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Homeschooling Practice Run

June 19, 2001 - November 4, 2001

After the failed attempt at teaching my baby how to read, I knew that I needed to work on my own discipline and organization. I also knew that I needed to work on the concept of "learning is fun". I had been raised under the philosophy of "no pain, no gain" so learning as fun was really quite foreign to me. I decided to try a practice run at formal school, starting when Justice turned 3 years old (one year before Kindergarten should start). My only goals were: to do school regularly (where do I fit it in with a little baby to take care of now) and that Justice associate school with fun.

June 19, 2001: I official started "school" with Justice. Everyday around 11am while Haifa is napping, Justice and I do a school activity together. My goal right now is for it to be regular and fun. I want learning to become a regular part of our daily routine and for him to love learning and be very excited about it. Justice learned how to read the word "dinosaur" today. We made a wall chart that says: "Justice can read:" and cards with each word he can read will be taped below it. He looked at the word dinosaur on a card and chose it from a choice of 3 different word cards several times in a row. Justice was able to find the word dinosaur on each page of a book about dinosaurs.
June 20, 2001: Today Justice learned the word "cat" in a similar manner to yesterday. He is also working on peeing in the toilet twice a day. He has no problems with doing it but we both forget to do it.
June 22, 2001: Justice learned the word "big". We talked about the 5 senses and which body part was involved.
June 23, 2001: We read about dinosaurs and made dinosaurs out of playdough.
June 24, 2001: We read about blood and made a little book about what blood is made of. He loves this book. He carries it around and sleeps with it and wants it read to him several times a day.
June 26, 2001: We practiced sewing using posterboard shapes with punched holes and yarn.
June 27, 2001: Tracing and matching shapes, tracing words.
June 28, 2001: Why does it get dark? sun, earth rotation, etc.
July 11-12, 2001: Canada geography. Names and places of provinces and unique features such as: natural resources and who we know who lives there.
July 13, 2001: Bones, built a paper skeleton and stuck it to Justice so he knew where which bones were in himself.
August 3, 2001: Muscles, matching words, circling words.
August 4, 2001: Horses, braiding, responsibility.
August 6, 2001: Farms, animals, equipment (combine, harvester).
August 12, 2001: Justice started doing worksheets in a book called "Everything for Early Learning". He usually does one or more pages a day for school while Haifa is napping. The reading wasn't going well (wasn't being retained), so I've stopped working on that for a while. The workbook eliminates the need to prepare a lesson ahead of time.
August 12-14, 2001: Justice did worksheets about colors. These were much too easy for him. Justice has trouble understanding patterns and completing pattern sequences.
August 18-31, 2001: Justice did worksheets about big and small.
August 29- September 1, 2001: Phonics (consonant,short vowel, consonant words). I'm trying (yet again) to teach Justice how to read. This time using CVC words on index cards and toy objects. We play a game where you match the objects and the word. Again, Justice learns it quickly but doesn't seem to retain it over the long term. I don't feel like it is working, so I stopped doing it.
August 31- September 10, 2001: Justice did worksheets on short, tall, and long.
September 10- October 4, 2001: Justice did worksheets on position words (up, on, beside, etc.) using cut and paste. Justice started to trace the bubble letters of the position words, it is helping him practice writing the letters of the alphabet. Justice was also doing worksheets for pre-math skills (more, fewer, time sequence, before, first, second, third, etc.). By the end of September Justice was very good at tracing letters.
October 1, 2001: Justice wrote all by himself (with mom spelling out the letters for him) "Happy Birthday Annika. I love you." and he drew a girl on the cover. Justice can write all by himself!!!
September 15- October 17, 2001: Justice did worksheets about numbers. He practiced writing and counting the numbers.
September 23- 25, 2001: Justice did worksheets about reading readiness (same, different, rhyming words). Justice had difficulty with identifying the sounds of rhyming words.
October 11- 30, 2001: Justice did worksheets about writing the letters of the alphabet, we stopped at the letter N because it was already too simple for him (at the beginning of October he was already writing on his own). We have now finished the workbook. I think it was extremely successful. Justice had so much fun doing "marker pages" (as he calls it). He loves to trace, circle, match, cut and paste. I now know that Justice enjoys learning through worksheets (which is actually rare with kids I think).
October 26, 2001: Justice can read!!! I have been teaching him the sounds each letter makes using phonics. We sent him words in his mailbox. Justice read: dog, ball, on, star, rug, lamp, sit, bug, mat,God, run, mitten. We've got it on video.
October 22- November 4, 2001: Had Peace Lessons with Justice using the book:

Living Values Activities for Children
Ages 3-7
By Diane Tillman and Diana Hsu
This book has age-appropriate activities to
teach the values of : peace, respect, love, responsibility, happiness, cooperation, honesty,
humility, tolerance, simplicity, and unity. There are stories, games, art projects and songs. I find it's a fun way to work with my children on their moral development.
(click on the book to buy it at amazon.ca)

Justice loved these Peace Lessons. We sang a Peace song, I re-made the Peace Star story with colourful illustrations, we made a Peace Star mobile, and we role played peaceful behaviour with puppets.

I think that this experiment was successful. I achieved my goal. We were doing school regularly (not every single day, but a few days a week) and Justice would often plead to "do school" or "do marker pages". He even once said: "I love doing school, it's so much fun". I learned that Justice loves to learn through worksheets. I believe that he is a visual learner. The workbook we used lead us to discover a fabulous method to learn writing - tracing the inside of bubble letters. Justice learned to write very quickly. Now he practices and refines his writing regularly by copying sentences or writing letters to people.

Now that we finished the workbook, I wasn't sure how to proceed with Justice's school. I knew that he could learn skills very quickly. I knew that he was ready for a kindergarten curriculum. But I didn't really know what to teach him. I decided that I needed to research the Bahai Writings and all available homeschooling resources and make some decisions about Justice's formal schooling. I felt that I needed to be more organized and that Justice's lessons should follow a sequential, systematic pattern (not like I started with Canadian geography one day, bones of the body the next, and then farm animals - what does it all mean, how does it all fit together, how do you organize it in your brain for retrieval?). And so, we were led into our third homeschooling experiment - Justice's formal homeschooling.

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