Beginning homeschool with Nathanael

Homeschool with Nathanael takes on a new meaning. Less prep time as I reuse most of my resources. But there is additional prep work sometimes because his interest and learning style are different. I get a bouncier kid and an easily distracted one if the environment is less than ideal. The best place for learning is really at the dining table. It's strange. Nathanael chooses to be schooled at the dining table and for any other activities, the living room space.

Learning the letters of the alphabet using cheerios as reward. He's more serious than Zech. :)

He seems to enjoy visual discrimination activity sheets. He loves to circle the correct answers. :)

Making the creation booklet is something he likes too.

Displayed on the wall.

Unlike Zech, Nathanael needs to learn through games. Here's a child who challenges my creativity every day.

Using paper cups with the letters pasted outside, I say the letter and Nathanael places a pom pom inside the correct cup.

Throwing the ball into baskets labelled with letters. A simple game where I say the letter and Nathanael throws the ball into the right basket.

Treasure hunting for letters. A game I've done with Zech before. We could do it for more than a week and Zech was still very motivated. Not for Nathanael. I needed to improvise after 3 days of playing the same game.

We played the memory game using the creation cards I bought a long time ago. With Zech, we used the cards for retelling. With Nathanael, he was simply bored after the first session. He played the memory game with me once and that was it.

Nathanael loves this. Sensory play! But the mess he made sat me thinking twice. He hides the numbers and the letters and then find them when I say the number or letter. Played it again the second time and he enjoyed searching for the letters. :)

Don't be deceived by this. He was all over the place most of the time.

Using the ipad doesn't help too. In the end, I simply sat him on my lap and sang the songs with him. Maybe holding him has a calming effect on him. He even sang along.

We ended the 7 days of creation with a trip to Bishan Park. It was sooo tough finding a suitable day to go as it has been raining for days.

Thank God for the fine weather albeit for a short while. Very thankful we were not caught in the rain at the park.

Identifying what are God-made and man-made...

So excited to see chickens in the park! Spot the brood of chicks with the mother hen?

We will be starting on the letter Ss after CNY. With Nathanael, I'm slowing down because he still can't recognize all the letters of the alphabet. When teaching him numbers or the alphabet, I find myself describing the shape in detail so that it helps him better in recognition. Association works heaps for him. He can recognize the number 2 because level 2 at our block is where the roof garden is. The number 3 looks like his butt. The number 4 has a triangle inside. The number 6 has a circle. Because of our block and unit number, he can recognize 5, 8 and 7 easily. I've never imagined teaching numbers like this. Every child learns differently and I'm experiencing it now.