Chops Progress Report and Plans

I've been looking back over my previous plans for Chops and it's amazing how far he has come in such a short time.

Out of interest I've had a flick through the EYFS guide that I have to see what they'd expect him to be able to do and in all honesty, he would laugh if I gave him stuff at that level to do. There are a few things that we are yet to cover - symmetry, 3d shapes and other peoples cultures - but symmetry I already had planned as part of a butterfly/spring theme next week.

In terms of literacy, he got a pack of magnets today which were the 45 high frequency words which children are expected to know by the end of reception (summer 2013 for him). He knew 41 of them already and gave the others a good try. There are also a lot of words in the Y1/2 packs which he knows too.

We got him a clock last week for the playroom which includes the number of minutes past plus quarters and half aswell as the usual 1-12 so he's been trying to decipher that this week. He can reliably tell the hour and half hour now and is getting to grips with quarter past and to. We played the Hickory Dickory Dock board game today to make the most of his interest. He's fascinated by what Daddy was telling him about the clocks changing, more sunny evenings and a later bedtime - for one day at least!

I really love being able to work at his level without worrying about anyone else. I love challenging him too and seeing the sense of pride when he realises what he's capable of.

I just can't imagine doing this kind of observation/reviewing/planning for a whole group of children in school. Hats off to my teacher friends - how you find time to actually teach when doing all of this I just do not know! Relieved my records are purely personal and for the boys to look back on.

Over the next few days I'm continuing with the Spring theme. I have ideas in my head for the life cycle of a butterfly. Plus we collected a lot of twigs at the park last week for making a nest so we need to find time for that.

He's enjoying spot the difference/maze type puzzles at the moment so I'm going to hunt out some more of those.

Then just the usual games, reading, random pages of workbooks and answering the gazillion questions he comes up with every day. I really love seeing the progress both boys are making and am very excited about seeing where their interests and talents take us next.

Spring is springing!

It's been lovely to see so many signs of spring when we've been out and about over the past few days! So much so that I thought it was time to start our Spring display door and take down the winter stuff.

The boys have both made some lovely sticky glittery mothers' day cards for me.

We've spotted lots of buds on trees, nesting birds at the Wildfowl Park and thought about other 'new life'.

This afternoon the Chops made a display of the life cycle of the frog by cutting and sticking the pictures onto a tin foil pond. His scissor skills have improved vastly over the past few weeks. It was really noticeable how much more confident he is now with craft activities. I left it up to him to spot the differences between the stages (legs, tail, live on land) which he did easily and he also worked out the order without a problem. I'm planning to take the boys to the Botanic Gardens in the next few days to see the frogspawn there.

In other news this week, Chops has been reading a lot. Not so much of the ORT but 'proper' books (with help) and a lot of reading signs and packets and adverts when we're out and about. We played a 'stepping stones' game where I wrote a lot of words down and laid them across the 'river'. He then had to read them to get across to the other side away from the Roly monster! It was a very quick, fun way to do some reading practice!

Speaking of the Roly one, he's making more sounds and generally being highly amusing. His face when he does something mischievous is fantastic. Can't wait to see what he's like as he gets older. He scaled the pirate ship at the park this week. I'm sure his older brother was 3 before he even attempted it but Roly was half way up before I could catch up with him!

Monster-good Thursday

The boys and I had a lovely chilled out day at home yesterday. It feels like months since we had a full day of laziness!

We had water play, shaving foam 'swamps' for dinosaurs and Chops and I created rock monsters in the afternoon while Roly had a nap. It was the most involved I'd ever seen him in a craft activity.

We continued the theme by drawing a monster together and then he dictated a story about the monster which I typed for him.

He also enjoyed completing a few worksheets from 1+1+1=1. They were concentrating on his pen skills and forming letters but had themes which appealed (batman catching bad guys, Luke using the force on vader, cars winning races...)

These were the days I wished for when I decided to home ed. Happy happy relaxed learning.

