All Things Supercinski

We took a break from doing our little preschool homeschool lessons for a couple months this summer, or we did them off and on and just never picked up the pace and it dwindled away. I blame Annalise phasing out her morning nap, me not being so interested, and Josiah already knowing his letter sounds. I read this great post from Gina and it really got me thinking. Thomas and I had some discussions about it, and decided not to work on reading stuff as much with Josiah, unless he was really interested, and do our more formal “school time” based on science.

He is really interested in reading and loves to practice writing and sounding out short-vowel sound words and writing words. We just do that when we are hanging out and make it more fun. I had to stop doing the BOB books with him for awhile because he was trying to memorize them too much. As an overachiever in some areas (what, me?) I am tempted to work really hard with him so that I can have a kid that reads early, but that is ridiculous so we are taking it at Josiah’s pace.

Anyway, we discussed these things with the other family we do our little preschool group with, and agreed to make things more fun and have lots of science experiments and art stuff during our weekly group time, with some reading, phonics and math in there, too. A unit study, I guess. Last week was our first meeting and I chose the broad topic of water. It was a lot of fun.

First, we did a little math, counting raindrops.

Then the boys learned about and felt different states of water–solid, liquid, and gas. After that, they raced beads of water across the wax paper while blowing them with straws. They made lots of beads and worms of water and then ate a snack.

While they ate everything but the celery, I read a book about rain and about Noah and the first rainbow from Josiah’s little Bible book. Then we started our floating experiment. The boys had to make predictions about whether the objects would float or not and then we would draw them and the results on our chart.

Then we attempted to make rainbows with crayon shavings. It did not go so well and the colors got all mixed together.

Afterward, the boys went outside and continued the floating experiment with every small object on the back porch. And before you think that everything is always rosy in Supercinski-land, things took a downward dive as Josiah spent the next half hour having extreme difficulty playing with his friend and sharing toys.

Next week… insects!