Make something.

When I made the leap into homeschooling, one of the things I really wanted to have on hand as a resource was a set of pattern blocks.

They are highly recommended in my favorite resource for homeschooling (that I think every person considering homeschooling should read), "The Well Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer. She says, "[Pattern blocks are] one of the most useful preschool manipulative sets. Each 250-piece set of 1-cm thick blocks contains 25 yellow hexagons, 25 orange squares, 50 green triangles, 50 red trapezoids, 50 blue parallelograms, and 50 tan rhombuses. Stack them, count them, make pictures with them, wallow in them."

We've done just that. Many mornings, pattern blocks are the first thing the kids ask for even before breakfast. They are fantastic! They are great because all three kids can play with them at the same time at their own level and speed. They are great for creativity. They teach geometry. Green Light can tell me the names of all of the shapes and he knows things like: two trapezoids or six triangles make a hexagon...and he's three years old! They are great for developing perceptual abilities. They teach how shapes can fit together and how different angles fit differently with each other. I just love them. We really have "wallowed in them"!

Take a look at a few of our creations. Roundabout insists that we take pictures of most creations before they get destroyed by little Curvy Road....

Sandpaper Letters.

We've been loving our little school! Roundabout loves it and Green Light is warming up to the idea. I have plenty of ideas and materials to use with Roundabout, but to find things that Green Light loves has been a little more challenging. We've found a few Montessori methods that work well.

Sandpaper letters have worked wonders with him! He loves tracing the letters and making the sounds that each letter makes while he's tracing. The texture captivates him and has really taken to this activity. His handwriting. in just a few weeks, has improved from basically nonexistent to actually legible! Not only that, but he's learning the correct way to form each letter.
How to make:
From posterboard, cut either 26 or 58 (depending on if you want to make the uppercase and lowercase) 6" x 6" squares. Using a pattern, cut letters from black sandpaper. Glue each letter to a square.

Take two letters of contrasting shape and sound. With the child's two fingers (index and middle), trace the letter and say the sound that the letter makes.

The first time: Make the association between the letter shown and it's name and sound. "This is B. /b/ /b/ /b/". Repeat until you feel your child understands the association.

The second time: To assure that the child understands, say "Give me the ___ letter."

The third time: See if the child remembers the name himself. Point to the two letters, saying "Which is the letter that says, "/b/ /b/ /b/". He should be able to differentiate and choose the correct letter. If not, help him.

Oh, the places you'll go...

when you read the fantastic imagination of Dr. Seuss. LOVE the man! Green Light can't get enough of his rhyme and meter. I thought that Green Eggs and Ham would be an appropriate part of our celebratory week, but the children said, "I do not like it Sam-I-Am."

We made Oobleck instead. Have you ever read this classic? It ranks right on up there with the best of the best.
Oobleck! The properties of this stuff are amazing. The kids (well, me too!) were totally smitten by it. We played the afternoon away with it.

What'd we learn about it? Oobleck is a material that is also known as a dilatant. A dilatant is a material that gets thicker with an increase of pressure. Oobleck is a liquid until pressure is applied to it and then it solidifies. It seems to defy Newton’s Third Law of Motion that states that every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. Here is a great way to test this … take two pie pans, fill one with water and one with oobleck, take both outside and slap them with an open hand. The water will splash while the oobleck stays put on the bottom of the pan. Water is a Newtonian fluid because it obeys Newton’s Laws of Motion. Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid because it defies Newton’s Third Law of Motion.


Give it a try with your little munchkins!

Oobleck!
--2 cups cornstarch
--1 cup water (add food coloring to the water before mixing if you want to color yours like we did)

Mix the two ingredients together. It takes a little bit of effort to get it all mixed in. Squeeze and stir to test it out before giving into the urge of adding more water to make it easier to mix.