Lesson plans, 3/9 - 3/16, 2009

For indoors activities: We will probably get some more work done on the alphabet project we started this week - coloring letters, cutting scrap paper while FatherBear cuts the actual letters out, and then gluing them onto brightly colored construction paper.

Another great activity that I want to do more next week is folding laundry with the girls. MonkeyGirl and I did this today, and I could see her improving her sorting skills, motor skills, listening skills, AND her ability to follow a multi-step process, like folding washcloths, on her own. Not bad!

For outdoors activities: I will probably do at least a little gardening with the girls. Well, MonkeyGirl, at least. FairyGirl shows no interest in getting her hands dirty.

We are also considering building a sandbox next week, depending on how my interviews go and if / when I start work. The work involved is:

• - Remove the fish from the pond and put them in our little fountain-tub until we can find a new home (girls can't help, but should have lots of questions from watching us).
  
• - Remove the water from the pond. The girls probably can't help safely with this either since the pond is pretty deep. However, when I started the process last week, MonkeyGirl was very interested in watching and had a lot of questions.
  
• - Clean the pond. The girls can probably help with this, but I'm not sure that they will both be interested.
  
• - Put the sand in. The girls can help with this.
  
• - Put up the tarp and weight the ends.
  
• - Remove the barriers around the pond so that the kinds can easily get in and out.

It's a nice medium-sized project. FatherBear is probably the best one to work on this anyways, and the girls are getting old enough that they can play on their own outside if they get bored.

We've been talking about setting up a little swing for them, so maybe we'll do that first to keep them entertained a little more.

Lesson plans, 3/2 - 3/8/09: Gardening, alphabet decorations, and bunk-bed shopping

For the next couple of weeks I think we're going to keep things rather light and unstructured while we focus on setting up for a more structured environment. For now, I'm just going to work on some projects with the girls to help us build a fun homeschooling environment. Eventually, we'll probably move to something more structured.

First of all, I'm dying to start a garden. I don't want all of it to be part of homeschooling, but I definitely would like to involve the girls at least in planting the small kitchen garden right outside the window. Gardening seems like an appropriate preschool science and home economics exercise that we can do all summer. That will be our plan for any days with good weather.

Secondly, I want to get the ABC's posted somewhere in our house, and have the girls help us make them. Maybe we'll color and cut out letters from coloring sheets from the Internet and paste them on bright construction paper. Ideally, I'd like to have the ABC's lining the wall in our future "homeschool room" and also on magnets on our fridge. And the crafty side of me wants to make our own magnets.

Finally, I want to take the girls shopping with me for what will hopefully be the next week's big project: Building bunk beds in their closet. Toddlers with tools, Oh My! I'd like them to get a feel for how you go about organizing and planning a big project like this, then next week they can see what is involved in actually doing the project. Plus a Home Depot will be full of all kinds of learning opportunities - house parts, how things are made, shapes, tools, and listening when Mom and Dad tell you to stop climbing all over the lumber.

Check back on March 7th, when I will post on how this week's plan actually went. This is a lot to do with preschoolers in one week, and I'm not sure how much we will really get done.

Edit, 3/6/2009: Fixed the date in the title. Wow, it took me a whole week to notice I had the date a month off!