A Day in the Life of Homeschooling a Toddler

Mr. B goes to Montessori school Monday-Wednesday and spends Thursday and Friday with me and Baby G.

What does one of our homeschooling days look like? Since Mr. B is a toddler I need to come up with creative ways to trick him into learning.

This is how I tricked Mr. B into learning today: 

Mr. B woke up and played quietly in his room while got myself and baby G ready for the day. When I came to get him he greeted me with a huge smile and a hug and ran to baby G's room to say good morning. I got him ready in her room which is also the children's library (she's only a baby so she can't destroy it). I decide to present Mr. G with the new ABC's puzzle book I picked up yesterday.

He played with it, taking the pieces out and putting them back together, but wasn't that excited.

We went downstairs and I made us breakfast. While we ate I proposed that we read our new book from Tuesday's haul: George Washington and the General's Dog by Frank Murphy (history lesson!).

This is my first time reading it and WOW! I love this book so much! Mr. B loves the presidents. Before he was 18 months he found a picture of George Washington on one of his nesting blocks and became obsessed. He went on to recognize George Washington's picture in books and would always point him out to us. I've been looking for a very simple toddler-friendly book about George Washington for a long time (this book in particular). This book tells the story of George Washington's love of animals and introduces kids to the American Revolution. The story is cute and engaging. A perfect unschooling history book!

Next Mr. B asked to watch his current favorite You Tube show. Mr. B has unusual tastes in movies for a toddler (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder, etc). Therefore, I was surprised when he became obsessed with Little Baby Bum: an age appropriate show! The 74 minute compilation includes nursery rhymes, ABCs, Phonics, and numbers.

Mr. B and Baby G watched little baby bum for about half an hour while I finished the dishes (I don't consider this education since it's passive learning) . Afterwards we had lunch and read George Washington and the General's Dog again (because it's awesome). Then I tried to put Baby G down for a nap while Mr. B watched Frozen in my office. This was a horrible fail because Baby G didn't want a nap. Eventually I gave up and went to rescue Mr. B from Frozen.

Next I proposed that we put together a new Lego set. I picked up the Lego Friends Jungle Rescue Base (41038) for $30 (on clearance for 50% off) from Target on Monday.

I LOVE Lego Friends! I was very skeptical at first ("girls don't need special toys, they can play with regular Lego sets!!!"). Then I found the Juice Bar  and Rapunzel's Creativity Tower (a Disney set but in the style of Lego Friends) on clearance and got hooked because they are sooooo colorful and cute!

The Jungle Rescue Base is a huge set. Since Baby G was awake and it was close to nap time we only completed the first bag. What lessons did we cover while working on his project?

• Math: counting out the bags, counting the pieces and putting them together from the instructions. Mr. B is getting a lot better at following instructions and putting pieces together.
• New vocabulary and communication: this set has a fun story. Andrea and Stephanie are animal doctors saving and treating injured animals. The set comes with a wider range of medical tools which we discussed. 
• Pretend play and creativity: Bag one included Stephanie with her medical tools, an injured panda and a bathroom. This was a lot of fun to play with and we reenacted some potty training scenarios.
• Patience, problem solving and motor development: these pieces are tiny and hard to put together. When Mr. B snaps them together it's a rewarding achievement. 

Next we went upstairs for some pre-nap reading.

 

Mr. B chose: 

• Man on the Moon by Anastasia Suen: This another one of my current favorites. It's also another perfect unschooling book as it tells the story of the first moon landing in a fun and very simple way. It's amazing how much this book taught me. A history and science lesson in one! 
• The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt: An art lesson in a book with an engaging story.
• Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel: I don't really like this book. It's cute and it rhymes but it's not very good. It's about a messy polluted town. Michael Recycle pays the town a visit, tell them to clean up and leaves. The towns people figure out ways to turn their town into a clean and efficient, green-friendly society. At the end Michael Recycle comes back and they honor him as a hero. WHY? They did all the work and came up with all the ideas. It's a strange book. At least Mr. B got a lesson in recycling.
• Luke Skywalker's Amazing Story by Simon Beecroft: This is a very simple summery of Episodes IV-VI. Very easy and quick read that Mr. B memorized a long time ago.
• Twenty-Six Pirates: An Alphabet Book by Dave Horowitz: This is a cute alphabet book about pirates (ABCs review: win-win!).

