonest. Mostly she plays, has stories read to her, draws/paints, and helps me with things around the house.
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Mimip
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Just getting around to this...
I'm with Erin, for the most part we read, and read and read. We are working through BFIAR but not with all the activities just good titles to read and things for Mom to discuss informally.
We have a Math, Phonics and Handwriting book for my ds 4 but he just plays pretty much and loves to draw and listen to Leap Frog and Audio books.
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In Christ,
Mimi
Wife of 16 years to Tom, Mom of DD'00, DD'02, '04(in heaven) DS'05, DS'08 and DS '12
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4Real Forums : Nurturing the Years of Wonder
Topic: How do you educate your littles? (
Topic Closed)
