Elijah's schooling

I recently found a homeschooling mother whom has a blog that is mostly dedicated to homeschooling.  She also has a curriculum you can buy called K4.  I figured it was worth a try... and so far we are loving it! I haven't followed 100% but it is nice to have a general guideline of what we should be doing.  It NEVER occurred to me that I would need to teach Elijah the pledge! so we bought a little flag and hung it up in our school area and that is the first thing we do when we start school. :)  he is starting to remember certain parts too!

Elijah already knows his shapes, colors, numbers, and capitol letters. So what we have been working on is lower case letters, simple math, and writing his name.

He is slowly getting the hang or recognizing the lower case letters but is having trouble with the obvious "b" and "d" as they look very similar.

  I am really proud of him with math! - He will add stuff all day long.  It was kinda funny though.. the other day he asked me "what does 5 and 3 make?"  so I told him 8.  He replied "no mommy, 4 and 4 make 8 not 5 and 3!" lol... I never thought of it that way!  to a child there is usually only one answer to things, but in this case there is a lot more then one combination to equal 8.  It is just very interesting to get a glimps into a 3 1/2 year olds mind sometimes :)


And his name....

I couldn't be happier!  He is doing such an amazing job!  I've had to learn a few things with him being a lefty though.  For every letter that has a horizontal line we (righty's) would make the line from left to right.  well Elijah is supposed to do it the exact opposite *right to left*.  Which is what he started out doing and of course I, having no clue, kept telling him "no this way". DOH! lol  and then the same thing with how he holds his pencil. Left handed people hold it higher up so that way they can see what they are writing - I was telling him to hold it lower. lol ohs well, good thing I have learned all this now!  And one thing I also came across was that Elijah should turn his paper at a 45 degree angle to the right... so far it seems to really be helping :)

He has now wrote his name by himself 3 times... and has done quite a good job at that!

the first time he did it was 1/25 with a pencil. I had to make ( ) marks on the paper so he would stay in the lines and not all over the paper. And I guess if you are left handed you write an "E" and any other letter that has a "-" in it from right to left instead of left to right... so that is why his "E" looks a little silly.

The second time he did it was with finger paint... but I can't seem to find the pic to show you all.


and finally about a week ago he wrote his name while we were playing with chalk. - He wrote E.L.I. then he went to write a "J" an accidentally when the opposite way on the loop and ended up with another "L" .  So Just had him re write the J and then continue.

 

After we did that then I wrote A.B.C.D.E.F. and then under it I wrote the lower case ones in a different order and had him draw lines from the "big letter" to the "little letter". - he did great! he only got a little confused with the b and d... but I can understand that :)

I just can't believe how fast he is learning!

Last night he was using his markers and then, VERY happily came over to me and told me he drew a picture of himself....

Then I asked him if he would make a picture of me and he did....

He tells me " Mommy I gave you legs and arms... but I didn't give me any arms". lol lol  so I get arms but he got a nose.  Hey I say those are pretty good pictures for a 3 year old whom has never been taught how to make stick people :)


This last week we have been focusing on writing his numbers and doing simple addition.

So the pages he has to write his numbers has different sections, one is called "getting ready" and that teaches him the basic design of the number.   Then there is the practice section where you trace on the dotted line.

Then there is a line to do it all by yourself.  so at the bottom of the next picture you can see where he wrote the number "5" all by himself :) the first one looks more like an "S" but the second one looks pretty good !

 

And just to end the post....

a great picture of my handsome little man :)