After reading, Mr. B played in his room until he fell asleep for his nap. Afterwards, we had dinner and watched the ending to Frozen (I've seen this movie 500 times but this might be the first time I saw the ending).

Mr. Husband got Mr. B ready for bed while I put Baby G to bed. Mr. Husband informed me that they read Man on the Moon (again), Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town by Fred Coots (one of our favorite song books) and Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers (a recent addition to our collection which I haven't decided if I like yet).

The End. Now the fun begins!

Banned Books

I buy a lot of books and often rely on positive reviews and recommendations to build my must have list. Unfortunately, sometimes I buy one of those books, read it and say goodbye forever.

 

Oh Babar! You are on all the lists! Everyone said you were a must-read children's book! But you are such a violent and disturbing book so out you go! Initially, I was so happy to find this book in perfect condition at Goodwill that I paid $2 for it! Satisfied, I crossed it off my list and placed it on our shelves. Months later I decided to read it to baby G and I am so relieved that she is a baby and can't understand it.

So baby Babar watches his mommy get shot and killed by hunters. Then, another elephant eats some poisoned mushrooms and dies. Then, the elephants decide to make Babar king because he wears clothes. Maybe if there was something of value in this book it would be worth keeping for when the kids are older. There isn't. OK NEXT!

 

But they said to get ALL the Madeline books...So the original isn't bad. The rhymes are a bit awkward at times but the story is great and Mr. B loved it. Madeline's Rescue isn't horrible either. The ending makes no sense at all but it's sort of cute.

Then I read Madeline and the Bad Hat. The Ambassador's son Pepito isn't a nice boy. He builds a guillotine to decapitate chickens in his back yard. He captures a cat in a bag so that he can watch it get ripped to shreds by a pack of dogs. The dogs then nearly maul Pepito to death and he ends up in the hospital, severely injured. NEXT!

 

The Story About Ping has glowing reviews from Amazon. It's about a sweet baby duck who gets separated from his family, has an adventure and then finds his family again. In the end a human with a stick smacks him because he is the last duck to finish eating. Don't hit cute little baby ducks! This book is BANNED!

DONE!

Baby G Favorites: Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo

 

This week Baby G LOVES Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo by Kevin Lewis. I originally bought this for Mr. B when he was about 18 months but he never got into it. The reviews say that it is the perfect book for preschoolers. I disagree. This is a baby book because you just keep saying "Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo" something something "Whoo-Whoo" on every page and babies love repetition. Toddlers wants some substance (or at least mine did).

Anyways, this book makes baby G smile and just saying "Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo" makes her happy when she is crying. Cute pictures and cute, sweet rhymes. This is a fun read.

Craft Fail: Wooden Craft Model Motorcycle

 

Grandpa's birthday is coming up and he LOVES motorcycles. For his gift I planned to build this Wood Craft Model Cross-Country Motorcycle with Mr. B and then have him paint it tomorrow.

Luckily I decided to read the reviews first (they are terrible) and build it myself. After half an hour of struggling to put together this impossible motorcycle, it snapped! Too bad because I was kind of managing. Mr. Husband and I took a look at the damage and decided that gluing it wasn't worth it. So in the trash it goes. I need a drink.

The Dimetradon by IQ Assembling Product Series was WAY better.

I'm so glad I didn't try to build this with Mr. B tomorrow. That would have been a disaster. Back to the drawing board for Grandpa's present.

Collection Showcase: Books About Asia

Mr. B is learning about Aisa with his Montessori class so this is a good opportunity to showcase and review the Asia portion of our collection

Mr. B is only 2 years and 8 months old so we have not read most of these books. Also missing are two Kai-Lan books that I lent to his class for storytime.

 

Mr. B isn't really excited about Kai-Lan at this time. He loved Kai-Lan: Under the Stars, a play-a-sound book, when he was 18 months and enjoyed Kai-Lan's Great Trip to China when he turned two. The New Year book is a new addition and Mr. B did not want to read it. 

