One Week Down, Six Hundred and Twelve (or more!) to Go…
Okay, so I don’t really know how many weeks of school we have left until our youngest child finishes, but I thought I’d assign a random number to it for perspective!
Our first week went really well. It wasn’t without its challenges (more on those in a minute), but Pumpkin Doodle cried when she realized Saturday wasn’t a school day, so I’ll consider that a success!
Some things that went well:
1. Pumpkin Doodle learned to read!!! I’ve mentioned a few times over the past month that she was so close, and I think all she needed was the structure of “you-have-to-work-on-this-before-you-can-do-that” to focus and pull everything together. She read the first four BOB books to us on Saturday, and it was fun to see how excited she was to realize she could do it.
2. By the end of the week, I think we had found our groove as far as what order to do things in, how to know when it was time to move on, etc. I’m sure it will change as the girls change (and once we add a newborn to the mix for sure!), but it felt good to end on a high note.
3. I was pleasantly surprised that even Sweet Doodle (22 mo) sits through story time. Well, she starts out sitting and usually ends up standing next to me on the porch swing, but she’s not being disruptive and seems engrossed in the stories.
Which brings me to the biggest challenge of the week: one small Sweet Doodle herself! While I’ve heard lots of homeschool moms talk about the challenge of homeschooling with a toddler, I wasn’t expecting it to be as hard as it was. I had a bag of activities packed for her and I just thought she’d be happy to participate and it would be no big deal.
Unfortunately, I was wrong, and the first day was very hard. I chalked that up to it being such a full day since we had so many additional activities packed in.
On Day 2, we tried doing our workbooks outside so that she could swing on the playground while we worked, but that didn’t go very well either because then Monkey Doodle wanted to go play, and when I let her, they spent the entire time antagonizing each other.
On Day 3, I switched up our order of activities and we did our read-alouds outside on the porch swing first thing. Afterward, we took a walk and then came inside to do our workbook activities.
I started Sweet Doodle off with her dry erase board and markers (a favorite activity of hers), and when that got old (which was fairly quick, unfortunately), I pulled out the big guns. I gave her two tiny pitchers with a little bit of water in them and a sponge. She proceeded to play with that for at least 45 minutes, dumping the water onto her tray, sopping it up with the sponge and then squeezing the sponge out into the pitcher over and over and over again.
We didn’t have school yesterday because my parents came to help me work on my freezer stock for our babymoon, so I’ll have to let you know how it goes this week. Obviously the key is going to be coming up with activities that will hold Sweet Doodle’s attention and keep her from wanting to get into everything her sisters are doing, but at least I know now that that’s the key.
On that note, anyone have any tried-and-true, guaranteed-to-hold-their-attention toddler activities?
Here are a few of my suggestions. My girls are 11.5, 8.5, and 4, so I’ve homeschooled with a toddler twice. . . putting stickers on paper, a paint with water book, chalk and a little chalk board, dry beans in a container with measuring cups, putting shape/letter stickers on paper, or a snack. Another big hit here was toy rotation. With my youngest, it helped to bring down a toy (ex. doll house and furniture), help her get engrossed in it, then move on to doing school with the other girls. We’d have a different main school toy every week. (When she was smaller - age 1 - 2 - we’d do this with a rotation of baby toys).
As an encouragement, it will get easier for your SD. She is just adjusting to the new normal, and I think you’ll find in a few weeks that she has settled into a rhythm.
Looking forward to hearing people’s suggestions. We’re finishing our second week of the new year tomorrow. We’ve got one in K, one in second … and a 2yo. Oy! August is our month to get in a new groove and I hope it happens quickly!!
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I love the water pitcher and sponge idea. I’ll have to try that. The ideas given in the above comment also seem great. Last year was my first official year homeschooling, and occupying my toddler was my biggest struggle.
A friend just told me about productiveparenting.com. I checked it out yesterday, and you can sign up and get age-appropriate activities daily or as you wish. Lots of the activities look like something I could set up for my toddler while I homeschool our oldest. Looking forward to trying these ideas!
I actually have some on my Blog today with a Link to some I did in the past an still do. We are testing some new ideas this summer to see how attention grabbing they are before we officially start school.
Ah. Homeschooling with toddlers. Frankly, I’m still working all that out. But I’m excited to see some suggestions here to try. Really, I often just give up and play with them, and let the school stuff slide… but I can’t do that for too much longer… Once we get up a bit higher in elementary with our older boys I’ll need to be diligent with them, and then I’ll really be happy to find fun stuff for the little guys.
One thing that has been a huge success with my toddler and pre-k aged boys though has been a little thing we call “diggers and rice.” It is the same concept as beans and cups, but I just give them a high edged cookie sheet full of dry rice and a handful of dry beans and let them go to town with a multitude of play items. They have all loved the little construction machines, and though I only have boys doing that now, I think girls might like that, too. But they also use little dishes and utensils to scoop and dump with, and they’ll take their plastic animals and little people in there, too. I use it as a table activity and just expect to sweep up after. But I’ve heard of people plunking their kids and the rice tray into an empty plastic pool and letting them go to town, too.
I hope she gets into the school fun soon and becomes less of a distraction for your bigger girls and you!