Friday, February 17, 2012

Febrero - El Mes de Hornear en Familia

Aunque el enlace está en ingles, es una impresa que me encanta, y que me inspira mucho.  Dan conocer que gran importancia lo es, que los niños aprenden desde chiquillos, como preparar comidas tanto divertidos que saludables, bueno....algunos son mas divertidos que saludables, pero todo en equilibrio, eh?  Dan cursos para organizaciones en todo EEUU, y ademas, cursos gratis en linea, o cursos en su sede en Vermont.

Get the kids in the kitchen: It’s Bake for Family Fun Month! | King Arthur Flour – Baking Banter

Febrero es el mes de hornear!  King Arthur aqui tiene un muy bonito articulo sobre cocinando y horneando con los chiquillos.

Un Buen Dia Escolar

How we struggle with rhythm, a.k.a scheduling, or whatever else you might be inclined to call it.  It is our greatest struggle!  I have been attempting to create, with some success so far, some visual reminders of our need for such scheduling.  I have essentially made copies of the ones found here.  I found some other really neat visual aids here.  This does help, I notice, and I would like to expand this, to include a larger portion of our day.

Today, I was pleased.  I set out to really, really prepare last night, mostly mentally.  It is all about starting our day without too much hesitation and really recognizing what works best and how to modify things so they are smoother.  We did our lessons, mostly as planned, and that in itself is a major accomplishment.  We did our circle time, including the younger child, told a spontaneous story utilizing puppets, sang and did rhythmic tapping games, as well as fingerplays to work on the little one's fine motor skills.  We moved from there to reviewing Little Miss' lesson on calendar.  She copied a chalk drawing I did and a summary, while I worked on pattern recognition using some Legos with ds.  We did this with some chocolate covered sunflower seeds too, which I did because his attention was not really with me.  After he helped me make patterns (each color was a friend taking turns on a swing), we counted them together and then he sorted them by color.  There were only 16 seeds, so it was not overwhelming for him.  We counted up to four, since there were four of each color.  The sorting of them was good for his pincer grasp development.  His entire lesson lasted less than ten minutes, after which he did some cutting and gluing and ran off to play.

I have read in so many places, of the value of really grounding oneself inside the home with young children.  I am truly beginning to see how all the errands and running hither and thither really destroys any chance at having a predictable rhythm.  With homeschooling, this could mean two things: 

1. schoolwork gets pushed into the background, and/ or undone 
2. schoolwork is done in a rushed and sloppy fashion

of course, neither are desirable, and so it certainly calls for much thought and contemplation and reassessment.  This is especially the case since I am really keen on having a whole, living, breathing approach to education, full of all the good stuff: the music, arts, stories, poetry, etc...