What else have we read? Mr. Husband and I LOVED Zen Shorts by Jon Muth! Mr. B didn't really get it so we will have to wait a few more months and try again. Zen Shorts is a series of short stories told by a Panda to his neighbors. Each story teaches a Zen principle (very un-Western concepts).

We also read Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say. Mr. B really enjoyed this one. This book is about a boy telling the story of his Grandfather's immigration to and life in the United States and then his return to Japan. This book has beautiful artwork, a very simple storyline and easy to follow text. It got Mr. B thinking about his grandparents and the concept of growing up. Excellent book! 

I'm A Little Panda is a cute little book about a baby panda growing up in the mountains of China. Mr. B loved this when he was little. This might be a fun read-aloud for him to bring to school next week.

Unfortunately, The Story About Ping from Tuesday's haul did not make our collection.  Amidst its glowing amazon reviews, a few negative reviews revealed the fact that this book includes animal cruelty! That's right, the hero of the story: the cute little baby duck gets smacked with a stick! This is not okay. Goodby Ping!

We have a lot of reading ahead of us. I'll need to review the rest of these to see if Mr. B is ready to read them soon.

Books on My Nightstand

Guess what? I read adult books too! These are the books that I'm currently reading or planning to read:

I try to get all of my books from the library. I only buy the book if the library doesn't have it or if I find one at a thrift store and it looks like fun.

The Boy Who Played With Fusion: This book just came out on June 9, 2015 and all the homeschooling blogs I follow have been on fire about it! Of course the library didn't have it so I bought it new (GASP!). I can't wait to finish and review this one!

Origins: Ever since watching Interstellar I've had an undying desire to quit my career and become an astrophysicist. Unfortunately, I went the social sciences rout in school and have never taken a physics class. To fill in some (ahem) gaps in my education we have been watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil deGrasse Tyson. I got Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution from the library to supplement.

What if?: This is Mr. Husband's book. I've been asking him a lot of questions about life, the universe and everything recently (thanks to Cosmos) so he is making me read it. So far the chapters I've read have been amazing. So far I highly recommend this one.

Homeschooling Books: I've been interested in the unschooling homeschooling philosophy recently so I got The Unschooling Handbook from the library to help implement it (because you kind of have to unschool a two year old). So far so good. The book is broken down by subject (math, science, history, etc) and shows how parents creatively trick kids into learning. Homeschooling the Challenging Child (also from the library) was recommended by a homeschooling blog. Mr. B is definitely a challenging child so maybe I'll get some pointers.

I got obsessed with nanny "memoir" books after reading The Nanny Diaries five times over the last few years. I saw You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again at a thrift store yesterday and "it looks like fun." I finished the prolog last night and so far IT IS fun.

Fox Trot: I love this comic series! Mr. B is the real life Jason (the tiny blond Star Wars obsessed nerd).

Hopefully I'll finish some of these!

Wednesday Haul

Oh no, I did it again! I wasn't planning to buy anymore books this week but I absolutely had to have these!

I stopped by my favorite little thrift store to see if I missed anything yesterday and sure enough I did!. I missed a Jon J. Muth book!!!!! Mr. B might be a little young to appreciate it but Mr. Husband and I absolutely LOVED Zen Shorts. Zen Shorts is a series of short stories told by a Panda to his neighbors. Each story teaches a Zen principle. We can't wait until Mr. B is a little older so we can discuss this book with him.

• The Three Questions looks like an excellent and very well reviewed addition to our Muth collection (also including Stone Soup which we have not read).

• Mr. B's Montessori class is currently studying Asia so I had to get A Visit to China. I will have to read it to see if it's appropriate for Mr. B to bring to school for story time. I put together a separate post on our Asia collection.

• I was just drooling over Spacebusters, The Race To The Moon last night on Amazon so this is an exciting find! Not sure if Mr. B is ready for it since it's a level 3 reader. 

• The Tales From the Odyssey looks like the Odyssey adapted for a very young audience. The author, Mary Pope Osborne, authors the extremely popular Magic Tree House Books which I've been collecting. The Iliad and the Odyssey were some of my favorite books is college so now I can introduce the kids sooner than later. This is part one so I'll be on the lookout for other parts.

• The ABC Jigsaw Book looked like fun. It is literally just a Jigsaw puzzle inside a book (like a self-correcting ABC matching game). 

