Holiday Homeschooling

I've been reading up on homeschooling and I like the idea a lot. At the moment, we aren't planning to homeschool Sean but since we are planning to send Sean to a mandarin based kinddy, I thought I should at least teach him English at home.

Sean's corner

First, I created a corner where we can play and learn together. It's meant to be a place where he is comfortable and know where all his things are. However we keep moving the things here and there so we haven't got to the point where he knows where all his things are.

Then on Friday, I covered his tables with white paper and plastics. It's meant to be a writing table that you can write and wipe off, like a whiteboard, so that Sean can scribble on it anytime he wants. But I found out that Sean doesn't want to wipe off the things he writes on the table. So it doesn't really work the way I imagined it to be.

Writing

Today I got him to write a few words just for a few minutes. At first I just got him to write on a white piece of paper. It turned out terrible because he couldn't manage the size of his letters. So I drew out a box for each letter and that helped a lot.

You can see in the picture. The above words 'red bird' was done at the beginning. He wrote: yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog and lastly brown bear. By the time he got to 'brown bear, his handwriting has improved a lot.

Sean tried using markers, pencils and crayons. Although he doesn't like crayons because he finds them icky, crayon is still the best medium for learning to write. It's easier to control compared to markers or pencils.

I'm not sure how often I can sneak in writing lessons but hopefully more and more often.





I made some sandpaper letters. It's a bit mismatched because I used whatever I had at home. When I ran out of the sandpaper,I couldn't find the same color. I'll try them out on Sean and see if they help with writing.





He still loves playing the computer most. I have to say there are just so many interesting things online that normal games can't really compete with the variety of games available online. But I try to get him do other things so that at least he gets a balanced day, such as playing playdough and cooking games.

We've also been playing with empty boxes, stacking them up, in a row, or puttings things into them. There are lots of things you can do with empty boxes. Just require a lot of energy on my part to do whatever Sean wants to do. LOL.... mummy isn't as energetic as Sean though. =P

Yesterday, we played shaved ice.
Btw, using food coloring stains even if just a little bit. It's probably better to use syrup for coloring. It may be a bit sticky but it shouldn't stain as much as food coloring.




Daddy has wanted to make Sean a Wall.e costume. So today he cut out a box for the body. Unfortunately Sean wanted to paint it red, so it didn't become wall.e after all.

Oh yeah, I made this wrist band as a craft for the playgroup. But the idea was to get Sean remember his name and to learn how to open and close button. It's very easy to make.