August Activities: Home Education

I feel like the boys are getting bored with learning about plants and gardening.

The chickens are still fun for them to check in on and learn about…especially now that they are laying eggs.

Joe is constantly asking how they lay the eggs. This morning, I went to check for eggs and there were two birds in the boxes. Joe said, “No eggs, but two are working on it!”

The swales, bugs and kittens still hold their interest, and they still check for strawberries daily, but what they’ve really been interested in lately are puzzles, dancing, playing golf and throwing balls. And, the big question around the house is “Mommy, can we do a ‘speriment?”

This month, we will focus our activities on movement, letters, shapes and numbers.

We’ll hop, kick, throw balls, play golf and dance. Joe and Jake both have been wanting to do puzzles so we’ll have a puzzle blitz. I’ll set puzzles of varying difficulty around two tables and the boys will move from station to station putting them together.

We’ll draw shapes, trace letters and start drawing some letters on their own. Joe has gotten really good at drawing squares and triangles, and copying the letters H, E and A so we’ll work on the rest of the alphabet. He has also been pointing out letters when he sees them, so we are going to try practicing our abc’s outside, using leaves, sticks, flowers and other things found in nature to create letters.

We’ll make treasure stones where I’ll put objects like marbles, dice, quarters and other small objects for the kids to find and count by breaking the stones open with their hands.

We’ll tell stories from pictures. Joe loves to do that. I found a book at Kroger called Spooky Night. It’s a Read It, Write It and Draw It book from Innovative Kids. I read it to Joe and then showed him the pictures in the Write It section, asking him to tell it back to me. He remembered a lot of what happened in the story, but he also used his imagination, making up additional details. It was a lot of fun for both of us!

We’ll make bubble snakes and answer the question “what is a bubble?”

And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll play. Joe and Jake both like to play “store” using play money and selling things like pens and cups of coffee. Everything is a ridiculous price like $42 for a pen and $80 for a cup of coffee, but both boys are learning about money and pricing.

They also like to pretend to be shape bandits, monster hunters, secret spys and run around shouting “emergency, there’s an emergency”.

Jake probably doesn’t really “get” the concepts yet, but I’m amazed at how quickly he is learning by copying his brother, and he’s right there trying the same activities. He pulls me over the the couch and, holding a picture book, he points and asks “wassat?” His version of “what’s that”.

They learn something new every day…and I do too.