we took last week off of school. it was a nice break, but i was missing our daily routine a little bit and i was excited about the changes that we were making. not doing school opened up like 4-5 hours a day. which is a lot of time- time that i greatly needed. i totally maximized it and made more lesson plans. in math i have material ready for the next 9 weeks. minus this one activity that i need peanuts. it's a lesson where the guys will use their senses and we will eventually make homemade peanut butter. i have to figure something out to replace that item though because farmer son two is allergic. any ideas anyone? beside that i'm good in math. which is exciting.
the other thing that i worked on was putting the sign for words that we are leaning to read. that pile is huge to say the least and growing almost daily.
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| about 1/2 of the words |
the friday before we took the week off, my interpreter friend who is helping me learn signs told me about a thing called visual phonics. this was the first time that i've EVER heard about this. visual phonics uses a hand signal for the sounds of letters. so i began this search to figure out these signals. we went to two bookstores and my favorite school store in lafayette. nothing. i ended up using YouTube. which was extremely helpful. if your at all interested i used this guy, who does the signal and the sound and this lady, who sings a song. the farmer sons and i have been watching the lady in school. that is a good catchy one. if you like to sing songs and want to learn visual phonics it's perfect! anyway, this has opened up a big door for us. i was having a hard time with that very aspect- how do i separate the letter from the sound when all i know is the asl alphabet. now i can phonetically sound out the word with hand signals or i can show them the asl letter then the visual phonic letter sound signal. how cool is that? the lady, who sings the song, said that a mom created this to teach her deaf children phonics. that mom is AWESOME!!!! i am so grateful for that. knowledge is power. and simply knowing about this now has changed things. on that note let me tell you have fast they guys are learning it. we have watched the song two times now. farmer son 1 has the words down and farmer son 2 has the hand signals. i'm impressed. it's interesting to see how they are different. farmer son one can hear and words come very fast for him. he gets it. at the same time, farmer son two, who can't hear picks up on signs as fast as a hearing child picks up on words. that is scary- and i say that only because it something still relatively new to me, but it's incredible. the brain/ mind is an incredible thing! and woohoo for visual phonics!
i'm trying to make school more interesting and exciting for the farmer sons. so to change it up, we started jumping on the trampoline as part of school. we jump and run around saying and signing out numbers to one hundred. then we do our math facts and the day of the week song. they seem to really like it. not to mention the number sign shadows are pretty cool! we also made up a chant for the month date year information too. it's a good use of the extra energy they seem to regularly have. it's a change of pace and environment. not to mention good exercise too. for whatever reason i don't remember jumping on a trampoline to be such exercise. anyway.
in addition to the jumping, i decided to open up a school store. they earn pennies (or lose them) and can go shopping once a week. this seems to be working. granted this was the first week, but our store is stocked with good incentives. it makes the constant drill work more exciting because they are getting something for it. it is also keeping them on task easier which is making the lessons go faster. less time wasted. that works for me. i don't mind "bribing" them in school. an adult goes out work and gets paid. school is their job. i should pay them for their work. house work and family responsibilities are a different thing.
yesterday was one of the best days of school ever! it felt so wonderful. they were very focused and knocked out their work. it felt nice and wasn't a struggle. they were having fun with it. that is what i want- them to have fun and learn at the same time. i feel like i'm seeing the pieces coming together. i see what i have taught them being used- as they randomly yell out math fact. i see the information sticking and them filling in their answers correctly. i have to say that sometimes it can be a struggle and challenging, but the rewards of it far, far outweighs that.
til next time,
farmer mom
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