Reading contined

Chops' confidence in his reading is growing so quickly. I love to see his face when he deciphers a word and he is so proud of himself! We moved on today to stage 2 of the Songbird scheme and also have a new batch of 'tricky words' stuck around the living room for his exercise game.

4 words in a row

Tweaked an idea I found online today to make our own 4 in a row game. I made a grid with 6 columns and wrote in a variety of words - some phonetic and some tricky. I made sure that a lot of them were ones he already knew but introduced another handful of tricky words too.

We took turns rolling the dice then picked a word from the column to read. Once we'd read it we put on a counter. The first to 4 in a row wins!

Chops did really well with it. The phonetic words he read pretty easily by sounding them out. He remembered most of the tricky words we'd looked at previously. The new ones we'll look at again soon but it was nice to introduce them while he was engaged in something fun and 'competitive' which is what makes him tick.

Literacy Crazy

The Chops is *loving* the tricky word exercise game so much that he wanted to add more words today. I am over the moon that he seems so engaged with it.

He's getting more and more confident at reading phonetic words and now recognises the first 18 'tricky words'!

Very very proud mummy here

He wrote a birthday card for his friend today too

Workers Wednesday

I'm not sure what it is about Wednesdays but as usual yesterday Chops decided to do some 'table work' after lunch. He did a couple of cutting sheets which involved chopping up bugs and pretending to squash them, a writing sheet, a few pages of a reading workbook and then played the magic cauldron maths game. I can see his confidence in reading and maths brimming but he's not so sure about writing yet! Like everything else though, I'm sure once it clicks with him he'll be flying with it. He seems to go from 0-100% with things so quickly rather than trying things that he can't quite manage. Reminds me of me as I'm still not happy trying things if I'm not sure I can do them!
Roly is still babbling incoherently and being generally mischievous in the best ways possible! He's loving books about animals at the moment.

Next steps...

Not all of these will be done straight away but here are the musings of a girl who needs a plan (for any horrified he-ers reading, he only does this 'adult-led' stuff when he feels like it and we do have plenty of time to 'just' play, honest!)

Literacy
- continue learning the digraphs from jolly phonics (ar was successful pirate themed so try to think of more like that if poss)
- practice pen control (wipeable flash cards, worksheets from twinkl etc. Aquadraw, drawing)
- do more pages in our alphabet book

Numeracy
- carry on practising addition and subtraction
- keep talking about money/units of measurement/time/fractions of stuff as he's interested (getting time game and play money for Xmas)
- find activities that involve counting to higher numbers

Advent
- need to my plan my Christmas activity bags like last year (crafts/visits/activities)

Also more fine motor control stuff (scissors, modelling, jigsaws with smaller pieces)

That'll keep us busy then along with the usual groups/board games/books/games we play. Good times. We're all definitely happier when we're busier, focused and sticking to our tv-free days.

Arrrrrr

Lovely chilled out morning at home today. Made the boys some pirate hats and wrote 'a' and 'r' on them. Roly was 'happy pirate a' and Chops was 'grumpy pirate rrrrrr' and when they stood together they said 'arrrrrr' pirate style! We turned our play tent into a ship and had an adventure on the high seas.
Once we'd finished we sat down at looked at the 'ar' page in jolly phonics. Chops sounded out all five of the words by himself. Yay!

Literacy Update

Chops and I use a few different resources for learning to read and spell - including Jolly Phonics, Oxford Reading Tree's Songbird and Read at Home series', Reading Eggs and a range of other books, websites and iPhone apps.

We went through the Jolly Phonics series today and he recognises all of the individual letters and the sounds they make. We now need to work on the different digraphs. He consistently recognises 'oo' and 'ee' (without sounding out the individual letters) so I'm going to have a look for some activities to introduce 'ai' next.

He's really enjoying literacy at the moment. When I came down from getting Roly to nap today he was looking at the phonics books and using his finger to trace the letters. I love seeing his face when he successfully sounds out a word. His aim is to be able to read the introduction on the Star Wars films!