Homeschool Preschool Weekly Recap {Age 3}

H is 3 and 2 months old, and loves Homeschool Preschool.  Not only does he join us for Circle Time and Stations (logic puzzzles and math manipulatives) in the morning, but he doesn't nap anymore so he participates in ALL our school work.  Even with Kindergarten-level work I'm having a hard time challenging this sharp little guy.  I think it's a good thing, however, to give him a majority of easy-mastery activities at the moment to keep school light and fun.  Here's a sample of what we did this week...

H is doing a lot of phonics activities to reinforce concepts like beginning sounds, ending sounds, rhyming, etc..  I have to keep finding/inventing phonics activities for him - the file folder game he's working on in the picture takes him about a minute to complete.

I introduced H to spelling this week.  He's really code at decoding (reading), but coding is really important too and is more of a challenge.

He reads one or two stories a day from the All About Reading first reader (called "Run Bug Run").  Right now he sounds out all the words, and then puts them together at the end of the sentence.  I'm not trying to get him to just say a word if he recognizes it because I think that sounding everything out phonetically is really good practice.  H should be ready for more variety of early readers soon.  He's always very proud of himself after he reads.

H's big sister E (5 years old) likes to "play teacher".  She actually teaches him a lot - sometimes I wonder if she's more effective than I am.  In the picture above, she made him a math worksheet where he needs to color in the rest of the shapes to complete the pattern.

H loves his worksheets.  Dot paints are always a favorite...

 

All the cutting and pasting is great fine-motor-skills practice, as well.  I love that he's also working on cognitive skills like pattern recognition at the same time.

The online Brain Challenges are a favorite activity as well (H likes doing him 'computer work' on the iPad since he hasn't mastered drag-and-drop with the mouse yet, while his sisters work on laptops).

This week I introduced H to a new activity - a plastic plane he can take apart and put back together (with a little screwdriver).  He's been carrying it around all week and re-assembling it multiple times a day.

The Color Code game was taken out a lot this week.  H can do all the challenges in the first level, and soon I'll give him some puzzles from the second level (there are four levels in all).

We do some sort of art experience every afternoon.  H has a lot of fun doing art, and usually requires a good scrubbing afterwards.

It was a great learning week for my sweet, independent little boy!