A little Homer-schooling morning

No, there's not any official schooling going on around here, as I've mentioned before, but as H3 gets older I'm trying to get her used to the idea. At this point in her life, I'm lucky to get her to sit for 5 minutes at a time. The only time she'll stay quieter is if she is either watching a movie she likes (usually involving Mickey or Baby Signing Time) or reading stories. We typically read 8-10 books during the day, and a few more at night, depending on how energetic she is that day!

This morning, after a breakfast of H3's favorite cereal, Raisin Bran Crunch, I decided to break out some of the preschool-type supplies I have around the house.

First up is a word puzzle set that H3 got from a friend for Christmas. The puzzles are two sided, so 16 words puzzles in total. She sat and played with them for about 10 minutes. With a little guiding, she was able to figure out the 6 that we worked on today. I say "guiding" becuase although she figured out most of the letter shapes on her own, it was hard for her to figure out using an "o", an "a" or an "e" in some places, based on shape. These puzzles are designed to teach basic spelling. Since H3 already knows her alphabet, I figured this is part of the next step as she works on letter sounds at the same time.




Next up, I went to the Fisher Price website and played a game with her. They have a game section designed for infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers. I used the toddler page, and found a game on the alphabet. All H3 had to do is push a letter key from my keyboard and the matching letter would come up on the screen, along with an animal that starts with that letter. Sound was included, of course, so the letter was pronounced and the animal made a realistic sound. She realled seemed to like it and has already asked me to play again.

While she watched a few minutes of Super Why from PBS, I printed out some shape coloring pages from the Fisher Price website. She's not real keen on coloring pictures herself yet, so I colored in the shapes for her, then had her tell me the name of the shape and its color.




H3 got several sets of flashcards in her Christmas stocking this year, and I've already used them with her a couple times. First, I spread the entire alphabet in front of her and had her identify each letter. Then, I scrambled the cards and showed them to her one-by-one and had her tell me the letter and the picture.



Last of all, I put up this poster that my father-in-law found for her at Dollar Tree. I thought it was so cute! Though H3 already knows all her letters, she loves having this in her room!




There is no such thing as a school room or even an office in our house, so my kitchen and H3's bedroom are being used for all these activities. If any messes show up in the pictures, I'm sorry! I'm still working on organizing the clutter. When we moved here 3 years ago, we lost over half the house size that we used to own, so it's been a long haul trying to sort through and get rid of things versus storing what we will need later and don't want to purchase again (like a table saw, radial arm saw, scrapbook supplies, sports equipment, etc).

Hope you enjoy as I start to post little schooling days like this!

~H2