It seems that posting on my homeschool lists inspires me to blog. That’s a good thing! This time I was mentioning how I varied the ‘teaching moments’ by usually grabbing a chance when it shows itself. Now don’t get me wrong, I do love to plan. I spend the summer mapping out the next school year. It feels great and I get excited to start. [Hey, it’s inspiring] Following through, however, is not so much fun. Those are details that are meant for mere mortals, I guess. Of course, I try, but its just not my forte. My forte is however, spontaneity!
When a kid asks a question or a child doodles on the wall. . . It’s time for a quick lesson! [Not That lesson, but an art lesson!] I grab the closest piece of scrap paper and voila! School accomplished for the day! String several of these together and it makes a great portfolio. So, I thought I’d post a few photos of those more impromptu sessions we have had in the recent past and their explanations.
I bought 'removable' chalkboard paper from a craft store. It sticks easily to the wall but is NOT removable if you keep it in one spot too long. This one is low to the floor right by the kitchen. Chalk tends to stay on the floor underneath, though there's a kitchen drawer close at hand. This way, if my pre-schooler seems interested, I can take a few minutes to work on her letters before getting back to 'chores' or school with the big kids. She is also free to use it whenever she wants. Above: we did a few letters and then tried a word. She also had to practice making hearts.
I have 2 good sized dry erase boards that I scored from a business closing. I have one place to hang them on the wall- so they take turns in that spot, otherwise they are leaning against various walls in the house, depending on where we feel like working in any given season. Dry erase makes impromptu learning easy. Just grab a marker and start teaching! Change of subject? Just erase it. Reluctant writers can't resist markers! Above: preschooler learning 'hop.'
So one morning we wanted to try that restaurant technique of squirting the pancake batter from a bottle or pastry bag. The kids quickly figured out you could 'write' with it. It wasn't as easy as we thought, but we made some letters and words. We could then 'read' them before we ate them! Yum.
The chalkboard off the kitchen: Our youngest learned out to write her name on this. There is always a fair amount of doodling and 'artistic' license. After writing her name, we erased parts and did them over in different colors. Note some phonogram review on top. This chalkboard is in our entry hall, so its also useful for party signs or family notes. Its low to the floor to be young child friendly and easier to just sit on the floor.
The dangers of Knowledge!! Our preschooler wanted to write my 'name' so I taught her 'mom' She did give me an invitation to a 'show' she was planning, however she apparently couldn't resist practicing on our suede chair. I'm a little conflicted. 1]I'm happy she remembered how to spell it and form those letters, 2]I'm disappointed she didn't use cursive. Maybe the curve of the arm and the softness of the fabric made it difficult. 3] oh, she wrote on the furniture. . . but now every time we sit there together we can sound it out and read it!
This was cool. We have combined several partial Risk games into one game. One set was apparently Roman numeral shaped pieces. The kids were having some difficulty telling them apart [it was hard] and remembering their value. It inspired an entire session on Roman numerals and how they work. Glad that chalkboard was close at hand!! Note the numbers on top- I always start with 0. It's a pet peeve of mine that we have 10 digits, they are 0-9 which we use to make all other numbers; not 1-10! Using 0-9 helps explain place value and counting higher and higher.
I also like to do 'teaching moments' while waiting in doctors' or mechanic's waiting rooms and even in the church pew. Even if you forget to bring anything, those places always have advertisements and pens- just grab some of that paper and use the white space. [for my youngest we can play 'find the phonograms'] If I'm on top of things, we can pack lap dry erase boards, markers, notebooks and any flashcards or books we want and off we go-carschooling.
So for a good deal of the time moms may wonder if this is all going to work out; am I doing anything right at all? And then there are those moments that mom just goes 'aaaaahhhh.' So Nice. I had one recently that I don't want to forget- so I must share it here. That day I was quizzing Lillian on the 26 single letter phonograms. [you know, the letters] I say the letters by sound- so A is a/A/ah -giving all three of it sounds, and B is just buh without the uh. She did not learn them in alphabetical order but rather by the way you write them in cursive; so clock face or circle letters first for example. She does know the ABC song, but I have purposely not connected it. This day though, I gave the quiz in alphabetical order and afterward I asked her if she knew what that meant. We sang the song. I explained what it meant and I said the order is very useful. We can organize our words in this order and then be able to find them easily. I pulled out the huge 1828 dictionary and started to show her. She was so mesmerized by this book! We spent quite a bit of time just looking up random words, or flipping through it. 'spelling time' easily lasted longer than usual. Then she proceeded to carry the book upstairs and around the house for a couple of days to look through it. I was happy twice. Because not only was it so cute, it was nostalgic for me. See, her oldest sister loved to read the dictionary, so it reminded me of that too. The first photo is during the real event of first explaining a dictionary. The second one I had her pose for this post so you can see the scale of her carrying such a large heavy book. 
