You've all heard of Joy school, right?
Joy school is when a few adults and their children get together. They rotate who teaches on a weekly( or even more than just weekly) basis and may even rotate where the joy school will be held for that week. The joy school can be held for as long or as little as you feel you want it to be. Adults can teach about anything and everything. From simple academics, such as ABC's to learning about days of the week, ANYTHING goes. Anyway, my little one and I have started a joy school with two other friends and its been fun for my little one to get the "social" part of schooling as well as learn about fun topics. Today was our "Joy School" day and my friend taught about "bugs", we had a fun, fun time. Last rotation was my turn and I taught about numbers #1-5. Let me give you an example of a joy school "mini" lesson. 1. We started with some singing or nursery rhymes: We sang "Old Macdonald Had a Farm" with a hand puppet, etc. 2.We looked at our number wall and counted up to 5: we used the song, "1,2,3,4,5...once i caught a fish alive to help as we counted. The song can be found here. 3. We looked at a number book we have and focused on numbers 1-5. 4. Activity #1: we traced our hands on paper and counted the fingers on our hands (#1-5) 5. Activity #2: We made cheerio-necklaces/bracelets and counted the cheerios as we put them on the bracelets/ necklaces. Look here to find how to make cheerio-necklaces/bracelets as well as other activities we use to supplement our academic learning. That's it! Simple, yet interactive and social. Of course you can always let your children play together with a few toys after the "mini" lesson. That makes it even better! Once you start up with a curriculum, you can find groups of mothers and children who also home-school in your area. You can get together with them and rotate or teach together. This can also help you to bring the social part of homeschooling. Nevertheless, this style of teaching may not work for you and you may wish to put your kids in outdoor activities or extracurricular's so they can get some social time. I feel that whatever method works for you and your family is best. Again, my child is only 2 so joy school right now works great for us. It's social and fun and just what she needs. I may feel I don't want to use homeschooling groups further down the road and once I start up with a curriculum. I hope this different style of teaching your little one helps you out in some way and encourages you to use your creativity! **Side-note: When we do learning time on our own, I teach Emma her ABC's and we put sounds together to make words. I realized that she needs to develop her vocabulary (especially since she is only 2). Expanding her vocabulary would help her to be able to read faster and know what more words mean. So, we started using this free Android APP to help with vocabulary. Go on over to my teaching tools page to find this and other APPs we use to help with our learning process (without a curriculum so far).
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