Week In Review

Week of 10/8-10/13

Summary:  

Non-Academic Skills:
   We are continuing to focus on teaching our son to say "No, please", "Minute, please", or "My turn, please" instead of just "NO!"  We are starting to see him use these phrases without prompting, which is encouraging since this is an almost constant effort!
   Other goals that we work on include building excitement toward prayer and church, sharing, and showing respect to friends. 

 Academics: 
   This week we focused on four items: 1.  recognizing the letter A; 2.  recognizing and drawing circles; 3. recognizing, drawing, and grouping 1 and 2;  4. recognizing and identifying the colors blue and green. 

   Our son is somewhat familiar with all of these concepts, as we’ve talked about them often through the course of our play and our days:  Hand me the blue cup, how old are you (2 yrs.), drawing circles with chalk, etc.  As this is our first attempt at any “lessons”, I wanted to start by reinforcing concepts that he is familiar with before building on them.

   Scaffolding is the technical term for using previous knowledge to build understanding of new concepts.  For example, if he is aware that the word 2 has meaning, i.e. how old he his, it will be easier to teach him that number words refer to a particular number of items.  When he has 1 and 2 down, he will have an easier time understanding 3, 4, etc.

Results:  After completing the lessons listed below, our son frequently points out the letter A in various situations without prompting, but does not regularly say the name of the letter. He also finds circles and says "circle", points out blue and green- but not with 100% accuracy, and enjoys pointing out when he has two similar objects.
 

For detailed lessons, please continue reading:

Monday: 

Goal:  Focus on letter A and colors blue and green

Materials:  Letter A/ a worksheets, blue and green paints, paintbrush, covered workspace

Procedure:  I printed a copy of a capital letter A coloring sheet and a copy of a lower case ‘a’ worksheet.  There are a ton of free printable worksheets available, but I chose to go with a simple block version with no additional wording.  My son is only 2, and keeping a narrow focus on the letter will minimize the chance for distraction or over-stimulation. To keep the focus on the objective of learning blue and green, I only gave my son those two colors to paint with. 

As he painted, we talked about the letter A, the sounds it makes, and things that start with A.  We also talked about the colors.  With a 2 year old, it isn’t so much actual conversation like you might have with a preschooler.  Focus on repetition instead.  The goals are to have him hear me say A, the sounds A makes, and the names of the colors multiple times.  After that, he can point out the letter A, mimic the sounds, and identify the colors repeatedly himself.  

Feedback:  After working with fourth and fifth graders for the past few years, it was a bit of a shock to realize just how short the attention span of a toddler is.  Shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. 

Initially, he recognized the letter A as one we’ve talked about before since it starts his name, but he did not call the letter by name.  He did identify both blue and green by name until the paints were mixed together. 

Painting was a big hit, and the lesson served as exposure to the concepts.   Future lessons should enable him to identify and label A, blue, and green.

Extensions: If you have pre-K or K age children, bogglesworldesl has great worksheets with coloring and tracing which would allow a child to practice forming the letters and beginning spelling and reading skills.

Tuesday:   

One reason that we’ve decided to be more deliberate about planning lessons now, at the age of 2, is so that we can get comfortable with the homeschooling routine and scheduling.  Today was an unusually busy day, and we were unable to do the planned lesson.  Since I had a review day scheduled for tomorrow, we’ll make it up then.

Wednesday:

Goal:  Focus on drawing and identifying circles and the numbers 1 and 2

Materials:  at least 3 sheets of blank paper, marker

Procedure:  I began by tracing several cups of different sizes with my son on my lap to “help”.  We talked about making big and little circles as we did this.  After the circles were cut out, I took 2 blank pieces of paper.  On one, I wrote the number 1 and drew one small circle.  On the second paper, I wrote the number 2 and drew 2 small circles. 

After the papers were prepared, I talked with my son about circles, we practiced making 1 and 2 with our fingers (very cute to watch him try to get his fingers under control), I had him give 1 or 2 circles at a time to my husband, and we put the circles we cut out on top of the circles I had drawn next to the numbers.

Feedback:  My son really enjoyed these activities.  He is a VERY active child, and there were a lot of hands-on steps.  He also enjoys playing with things that have a lot of pieces and had fun playing with all of the circles that were cut out.  In fact, I’m still finding them around the house.

Watching our son’s reaction to different types of lessons reminds me that it is important to be aware of personality traits and learning styles and how they affect a child’s learning.  I do believe it is important to expose children to all styles of teaching as the world in general will not revolve itself around a child’s learning preferences.  They need to be able to adapt. 

Extensions:  If your child is already familiar with shapes and counting, you could have your child do a search for objects around the house that are circular, adding as many other shapes as you feel comfortable with.

Playing store or allowing your child to assist with paying for purchases are great opportunities to allow older children that become comfortable with counting and beginning mathematics.

Thursday:

Goals:   Review the letter A, 1, 2, and Circle

Materials: blank paper; marker; Capital and lower case A, 1, and 2 stamps; ink pad

Procedure: I began by drawing a circle on blank paper and talking to my son about the shape asking questions as simple as, "What is this?".  I did not plan on it, but he wanted to draw his own circle- a little nerve-wracking with the permanent marker on carpet!  After that we moved on to the stamps.  I initially asked him to find the letter A and 1,2 out of an alphabet set, but this proved difficult so I found the stamps needed and put the rest away.  We talked about each of the letters and numbers as we stamped, practiced saying the name of A, and counting.

Feedback: My son really enjoyed this activity as it was the first time he used stamps and ink.  In future lessons, I would choose different stamps as these were double sided and made it a challenge for him to stamp the desired letter/number.

Extensions:  Older children should be able to complete the search for the correct letter and numbers from the set.  They could also stamp the letter A and then complete a word that begins with or contains A.  After stamping 1 and 2, kids can draw the correct number of objects of their choice or find objects around the house to match the numbers.

Friday and Saturday: 

(I had initially scheduled this lesson to be used on one day with a second day of general review, but the skills required quite a bit of focus for my antsy boy so we broke it into smaller chunks over the course of two days.)

Goals: Introduce items that begin with the letter A; review circle, 1, 2, blue, and green

Materials: sheet with pictures of items that begin with A, crayons or markers- particularly blue and green, blank paper

Procedure: I began by creating a Word document with several pictures of items that begin with A.  There are many worksheets available, but most also had other skills like tracing or writing the name incorporated into it, and I wanted to keep things simple.  A Google images search for each item drew plenty of pictures.  I then wrote the name of each item next to it, with the letter A capitalized and in a different color.
   After creating the sheet, we sat down and talked about the name of each picture.  After saying the name, I would point to the letter A and have my son repeat its name. 
   I also drew two circles on a blank paper and labeled one blue and the other green, using the respective color to write the label.  I asked him to pick out the blue and green crayons and markers from our collection.  I then asked him to color each circle the respective color.  He began to color the green circle green, but then lost interest.

Feedback:  He had the most trouble with talking about the pictures and saying then name of A.  It could have been that the activity itself was difficult,  the setting (lots of markers nearby), the fact that it was evening, or a bit of all.  Although he can identify circles, identifying colors continues to be a bit of a challenge.  I am trying to determine if it is because there are simply a lot of color names to remember or if he actually has a degree of color-blindness as my father does. 

Extensions:  There are many worksheets available with varying degrees of difficulty.  Some examples can be found at Enchanted Learning.  Older children may be able to create their own letter book by having the title page A/a and then finding or drawing pictures of items that begin with the letter A or have the A sound in them.  The child or parent can write the name of the object or a sentence describing it as well. 

Are there more extensions to these concepts that you can think of or have tried yourself?