I am pulling together a bunch of things from various sites to help me teach Froglet some phonics. He already knows the alphabet thanks to the wonderful Starfall website, and as he's started spelling out words to himself while playing, I think now it's time for the more complicated stuff.
Sound of the week is a great place to start, with a different page for each sound (e.g. /ee/), including a theme to match the sound (e.g. trees), book ideas, rhymes or poems, and art projects. So far we have done the first two sounds off this page: /ck/ and /ee/. Other sites I have been using include the brilliant Phonics, and the BBCs Words and Pictures.
After thinking about it quite a bit, and to-ing and fro-ing between various possibilities, I've decided to link the sounds I teach to whatever longer theme I'm currently on, rather than follow the order set out at SOTW or Phonics. And as we're doing flowers and gardening at the moment, next up are /er/ and /ow/ (as in cow not grow). I have ordered a book about plants, which hasn't arrived yet, but fortunately we do have a book on weather, which also has the /er/ sound in it, and as it's particularly rainy at the moment this will be a good place to start tomorrow.
In fact I've ordered a whole bunch of books, which may get reviewed on here at some point. They are:
How Flowers Grow (Usborne Beginners)
Summer Nature Activities for Children (by Irmgard Kutsch, I think)
Floppy Phonics (Stage 1+)
Miffy in the Garden
Things that Go (Trace, Stick and Learn)
Stories Jesus Told (by Nick Butterworth/Mick Inkpen)
and several less educational ones for our own entertainment.
Froglet saw me ordering the Miffy book and said that he wanted one too. I said it would have to be with his own money, so he chose Miffy is crying (!) and now owes me 3 pounds. His first book purchase of his very own!
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Turnoff week
I thought I'd do the Blog challenge from over at Unplug Your Kids, even though I didn't sign up to do it. There was a prize draw, but a voucher from Amazon US isn't so useful to me anyway. :-)
So, how did it go? Surprisingly well, I think. Although I grew up sans TV, my husband didn't and Froglet isn't doing so either; he watches at least some TV every day.
Nutmeg is too small for both TV and internet, so she did very well this week. 10/10 for her!
Froglet asked for TV a couple of times towards the beginning of the week, but we explained that this was a no-TV week just like the Berenstain Bears had - fortunately we've just read the book - and he didn't push too hard. Yesterday he happily announced "Yay, today is a TV day!" but in fact he only had two episodes of Pocoyo, which is way below his age range but he still likes watching (I only ever put it on for Nutmeg to listen to). I think we put on some Thomas the Tank Engine for him on Sunday too to keep him out of our hair while we dealt with dinner. We also successfully kept him off the computer and the Wii, apart from WiiFit but we decided that was not going to count because it's exercise. So he gets about 8/10.
The grown-ups did less well. We did keep the TV off, and I certainly enjoyed the evenings more as a result, but the Internet stayed on. In our defence, I work from home so need to check my email at least twice a day, and of course once the computer is on it's a matter of self-discipline not to check the blogs I follow, Facebook and so on. The self-discipline could use a little work there! Nonetheless, I was online less than usual and spent more time cleaning and playing with Froglet, so I get 6/10 - that's 5 for no-TV and 1 for less-computer!
I won't give The Engineer points. He never did like school!
(I have decided to call my husband The Engineer on here. It's a bit long, but accurate, and I haven't thought of anything better yet - suggestions welcome!)
So, how did it go? Surprisingly well, I think. Although I grew up sans TV, my husband didn't and Froglet isn't doing so either; he watches at least some TV every day.
Nutmeg is too small for both TV and internet, so she did very well this week. 10/10 for her!
Froglet asked for TV a couple of times towards the beginning of the week, but we explained that this was a no-TV week just like the Berenstain Bears had - fortunately we've just read the book - and he didn't push too hard. Yesterday he happily announced "Yay, today is a TV day!" but in fact he only had two episodes of Pocoyo, which is way below his age range but he still likes watching (I only ever put it on for Nutmeg to listen to). I think we put on some Thomas the Tank Engine for him on Sunday too to keep him out of our hair while we dealt with dinner. We also successfully kept him off the computer and the Wii, apart from WiiFit but we decided that was not going to count because it's exercise. So he gets about 8/10.
The grown-ups did less well. We did keep the TV off, and I certainly enjoyed the evenings more as a result, but the Internet stayed on. In our defence, I work from home so need to check my email at least twice a day, and of course once the computer is on it's a matter of self-discipline not to check the blogs I follow, Facebook and so on. The self-discipline could use a little work there! Nonetheless, I was online less than usual and spent more time cleaning and playing with Froglet, so I get 6/10 - that's 5 for no-TV and 1 for less-computer!
I won't give The Engineer points. He never did like school!
(I have decided to call my husband The Engineer on here. It's a bit long, but accurate, and I haven't thought of anything better yet - suggestions welcome!)
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Water play
Today Froglet decided he would like to play with water on the balcony. I found him some water and various cups and pots, and then thought of giving him a paintbrush too, as I have read about painting walls with water on several other blogs recently.
After a while, he asked if he could paint the windows too. My first response was of course no, but then I remembered the old squeegee that lives in our shower... one sponge and some soapy water later, hey presto, free window cleaning.
Not very successful in terms of the result, but the process was greatly enjoyed and gave me some time to have an adult conversation with our visiting friend. I think we might do some more window-cleaning tomorrow!
In other news, I have discovered that when you don't own a mixer, you should not try to hand-mix two loaves-worth of bread dough. It does not work with a fork (my usual implement), and if you resort to using your hands it makes them so sticky that you can't do anything and have to get your husband to scrape the dough off them with a spatula. Which doesn't really work either.
Still, the loaves look nice enough. I do love baking. It beats cleaning hands-down.
After a while, he asked if he could paint the windows too. My first response was of course no, but then I remembered the old squeegee that lives in our shower... one sponge and some soapy water later, hey presto, free window cleaning.
Not very successful in terms of the result, but the process was greatly enjoyed and gave me some time to have an adult conversation with our visiting friend. I think we might do some more window-cleaning tomorrow!
In other news, I have discovered that when you don't own a mixer, you should not try to hand-mix two loaves-worth of bread dough. It does not work with a fork (my usual implement), and if you resort to using your hands it makes them so sticky that you can't do anything and have to get your husband to scrape the dough off them with a spatula. Which doesn't really work either.
Still, the loaves look nice enough. I do love baking. It beats cleaning hands-down.
