Middle shelf: geometric solids, sorting ball shaped erasers, matching buttons by color on a strip
Bottom shelf: cotton swabs in honey bear (seen on Chasing Cheerios), knobbed cylinders.
This puzzle is on the table in front of the shelves - this set comes with so many pairs, but I have three out for him. He has a short attention span so this keeps him challenged enough without him leaving partway through.
His sister played roll and find the color with him. He is really not into matching and finding objects of certain colors, but he watched Bear do it so I'm hoping he picked something up.
I never know just how much he knows because, unlike Bear, he won't perform for me. So I still have no clue if he knows his colors.
This is linked to 1+1+1=1
Hi! My son is 31 months old. He used to love our homeschool activities. But these days he lost interest. In fact all he wanted to do is to play his miniature animals and blocks. In short, free play. There are also times wherein I would give him a certain activity and present my materials, but he doesn't want to do it my way. He persist to play it on his own way. Is it normal? Should I just allow him to play whatever he likes? No more homeschooling for the meantime?
ReplyDeleteTigerlily, I can relate. My daughter (the 3.5 yr old) went through a short phase like that. And J-jo is completely opposed to lessons most days. For me, I just kind of go with their flow (and even more so with J-jo - second time mom with him lol) so I let up a bit on the instruction but still sneak it in. For example, J-jo doesn't have any desire to sit and learn colors but that doesn't mean I am not going to try. I talk to him constantly about the colors of his trains and cars and balls (his three favorite playthings) and use his cars for counting lessons when he zooms them down the slide. Homeschooling him just means shorter lessons (like mere minutes) dispersed throughout the day instead of longer sessions all in a row as in a traditional school like session. Immerse yourself in some great playbased learning blogs like Teacher Tom, Imagination Tree, Childhood 101, and NurtureStore (there's so many more) too. I found reading those encouraged me to let J-jo (and Bear) play more and just ease up the pressure I was putting on myself for them to learn these things by a certain time. They are also giving me good ideas on ways to play with my children in a way that meets their needs and encourages their creativity and imagination and allows them to learn. I hope this addresses your question.
ReplyDeleteJordan (who will be 3 next week) is also quite the opposite of her big sister. Sometimes she'll sit and do lessons, but mostly she won't or wants to play with things the way "she wants to." I have found that more experiential learning works for her. If I take her out to talk about something or experience it, she remembers it for a long time and really makes the connections. The same occurs with books/stories/songs.
ReplyDelete