Simple starting point for a 2 year old?

[dubhreubel]

I'm looking for some simple (free) activities or resources to start some simple home-school basics for my daughter... Partly to get us into the habit, partly because I need more sit-down things to do with her once the new bean gets here (in a couple more months) and mostly because she really seems to need a bit more challenge than free-play and reading books with me is getting her.

She has very few words, so that is an area I'd like to encourage, and a limitation I need to work around when teaching her. I'm planning on making her a felt board with felt colours, shapes, numbers and letter to stick to it to help her learn those things (plus, it would be fun!)

TIA for any help or advice

[sapphire_chan]

http://whatdidwedoallday.blogspot.com/ has a list of Montessori homeschool blogs for 0-3 year olds. Tons and tons of activities. DD especially likes the fishing game we made after seeing it on a blog through there. (fyi, all the kids in those blogs are advanced, so don't worry if your dd isn't doing half the stuff they are. I have to remind myself of that a LOT )

Reading to your dd should help with language considerably, particularly if you encourage and follow her lead on exploring all aspects of the book.

Is she in the "what's that?" stage for learning new words? I found that dd learned words more readily in that stage if I could narrow down what she was asking about. So flash cards (find pictures of stuff around your home, park, town, glue to 3x5 cards, clear contact paper to "laminate" so they're more durable)
Makes it a lot easier to tell that "pomas" is actually "hippopotamus" and it's easier to give appropriate feed back to later "pomas" remarks. ("pomas" progressed and now sounds more like "hip-penis" )

Signing was/is also awesome for helping to translate toddler talk in order to be more responsive and to be able to model the words she is immediately interested in.

I read somewhere that how much we talk to them has less bearing on how quickly/well they learn to speak than how much response their attempts at speaking get.

Connect four is fun even when they can't play yet and would work well on a table.

The felt board idea is really great.

[dubhreubel]

Thank you! That was a very helpful post!

I sometimes think her speaking is limited because DH and I are first-time parents, and might miss some of her attempts She also communicates quite well with motions and noises, and I think that makes her less inclined to bother with *real* words, you know? She was also an early walker, and iirc, it's normal when one is early that the other be late. Signing was/is a bust because I can't remember them, I'm not good with languages, and ASL is no exception unfortunately. She definitely does "what's that" it's one of her favorite games, along with us asking her "where's that" and her pointing it out, but so far she isn't really imitating the words very often, once in a while she tries, but mostly she likes the game without the speaking part lol.

I really like that blog, I subscribed, and I'll be poring over it later We definitely explore books more than reading them, she has a great attention span for things like that, but isn't always interested in listening to the story... I think it's more fun her way lol.

The felt board was actually my DHs idea (he's very supportive of homeschooling so far) and I like the connect four idea, I'll see if I can't find one! I think she would love that!

[mrsfrenchy]

Originally Posted by dubhreubel

I sometimes think her speaking is limited because DH and I are first-time parents, and might miss some of her attempts She also communicates quite well with motions and noises, and I think that makes her less inclined to bother with *real* words, you know?

As for helping her transition to using more 'real' words, its important that you actually 'require' her to use them (which sounds awfully cold when I say it that way, but its really not).

for example, when my DD was around 18months (earlier even), I knew that she could say "up" and that she knew what it meant and how to use it. So when she came over to me wanting to be picked up and was reaching and grunting and such, i would say " Oh, do you want up?. Say "up!" and I can pick you up" Occasionally, she would be too tired or hungry or whatever to comply and I would go ahead and pick her up. But doing this helps reinforce the behavior of using words to communicate with others.

Also, not using her nonsense words its important at this stage. For instance, if she calls her blanket a "beep" (like my DD did at one point), I wouldn't go around saying "Oh, here is your beep, DD." If she says "Want my beep," you can say "Oh you want your blanket? Here you go. You love your blanket!"

My DD is two and we do a lot of puzzles (both the kind where you simply insert the shape and beginner jigsaw puzzles, they have puzzles that just consist of 2 or 3 pieces), we do lacing beads (to work on fine motor skills, which is important to get ready for writing), we go to lots of different places and talk about how and why certain things are (ex.: "we have to pay the cashier before we can use a toy or eat the food we bought." "we have to wait for the red light to turn green because green means go and red means stop." "its fall and its getting colder, so the leaves used to be green but now they're turning red. soon they'll be brown and fall off the trees")

We color (on plain paper, so that we can draw whatever comes to our minds and not be limited by the coloring book). We use www.starfall.com to let her get used to how a computer works and learn that letters represent sounds (and to make her feel 'big' since we use the computer a lot too). I let her cook, crack eggs, etc.

When we play with playdough, we might talk about which ball is bigger and which ball is smaller; which ones are the same and which are different.

