Life, right now, is in flux. We just recently moved across the country (USA) for my husband’s new job. All of our belongings, except what we could fit in our car, are in storage & we are living in a hotel until our new place becomes available. We have been in the hotel for about 3.5 weeks & have about 2 more weeks here. The boys won’t know what to do with themselves once we have toys again! Shockingly, this has put all my home schooling efforts on hold, but has also given me ample time to analyze what I have been doing & plan what we’ll do from here.
I have been dabbling with different techniques and methods for about six months now and have gotten a little frustrated. Luckily I have just made a major breakthrough & understand what has been going on! My 3-year-old is 3! Not 15, 9 or even 5! So I’m taking a much different approach & going to focus on playing. We are going to do a lot of play dough, we’re going to play more Candyland & we’re going to have more frequent library days (since our new place will be about three blocks from the library!). He loves doing mazes so I am going to find a thousand different ways to do mazes and we do all the fun ones! Since he loves writing to grandparents I am going to aim to have him “write letters” & send projects to them so they can see what he’s doing (and then I don’t feel like I should be keeping all of it!). We are also going to spend ample time building forts exploring our new town! I think this new direction will be a good one.
I am not completely giving up on my curriculum, but rather than trying to do a lesson from the textbook I am going to use the lesson as a spring board. We will take the concept being taught (for example, patterns) and use that in some of our games during that day or week. For patterns we might build tall, medium & short towers and place them in particular patterns, we might fold a pair of socks, then a shirt, then pants, then socks, then a shirt, then pants, and so on.
Of course, all of this will probably start in the New Year. We can move in about a week before Christmas so that week will be rather busy with unpacking & trying to get ready for Christmas. I doubt we’ll be settled enough to get back to regular life until then, but I am excited to move forward with my new plan! I think it will lessen my frustration & be a lot more fun for all of us!
