How do you transition from play to homeschool? - Page 2

[zebaby]

Originally Posted by SweetSilver 

BTW, zebaby, I love your avatar picture.  

LOL I was wondering if anyone ever noticed that!

[SweetSilver]

My two girls are both precocious, but they are different.  My 5yo is all but obsessed with the alphabet.  She always enjoys writing her alphabet.  Yesterday she was forming letters in the bath with a hair that was stuck on the side of the wet tub.  Today she found 5 little pieces of string leftover from a project and started forming letters with them while I read Harry Potter to my 7yo.  She writes (what she knows) and draws with ease, and when she tries reading she looks at every single letter and sounds them out with painful slowness.

DD1 has always been a champion listener, like your son.  We've been through the Hobbit, LOTR, and almost through the 5th HP book (i must look into the Spiderwick Chronicles).  She has never been more than modestly interested in writing or drawing until recently when she became more comfortable with her reading skills.  She is just starting to read on her own.  (She is self-taught, with some assistance, of course.)  She is an impatient sight reader but has learned to slow herself down a little to try sounding things out.  Actually, learning some Spanish in books has helped, being so easy to sound out she doesn't have to keep guessing.

Anyhow, now she is comfortable with her letters and doing some writing.  Now her letters flow, and I think before they were just so meaningless and had no relation to anything.  She had to power through every letter in a word.  Now she can read and spell, she is much much more interested in her letters.  Now, they have a point.

Perhaps for your son, what he learns needs to be connected to something.  Perhaps he could care less about letters right now, for example, because letters on their own hold no interest.  I'm really just guessing.  But writing letters in shaving foam, for example, while it sounds fun to you just might seem pointless and uninteresting to him.  ??????

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by SweetSilver 

Perhaps for your son, what he learns needs to be connected to something.  Perhaps he could care less about letters right now, for example, because letters on their own hold no interest.  I'm really just guessing.  But writing letters in shaving foam, for example, while it sounds fun to you just might seem pointless and uninteresting to him.  ??????

 And truth be told, there aren't a whole lot of adults who sit around writing letters in shaving cream for their own entertainment. I can imagine a child getting curious and wanting to briefly join in if he saw his mom sitting out in the patio and doing this on her own for fun, but that not a likely scene. So they can't help but get that there's an agenda, but it's one that most that age can't relate to.  - Lillian

[greenemami]

I found what the PP's have said about needing the learning to be connected to something very true.  For instance, using the shaving cream letters example, that is something that dd would have done for less than a minute and been done with.  We tried doing the letter and number of the week thing and it was just...blah.  Neither of was really interested, the "lesson" lasted for 5 minutes while it took 30 minutes of prep work planning and printing out pictures, etc., it just felt a little contrived and silly (for us, I don't mean to criticize if this is what works for others!) But, dd loves to write names, so we just ended up spelling out the names of everyone in the family and incidentally covering most of the letters of the alphabet while she wrote them happily all out.

She loves to be read to just like your ds, OP-I was so amazed that she could sit through long chapters at the age of 4 and still beg for more afterwards! She likes the idea of learning to read, but kind of freezes up when I try to get her to practice, so we are just letting it go for now-I offer to help her sound out a word, but if she doesn't want to, we let it go.  She is still very little, so I am not worried about it for now. 

So, I think it is fine to just kind of throw things out during the day without calling it "Learning" or making it official.  I do struggle with this too-I am kind of taking a break from most things I had planned this week because I'm  busy with a house project, and I have to remind myself that she is still learning even without doing pre-planned lessons :)  

[sewchris2642]

Haven't read any of the posts so sorry if this has been already addressed.  We didn't start formal schooling until age 6 (mandatory school age in CA).  Before that it was informal learning through play.  Most of which occurred in the morning so the trasition to a more formal schooling was seamless.  Most books were read in the morning so adding in learning to read was a natural progression.  Playing with play dough and drawing on paper carried over into learning to write.  Cutting and pasting segued into cutting out magazine pictures that started with the letter of the day and was phonics.  Colors and shapes led into math along with counting and sorting.  Since my first loved workbooks, it was easy to add formal academics and the others just followed along because it was normal to have school in the mornings. 

It was different with my 4th as he was an only child.  He went to public school the same year as his youngest sister graduated high school.  He didn't home school until 6th grade.  Since he is an auditory learner, we watch a lot of video (on TV and online) for history and some science.