Websites

See I am so not good at this blogging stuff. I keep leaving stuff out. And not blogging much. So time to play catch up.

Starfall.com. What can I say? It is such a neat site. TJ loves going over the letters and sounds and playing the games. That's what he thinks he's doing and in reality he is reinforcing letter sounds. Neat, huh? He spent almost 2 hours on starfall.com the other day. Oops! I think I was cooking and didn't realize that so much time had passed. But in that time period, he had gone over calendar concepts and reviewed the entire alphabet with all sorts of activities. I think it was time well spent. But now he hasn't played in a while. I think he was starfalled out. lol But I don't really want him into computers and games too much. He has plenty of time for that. There are other things to do. That's why I want to provide him with a wide variety of activities that touch upon different aspects of learning - with the computer, video games (I will get to that), worksheets, books, arts and crafts, etc.

At my parents' place last weekend, TJ was on the PBS kids website. Another very nice website. I think TJ is getting pretty good at getting around that site and is able to access the activities for each other shows that he was interested in pretty well. I was able to leave him alone for the most part while I was packing up. I know he played the matching game with Clifford. That one I saw him play while at home. He also did a find and seek activity with Dragon Tales, a letter game with Super Why and this really noisy one with Teletubbies. I have no idea the benefit of the Teletubbies game. I will have to look into that one. He may have played others, too. I think he spent the most time on the Dragon Tales game. It provided a picture list of items and TJ had to find them on the page to create a recipe. I explained to him that this was how I made things in the kitchen. I have recipe and I have to find the items and put them together to make whatever it is I want to make. TJ really liked the idea of this. He was having fun guessing what the list of items was going to make.

Tomorrow is Dr Seuss' birthday. In honor of this momentous day, Lakeshore was holding a Dr Seuss celebration. We managed to make it. Almost didn't after last night's snow. But by morning all signs of snow and rain were gone. The boys spent over an hour doing arts and crafts in honor of Dr Seuss. TJ and LJ made Dr Seuss hats (Cat in the Hat.) They also did dot-to-dot art with various pictures. They also made and decorated potted plants. And the boys also fished in the "fishing pond" (One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.) I have to figure out what books the other crafts related to. And of course, I had to pick up some Dot to Dot markers and a giant thumbprint stamp pad. I also picked up a few more leveled reading books for TJ.

Right now, TJ is playing with his VSmile. He is playing with the Cars cartridge. I think this is only the 2nd or 3rd time TJ has played with the VSmile since he got it for Christmas. I like how it's not like the video games of old - say, Ninetendo, Atari, which had no education value whatsoever. Yes, I'm aging myself. VSmile seems to be a different way of making learning fun. I would not have TJ play this every day or even every other day (so far it seems like only once a month! lol), but consider this a different form of reinforcement of skills. What's neat about it is that he doesn't even realize that he's learning.

Oh, and I've registered TJ for that Pizza Hut reading thing. I forget what it's called. But it's the first "official" thing I have done towards identifying TJ as a homeschooled kindergartener. Woohoo! The more people I tell about TJ being homeschool and the more steps I take towards identifying TJ as a homeschooler, the more real it will become!

That said, on Monday, TJ will start the township "preschool" program. I use the word "preschool" lightly. It's from 9:15 to 11:30am on Mondays and Fridays for 4 weeks. I consider it more a drop off playgroup. They do arts and crafts, play and have snack. And maybe a couple of worksheets which are coloring a page with a letter on it. If TJ is okay with it I will sign him up for the second session as well, but that's all they offer for the Spring. But the only reason for doing this is to have one on one time with LJ. LJ and I will have an arts and crafts mommy and me class on Mondays while TJ is in preschool. Our township is pretty strict in not allowing siblings when you're part of a class. This really limits us because what am I going to do with one child while the other is in a class?? Are they trying to push for one child families!?? We'll see how long we are going to be here. Maybe next spring, if we still live here, I will put both TJ and LJ into the preschool program, so that the baby will finally have some alone time with me! Poor baby!