Touch and Feel

Today I took a box and covered it with a blanket, then placed items with different textures and temperatures into it. A would then put his hand inside without looking and describe what he felt. It took some coaxing from me for the words to come "is it soft? Hot? Cold? Hard?" Once he got what we were doing he was on fire and wanting more and more items added. Once he had finished with the item we passed it onto G who tasted it thoroughly. We had frozen bread, a candle, lots of different toys, a piece of forgotten toast from breakfast, a satin nightie, rolled up belt... anything I could think of that had an interesting texture.



This was not only about recognizing textures but also about describing them. Its also a great way to talk about different senses. G also got a lot out of the different textures, helping to expand her world.

D-Day

Well, tomorrow is D-Day. The school term officially starts so I thought that was as good a time as any to start our journey too! We have the spare room all set up as a play/learning room and ideas a plenty in my head.

The plan is at this stage to just take things slowly. We would like to adopt an unschooling philosophy as much as we can. In saying that we wont be leaving everything up to fate, but would like to incorporate our learning opportunities through every day rather than a sit down lesson. I will talk more on unschooling further on in the blog and wont bog down the first post too much! So today we chose a name for our school and baked some scones. Of course there were lots of other learning moments in our day but these were thought out and planned rather than just happening.

The Name! - Well 'A' chose the name of our school. After a lot of deliberation we are now known as the 'Jones School'. We threw ideas back and forth and he settled on this one because "because its for Mum and Dad and G and me, we are all Jones" - cant argue with that logic! So we made a sign to go on the door. I plan on making lots of these signs to show how A is progressing with not only his coloring but also his handwriting skills... when we get there.

The Scones! - We use baking and cooking a lot when we have our 'teaching' hats on. Its great for hand eye coordination (pouring and stirring) and of course you have all of the measurements and recipe reading as well. A can now recite the ingredients in our favorite recipes and is starting to understand measurements. We talked about volume today. I showed him how the same amount of milk looked in different containers. Then he drank some of the milk and we looked again. :-)

So, that was our first official day. We had fun. It was VERY hot here so most of the day was just spent hibernating in the house trying to stay cool. But we made the most of it and I feel like A went to bed knowing more than he did when he woke up... and thats the point I guess. Now if we can just get G to GO to bed we will be sorted.

GNOMES

" A, Did you know that you and G are my GNOMES?"
"No."
"Do you know what a GNOME is?" Looked at some pictures online. "Did you know that GNOME is an acronym?" (he looks at me like I am totally cracked) "An acronym is when the letters in a word say something. GNOME means Guarding Naturally Over Mother Earth"
A looks thoughtful. "Earth is a planet"
"yes it is"
"Me live on earth"
"yes you do"
"G live on earth. G is a nomb"
"G is my GNOME. Just like you"