Seeing Sight Words

Here's another thing that I had no intention of doing with the boy this year- sight words! But he's keen and I go where he goes. It was his choice to have them on cards, his choice to write them on the whiteboard- he does it often! He likes to pick out the letters that he has done a good job of writing. :-)  And he does it well.... I'm just a little bit proud of my little smart cookie!

The Aftermath

This is our main 'classroom' for doing Tama's much requested 'activities'. This of course is after a morning of doing stuff!

Sorting and Classifying

Sorting and Classifying our dinosaurs into Carnivores and Herbivores. We took printed the picture below and added it into our Dinosaur Study book.

Drawing Dinos

Tama choosing to do some drawing- dinosaurs of course!

Nursery Rhymes and Poems

Each week one of our activities is to add a nursery rhyme or poem to the book we have for such things. We try and read it most days and Tama colours the illustration... purple sheep? Why not?

The Book Basket

This is what we're reading from everyday. It's a collection of our most loved stories and some of the better suited dinosaur stories and non-fiction that we have. We have A LOT of books and could probably read 3 different books every day for a year. But I want Tama to learn to read more via reading- which is how the other kids did it than by depending on phonics and decoding... yes I'm a whole language fan- it's worked for the rest of the crew, very well. Some of these he already knows by memory anyway so he can 'read' them himself. What he has started doing is spotting words that he knows- like 'to' and 'the'. I wasn't intending to 'teach' him to read this year- and I'm still not, but I can see that he's learning to despite me. :-)

Pre-writing

So much of this going on right now- lots of symbols, letters and numbers- the trick is when he asks me to read back what he wrote. We're working on that pencil grip too- normally it's just a matter of saying "Are those two tricky fingers hanging out together again?"

Bushmen

Playground Strength Training

Subitising

Subitising wasn't a concept in the maths curriculum when I went to Teacher's college and quite possibly it's just an Aussie thing- but they were very keen on it at the first Kindy Will went to and I made up this game back then. It's pretty simple- each person has a game board dice and pre-inked stamp. We take turns at rolling and stamp the square beneath each number. Who ever fills their board first wins.... no prizes for guessing who won this one. :-)

Weighty matters

Recently got these scales off ebay- they were a little smaller than I was expecting but they'll do the trick for a while. Will and Tama spent some time working to get the sides as close to balanced as possible.

Lego

Lego is big in our house and it gets created and played with most days. Sometimes to plan, but most often not. There's also a lot of imaginative play that goes with it- most of the fighting, super hero type- some violent which I'm not fond of but I'm super glad for the creativity and imagination going down so I take the bad with the good.

Dino play

Some dinosaur play!!

Writing and Drawing Just Because

Tama choosing for himself to do some drawing and writing. He adds his name to most of the work he does- I'm guessing this is a throw back to Kindy. :-)

Number Works

A super simple activity gluing 11 felt shapes onto out number 11. This goes in a clear file when the glue is dry- we're building up a collection of numbers from one to 20. When we done we might go up in 10's with something small like lentils. I know Tama would love to represent one hundred it's one of his favourite numbers!

Electronic Rex

This kit is from the super cheap range of science and electronic kits that KMart has started building up. (I'm keen to get the anatomical model). The age recommendation on it was 8+ and I struggled at times to understand the instructions- so it wasn't really suitable for Tama- but he did seem to enjoy the process even with all the assistance I had to give. And he's more than happy with the result.

Dinosaur Study

Tama chose Dinosaurs as a subject of study this term. I can't say that I was surprised and luckily we are very well resourced as it's our third round of this particular obsession in the family. :-) I struggled with it at first but I think I underestimated Tama's knowledge and understanding- and aimed too low. We're finding our groove now. Luckily Perth Zoo has got an animatronic Dinosaur display happening so we're looking forward to checking that out.

Playing with Fractions

We've had these blocks since Kieran was little (13 odd years!) Tama enjoys putting them together and finding the patterns.

Poi-E

As part of the Australia Curriculum we have to follow we're expected to do a second language. We're doing Maori- it's not a huge component of our homeschool week and mostly I think we'll do it via songs and such. I'm waiting on a CD from New Zealand to come. But in the meantime we're playing with poi and singing one of Tama's favourite songs - Poi E!

Speech Sounds Memory Game

Another game we use to practice Tama's speech sounds based on the memory card game. The words are just printed on a light paper so he can actually see through a lot of them. He thinks I don't know this- but I like it this way as the more he wins- the more words he practices. :-)

Letter Works

A super simple language activity looking at letter sounds and shapes.