There really isn't a reason for 'school' at this age. Kids (especially toddlers) learn through play. But you can make sure that your playing is 'educational' enough just by mentioning concepts that you and I take for granted and by encouraging their curiousity.

[mrsfrenchy]

Oh, I also wanted to mention that for encouraging vocabulary, just talk talk talk. Example: you're cooking lunch while she watches or plays nearby. talk about what you're doing. ask her what she thinks (even if she doesn't answer). "mmm. What do you want for lunch? [pause] I think I'm going to cook some yummy fajitas. I'm going to cut up these peppers with a knife. They're red and green. Aren't they pretty and shiny? [pause]. Ok, I'm going to put them in the pan. Oh! That's hot! See all the steam? [pause]. Ok, lets add the chicken now. Can you open up the refrigerator with me?" and you just continue like that. By using lots of context cues (holding out the peppers for her to see when you're talking about them. going over to the frige when you ask her to open it, etc.), you help build her vocabulary. Even if she doesn't say those words yet, she's learning what they mean.

Also, about the numbers and colors, I've learned that at some point, kids get really curious about those things. but if you try to force them before they're ready, it just won't stick. So theres nothing wrong with talking about them and labeling them as you see them ("Oh look, there's three ducks over by the pond." or "I'll kick the red ball, while you kick the green ball"), but don't try to force the issue if she doesn't seem interested.
I tried to teach DD1 colors and she showed absolultely no interest for months. She call everything blue. Then suddenly she started asking lots of questions about what color everything was and she knew most of her colors within a couple of weeks. Now all she wants to do is count things (she recently made me count FIFTY dogs in a picture book). They'll tell you when they're ready if you just provide an environment that exposes them to these things.

[kittie313]

www.letteroftheweek.com is one of my favorite preschool sites, and you'll find links all over it for more sites that you can use. Others I do often with my preschoolers (3yo and 4 1/2yo) are

www.first-school.ws
www.homeschoolshare.com (free lapbooks and unit studies, some can be done with a 2yo also as my youngest did some as young as 13mo with her big sisters)

Another thing would be to get a catalog from www.sonlight.com and use the list from core P3/4 at the library (or better, get the parent guide for P3/4 so you have a list of every single story in those treasuries, then since she's 2yo do just the first trimester stories over and over until you are so sick of them you don't ever want to see them again, then read them one more time LOL). Reading to your child daily will definitely help with speech issues, my 4yo has speech delays and one of the things we do is reading a LOT daily. Now that she's 4 1/2, she also is wanting to learn to read now and I've discovered a huge speech improvement with her once we started working on letter names and sounds and working on putting them together to sound out cvc words. I'm talking she went from 20% verbal to about 80% in the 5 months we've been working on reading. I don't know if it is that she's getting more one on one time with me because of reading lessons or that the phonics that we're working on is helping her brain make connections stronger or what, but it is working for us.

So all that to say wear out the library card and get a lot of bookshelves LOL

[kittie313]

And I totally agree with the comments above on the speech and vocabulary encouragement. We did all that stuff too with our 4yo dd before doing phonics at 4yo to increase vocabulary and work on clarity and frequency.

[dubhreubel]

Thank you guys, I'm making a list of ideas from this

[kgianforti]

Carol's Affordable Curriculum is what I started my big girl on when she was about 2.5-ish.

http://www.carolscurriculum.com/

Very cute curriculum!

I also second Sonlight's P3/4 - I'm using that with my almost 2 year old right now.

[onyxravnos]

sonlight is A ++ and just drop the bible books to make it secular. GREAT reading lists! No need to but the teacher manual just use the book list.

carols affordable curriculum isn't free but it's cheap.. i like to have some on hand for when we are sick or right after i have a baby... or just 'off' days because everything is included the only planing i have to do is dig out the crayons, glue, and scissors.

I like to pick a weekly theme and then choose 1 official 'school' thing to do each day per # of years old based on the theme......

so say... Fogs is your theme - monday we make green play dough and hop like frogs and make froggy noises tuesday we make green paint thumb print frogs and read book about frogs. etc etc

http://barefootedfamily.blogspot.com/ is my blog and i focus on waldorf inspired preschool learning.

[AngelBee]

www.amblesideonline.org Choose some selections from the Year 0.

Also www.oldfashionededucation.com Kinder curriculum (Just choose one and start reading it aloud. )

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by mrsfrenchy

As for helping her transition to using more 'real' words, its important that you actually 'require' her to use them (which sounds awfully cold when I say it that way, but its really not).

I'm glad that's worked for you. Other reading I've done (and I'm sorry I can't recall where, since I've done waaaaay too much reading on the topic to know where everything comes from ) suggested that simply modeling the correct words will get a typical child able to use them.

And sure enough, dd is now actually saying "up" or even "up please!" () instead of whining.