Learning From Home First

Learning From Home First, it has a catchy ring to it doesn't it? I may just start a new blog and call it that since I may be homeschooling much longer than just the preschool years!

I have had such a great amount of people with resources for homeschooling help me over the last two weeks and my husband seems more excited than nervous about this foreign concept. 

This last week I had a friend come over and have lunch with both Justin and I. We were able to ask her all kinds of questions and she was a well of endless knowledge! It was fabulous and Justin is more than on board, so much more than he was when he was just agreeing to let me home school V for preschool!!! Our friend has home schooled her four children so she has great advice, tips and even other resources for us to use.

So, I may have a future in this Cross your fingers, toes and what ever else you want, say a prayer and wish me luck because the outcome is looking good! Over the next few months we will be finding our groove and getting into a solid routine!

Music Class ?

For a two and a half year old this surely could be considered just that! Justin is teaching me to play the Bass Guitar. So far I have learned Lightning Crashes by Live (fantastically sad song, but beautiful, btw) and the Twelve Bar Blues. 

Vada loves music and she especially loves it when her PaPa plays his guitar and sings to her in the morning. He just got home from working a twelve hour night shift in these photos, yet he makes time to play music with me and for his daughter. He's a pretty great man!

Vada really enjoys feeling the music as its being played.

The lighted button is pretty fun as well!

We worked on colors later in the morning today. I found this book at Wal Mart in their bargain book section, it was only one dollar.
Its a sticker book which I thought was an added bonus because that meant that V would get her texture stimulation in as well as working on her color recognition.

Christy, Check out this pincer grasp!!! Not bad, eh?

Vada worked on lacing beads which is actually quite difficult to learn but she is getting better and better at it each time that we bring the beads out!

Look at the determination coming from this girl! She is cram packed full of it!

This is hard to do. It may look easy enough but it takes a level of skill that is achieved only through practice.  

Blowing is another hard thing to learn let alone teach. Why do I want her to learn how to blow out? Well, its just another skill to be learned. Once she learns how to blow out she can blow whistles, bubbles and even bubbles into her milk (yes, I will let her do that! --even if its only once :P)

So today I brought out a cheap party whistle and I tried to get her to blow. I cant quite put it into words how I am trying to teach her, I do a lot of bowing in her face then bowing into the whistle. We have a lot of different whistles. I went to a party story that sold cheap party favors and found a kinds of whistles for twenty-five cents. 

We also have these fancier whistles that make some real noise...

Vada has not learned to blow yet but she is catching onto the concept!

We worked on building muscle. Well, kind of. This fruit and veggie slice food is perfect for working on coordination --she has to match the Velcro up to get them to stick. When I ask V to take them apart or put them back together, we are working on her listening skills as well as her skills for following directions. The puling apart of the toys is where her strength needed though, the Velcro is really strong and so it does take a lot of effort on Vada's part to pull the play food apart. The way that I have been explained this is comparable to how I am going to explain it to you...

Having low muscle tone can be compared like this, If I asked you to hold a slice a bread in one hand and a loaf in another, the weight of the loaf would be comparable to how the slice alone would feel to Vada. Obviously, I don't know how it truly feels for V or any other child who has low muscle tone but this is just an analogy so that you may understand how difficult some of the easiest things are for V to do, yet she does them (and not always with a smile on her face --but most of the time). 

We worked on reading and matching today as well. This is a book that I purchased and then tweaked it by scanning copies of each page. I then printed the copied photos, cut the words separate from the picture (for a later time) and laminated each copied photo and word.

I first read the book to Vada, this makes her happy, she loves books! I then go through the book again and pick out photos that I want her to match with the copied cards that I made. While holding the photo card,  I say this to her, "Vada, this says dog", and then I show her the card and say again, "Vada, this says dog." I then put the dog photo card onto the dog photo in the book and then say, "I put the dog onto the dog, can you put the dog onto the dog?" I remove the card and hand it to her and then ideally, she does the same steps. This, she is great at! This is why I am super eager for Vada to do GiGi's Playhouse Literacy training --when she turns three.

Vada likes the computer, a lot! So much in fact that I ended u putting up this huge baby gate that surrounded our computer desk. Well, that enclosed area became a disaster so I took it down and now I am back to grabbing her away from the computer desk. However, I have been looking at different online programs to use with V, that's geared towards learning. 

I found a couple of free program sites but the one that I am really interested in is ABCMOUSE.Com. Has anyone heard of it or does anyone have a membership to it? What are your thoughts? Likes? Dislikes? Its around eighty dollars a year or eight dollars a month, with the first month being free but I need to give my credit card info to get the trial month and im not fond of doing programs like that unless I know that I want more than just the trial. So I am curious of who has it, if it is liked or not. If they see interest from their young child with the games and programs. If you have any other suggestions for programs, especially online learning sites, please feel free to let me know about them!