Why would you do that to yourself?
I have been asked this again and again! I can see homeschooling is more accepted now. I don't get strange stares or weird looks anymore. It does seem like more people sympathize with me though.
At a friend's kids birthday party. I got 'Why would you do that to yourself?' and 'I commend you for doing it'
Its not like I am fighting in the army - guys. I know schooling your child is not everybody's cup of tea. But its not that hard. Also I have excellent help! Both hubby and my maid are good resources at giving me the break when I need it ... as I need it.
Besides I like schooling Isaac. He is an great learner. He does have his annoying moments, but if I can associate anything with an animal and teach him... he absorbs it like a coffee filter!
(Photo credit ... Veena aunty ... In think)
I had not expected to do much in June. Suresh was travelling for 13 days and I had planned not to push myself. But the two weeks Suresh was away worked out rather well. Ziva took a nap every morning for about 45 minutes, which gave me some time with Isaac. You may think 45 minutes is a short time ... but to a pre-schooler its seems infinite.
I found a ton of workbooks from Reliance with incentives - STARS (I will write a separate blog on the stars.) and it is helping me work through things systematically and stay organized. We started June with stuff Isaac already knew.We covered phonically pronouncing alphabets. There were a couple of books that went from A-Z simply asking the child to guess the word.
Of course Isaac did fabulously and got a star on each page. I guess it was good boost to his confidence. Since he does not like phonics .... getting the confidence back into him was a big deal. I tried rhyming words after this and he did not take to it. So we jumped to ending alphabets. I did not know that it was hard for child to understand what sound a word ends with. He knew starts with ... he did not know ends with! But a couple of tries and he figured that one too.
One great success was match the columns. A nice workbook which I got a year ago from D- Mart had words on one side and pictures to match up on the other side. I really have no idea what gets the kick going in kids, but drawing a line from a picture to the word got Isaac all excited. He kept asking to do more and more. In the process I realized that he had memorized a few sight words like 'Owl' and 'Orange'.
Then there were numbers. I left him with a tracing sheet on 1 to 10 and when I returned they were all very neatly traced. Tracing I realize goes very well on some days and poorly on other days. If caught on a good day he would trace anything I asked him to. On a bad day he would doodle with his pencil. I guess doodling is acceptable for a 3.5 year old.
Isaac was already done with capital letters and so it was time for little letters. I decided that since he loved finger painting so much, I would try letting him trace with his fingers. I printed out an alphabet and let him paint it with his fingers. He had a blast and we were going through two and three alphabets a day. I believe tracing with the fingers gives a child a lot of control over his movements. By this time Ziva would be awake and would join us in finger painting. Ziva would paint capital alphabets.
Then there was plenty to read. Now Isaac loves reading the same story again and again. I decided I would read at least one new story everyday to him. Thanks to one gigantic book from Veena Aunty and some book sharing with Sonal Aunty we have a full stock of books. I haven't been able to keep up my one -new story a day ... but we got a good number a new stories going.
There was 'Snappy the Crocodile' ... 'The elephant child' and tons of Aesops fables. Isaac has definitely increased in patience as far as listening to stories that are couple pages long with fewer pictures in them. I may be getting a little ahead of myself when I say ... that he is very close to sitting through a chapter of Narnia pretty soon. But I am so excited for him. Thanks to Kanchan Aunty ... I now know how to grasp if he has understood the story. He loves summarizing them to Ziva and I even occasionally get asked if I want to eat some 'Crocodile'. This brings me to role play.
While Ziva, at 20 months has started role play, Isaac has only recently gotten into it. He loves playing 'me'.
'Ziva sit in one place and listen' ....'Ziva you dont want to learn?' ....
But the best so far is Isaac turning on his imaginary gas at a coffee table and making me crocodile fry. He even pours the oil into the pan the way I do! Clumsily!
We also managed to complete two craft projects. Well I guess they were my projects that Isaac helped with by hand stamping them. A father's day card for Suresh and a birthday scrap book for best bud Dhruv.
There is a lot more to talk about ... but I wont bore you ... I guess you get he point when I say for the month of June ... homeschool was very satisfying.
