So whenever I talk to people and they hear I'm homeschooling, most tell me two things: "I could never do that," or "I would never be able to give up all my free time." I usually respond with a smile and hardly ever say anything else. But when the conversation goes past that, the most FAQ I get is, "What do you do with Lucy while you teach Tony?"
This has to be the biggest question I get asked from those who are serious about spending the day well. I mean let's face it, if we are doing CC or thinking about it, it's some serious hard work to keep the house together, organize all the social activities, follow all the blogs for ideas, and not let the kids go crazy when teaching them all this great stuff.
If your house is like mine, you have one very little 3 year old that thinks she is in school too and wants to be in on the action every step of the way. So this post is my latest resource of what I do with my youngest while I teach Tony.
First I hate, hate, hate wasting paper! I mean, I know that is just the way it goes somedays, but my second hate is wasting ink and going back to the store to buy more. Which lately, with all the great resources on And Here We Go, I've been using a lot. Melody has a ton of resources for weeks 9-12, some great Geography cards that she has made up for us to use. And it's free! Yipee!
Ok, I'm digressing... back to Lucy. So what I did this week was somewhat of an experiment. Is it ok to use our children in experiments? Well, I did.
I placed some alphabet letters in a page protector!
Now I know that may not sound amazing to you but here's why it rocked.... I then had her glue different things everyday to the same page! So each morning we peeled off the last night's projects of beans, salt, paint, (whatever) and used the same page again!
So this took care of my biggest problems of using too much ink and paper. Then I made some fuzzy ball magnets and let her spend her last day creating letters, and feeling them as she traced them with her fingers.
This took all of about 10 minutes while the kids watched the magnet fuzzies come to life. I found this on another blog, http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2012/09/homemade-pom-pom-magnets-2.html
I had some minis, so I added them as well. My pics aren't that great, but you get the idea. :)
Then we used them on the letters and whalaa, she had a tactile learning experience!
Traced around and she was happy. I taught Tony while she "played" and practiced writing. You can use the big dots to show them where to start tracing and even draw on the page to show direction.
Next you have them write the letters out with dry erase on the letters and get great penmanship!
All I had to do was tell her where to start. I was doing the happy dance inside. It was a great moment.
Now, I'm not sure where to post these letters. My drop box has not been cooperating very well, so I will do two things here: drop box and email. Just leave a comment with your address and I will send you the file. It's too big to put on the CC3 website even though it's just Powerpoint.
I used different fonts because some letters needed to be switched to look more realistic to handwriting letters.
Here it goes- if anyone out there can download from dropbox, let me know it worked, ok?
I'm going to have ask my sister in law to help me if not. :)
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ReplyDeleteDo you use regular elmers glue? How do you keep her from slinging it everywhere. Maybe because I have a 3 yr old boy this activity seems tasking! :) But he NEEDS to learn this, so I love the idea.
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