Now I am officially done buying books for the week! 

IQ Assembling Product Series: Dimetradon

 

We built a Dimetradon last week and Mr. B painted him. There are tons of these  IQ Assembling kits (brand new) at thrift stores for about $0.50-$1. I have been building up a collection of these and this is the first time we've opened one. Mr. B loves to help us put Lego sets together so we decided to try something new.

Unfortunately, the pieces are a bit flimsy. Mr. B really wanted to help me punch out the pieces but he ended up breaking a few. I also cracked a few pieces putting the dinosaur together. The instructions were not user friendly so I winged it. 

Overall, if you can find these puzzles used, they are totally worth the price! Would I spend $10 for one? Nope. 

Afterwards I went through our collection of dinosaur books but couldn't find a picture of a Dimetradon (except for a tiny one hidden in a dinosaur search book). I ended up finding a description of him in a stack of dinosaur flash cards from Target. I guess he's not a very common dinosaur. In fact, he's not a dinosaur at all!!! He is "a mammal/reptile-like creature that lived before the age of the dinosaurs." COOL!

This Week We LOVED Vigfus the Viking!

This week we LOVED Vigfus the Viking by David Sacks. This book is about a family of Vikings that sail into New York by mistake. At first Thorveld, Helga and their son Vigfus proceed to pillage and plunder as vikings do. Vigfus ends up at a school and discovers the concept of friendship. His desire to make friends forces him to rethink some of his barbaric cultural practices. In the end, this viking family learns to fit without letting go of their culture.

I was planning to wait to introduce Mr. B to this book because it is long and wordy. He ended up finding this book himself and asked us to read it. The concepts behind this story are relatable (being different and making friends) enough for Mr. B to enjoy and the pictures are funny

What did Mr. B (2 and 8 months) have to say about Vigfus? Mr. B required us to read this book 1-2 times a day last week. He said that he wanted to be friends with Vigfus and wanted Vigfus to come to our house to play. He was extremely engaged in this story and enjoyed discussing the pictures.

Tuesday Afternoon Thrift Shop Haul

The only thing I love more than shopping for books is enjoying them with the kids. I started collecting children's books while I was pregnant with Mr. B and we currently have a MASSIVE collection. I rarely purchase books new so almost the entire collection has been purchased from thrift stores during the last 3.5 years.

Today I stumbled on an excellent haul. Once a month I set off on my "Book Hunt". During this hunt I drive to distant book thrift stores to look for books for our collection. Today was not a Hunt day. There is a great little thrift store next to our grocery store and I can't help but take a peek every time I go. Their book prices are excellent. Children's books are priced $0.50 for a hardcover and $0.25 for a paperback. Unfortunately, most of the time I leave empty handed. Today it looks like the store had a great drop off donation. The entire children's section was full and and the kids books spilled over to fill two adult shelves. There was also a full box labeled "free books" outside the store. Baby G whined the entire time.

Here it is in all its glory! I got a Berenstain Bears Book for my collection, some great history books (including George Washington and the General's Dog which I've been wanting for a very long time), Stellalnua (which Mr. B ripped to shreds when he was 18 months old), some great art books which are on my special list, etc. In hindsight I do have a few regrets. Mr. McMouse by Leo Lionni is not very well rated on Amazon and the history books are for a much older audience than I had hoped. Overall I do have some buyers remorse. It's hard to shop with Baby G.

I also took a look in the free books box and got an interesting collection:

These are really cute and OLD mini dictionaries that the kids may or may not enjoy when they are older. Mr. B is not very interested in dictionaries but I had to have these. 

Finally, despite express orders from Mr. Husband I did grab a few toys for Mr. B because, you know, they're educational. Mr. B is obsessed with puzzles and I've been looking for 48 piece Melissa and Doug puzzle with a board backing (since he's mastered most of our small ones). This one was $2 and in excellent condition. The Phonics toy is a gamble ($5). I usually don't buy electronic toys because I got sucked into the Montessori philosophy before I had Mr. B and they are extremely annoying. Right now Mr. B is obsessed with Phonics so this might help him figure out his letter sounds and lower case letters. 

 

I plan to slowly introduce these books and items into our curriculum and will review them once I and Mr. B get a good sense of them.