LittleIzumi Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 (edited) We have been unschooling for a while and I just started more "school" with big sis Monday, and dd who is 2 (3 in a month) was going to tag along. Except she wants to do MORE than her sister. She was tracing big letters and then doing the matching of uppercase to lowercase completely on her own, DEMANDING the next worksheet and then the next until she had the entire alphabet done, and then wanted more, etc. I've gone through over 30 worksheets from enchantedlearning.com with her in two days. She doesn't even want to color in the picture of what the letter stands for. She just wants to draw on/trace the letters themselves like a big kid and NEVER STOP :tongue_smilie:. After she did all of the letter matching today I managed to distract her with cutting and some ninepin bowling :lol: but then she pulled out another workbook and started in on more letters. I have some dry erase alphabet things she can do. She has sensory issues and I have no idea how she actually learns--she will act like she isn't learning anything whatsoever and then boom, she'll come over & show me that she knows absolutely everything on a certain topic. Right now she is apparently on an ABC kick. She picked up the letters ages ago and then went back to "no learning, thanks" and then suddenly this month she decided to start identifying letters in every word (b is for bathtub! L is in Chloe!) and trying to write them herself. Any other ideas on what to use for her??? She has no interest in just playing while her sister works. She's jumping up and down next to me demanding another worksheet, more workbooks, etc, for a couple of HOURS. I don't want to be responsible for destroying an entire forest, which at 30+ pages in two days is so going to happen, lol. ETA: I'm thinking about starting some AAS with her, and doing some MUS, but she gets really OCD about the placement of tiles & blocks. Really OCD. Edited August 24, 2010 by LittleIzumi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2smartones Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 I say let her learn whatever she wants to. That's just me. If the only real concern is saving trees, get one of those dry-erase workbooks for writing practice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MissKNG Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 Wow! Sounds just like my big girl at that age. We went through all the School Zone workbooks at Wal Mart for PreK and K then I got some Critical Thinking Co math books and blew through those. Maybe start with something like that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 If you think she may be learning letters for a while, you could the StartWrite program so you can make your own worksheets. If you don't want to go through all that paper, maybe you could put the worksheets in page protectors and have her use dry erase markers. Considering she doesn't want to color the letters in, this might be the way to go. And you can use them over and over. Another thought is I have a couple of dry erase things for learning letters. One is called Practice Pals. The other is a box of cards with one letter per card. I don't know anything more about it, because I have lost the paper with the name on it, but my 2yo loves them. If you go to Amazon and search for "dry erase alphabet" you will a lot of related products, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patchfire Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 What about letting her memorize various things? You could get her a cheap CD player and some skip counting CDs, poems, nursery rhymes, that kind of thing, and tell her that's her "school," to listen to x until it's memorized. Alternatively, of course, you could use an mp3 player of some type. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleIzumi Posted August 25, 2010 Author Share Posted August 25, 2010 If you think she may be learning letters for a while, you could the StartWrite program so you can make your own worksheets. If you don't want to go through all that paper, maybe you could put the worksheets in page protectors and have her use dry erase markers. Considering she doesn't want to color the letters in, this might be the way to go. And you can use them over and over. Another thought is I have a couple of dry erase things for learning letters. One is called Practice Pals. The other is a box of cards with one letter per card. I don't know anything more about it, because I have lost the paper with the name on it, but my 2yo loves them. If you go to Amazon and search for "dry erase alphabet" you will a lot of related products, though. Another mama reminded me about dry erase this morning. I totally forget that I have a couple different alphabet-related dry erase books from her big sis. I'm going to try those tomorrow. :D What about letting her memorize various things? You could get her a cheap CD player and some skip counting CDs, poems, nursery rhymes, that kind of thing, and tell her that's her "school," to listen to x until it's memorized. Alternatively, of course, you could use an mp3 player of some type. Huh. I never thought about having her memorize things yet. Before she wouldn't have understood but after her last couple of "leaps" she might be able to. She's been learning the songs we've started this month. Hmmmmmmm. I need a pondering smiley! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa in the UP of MI Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 We recently started doing circle time with the whole crew. We do nursery rhymes, finger plays, and songs. All of the kids love it! And even the 2.5yo is joining in. One other thing that I have her do is draw narrations with the rest of us. These are oldest dd's assignments but all three of the older kids do them. The 2yo and 4yo also enjoy the extras from HWT. We have the capital letter wood pieces and the Roll-A-Dough letters. Another thing we do that doesn't feel like school is doing science explorations from Sandbox Scientist. My first grader usually wants to join in when I set up an activity for the younger kids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleIzumi Posted August 25, 2010 Author Share Posted August 25, 2010 This morning we got up, had breakfast, and I announced we would have the usual scripture & song time--to which she responded "and worksheets again!!!!!!!" Help me :lol:. I'm trying some of the new ideas today, hopefully it goes well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleIzumi Posted August 25, 2010 Author Share Posted August 25, 2010 Worked on learning a new song, used the dry erase alphabet & shapes book, she had fun scrubbing all of the pages clean, then we used our fun flashcards with almost every vowel/consonant sound plus blends, made a sorting game of putting them away--and then she still dragged out her big workbook and asked to work on it. This may be a long day. :tongue_smilie: But, we used much less paper this morning so that's good, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 :hurray: It sounds like you are on the right track! It does get better. I think you will find that next year, she will have more skills and more patience. Hang in there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embassy Posted August 26, 2010 Share Posted August 26, 2010 LOL, no advice for you but I could totally picture what you described. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleIzumi Posted August 26, 2010 Author Share Posted August 26, 2010 I've switched to giving worksheets as a reward for doing other school things so she doesn't kill the forest. Lots of different dry erase books/sheets, songs, AAS, flashcards, MUS, spelling with foam letters, and then worksheets for a treat in between most of those :lol:. After several hours of that she finally had enough in her brain that she went to play. Whew. :tongue_smilie:I might survive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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