Cai's Home Learning

The Pirate Who Had To Pee by Tim Miller


A dramatic tale. I am unable to relate whether it ends in tragedy or joy, as my son was too overwhelmed by distress when he realized the toilet on the ship was out of order and the pirate needed to go to the loo, and almost tearfully begged me to stop reading.

Not a book for sensitive readers.

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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1087047.Pattern_Bugs" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Pattern Bugs" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347470418m/1087047.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1087047.Pattern_Bugs">Pattern Bugs</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/62767.Trudy_Harris">Trudy Harris</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2271391329">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Simple and pleasing to read aloud, with bright pictures, but full of verbal and visual patterns--AB, ABC, AAB, ABB... Patterns are expressed with words, movement, size, position and cover.<br /><br />A really lovely maths concept book for little kids.
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7441725-lindley-walter-smith">View all my reviews</a>

Overview

To celebrate all the brilliant work Cai has been doing with reading.

This has been two pronged: phonics and real reading.

Skoolbo and teach Your Monster to Read have been a fun way to teach him phonics as a tool to decode words. While he is often lacking in confidence over diagraph games and asks for help, once one or two is done  he quickly takes over and does them all himself. He just needs support over his initial panic.

He has shown he really understands these tools by decoding made-up words, like the names of unfamiliar Pokemon.

Overall, though, most of his reading seems to be sight words from repeated exposure to text in his everyday life, and through recognizing the shape of words. When he confuses words, it is usually because they have a similar shape--'pizza' and 'plaza', for instance, or 'expedition' for '--and he rarely confuses them again once it's pointed out for the first time.

It's noticeable that he reads sentences, even quite complex ones, with more confidence and ease than individual words. The questions he answers fastest in Teach Your Monster to Read are the ones that are sentences, not words--for example, "Give the red cat to her" is instantly followed. I think he instinctively uses context to figure out words.

He gets real pleasure in reading signs and words in everyday life. He practices reading in games, and lately he has independently read kids' books to me, without ever having had them read to him. We use library books, not readers.

He also has a big preference for ebooks that read aloud while highlighting the words, and I notice his eyes following the text carefully. I think his fondness for them has really contributed to his reading skills.

We discuss his thoughts and feelings about what he reads, his favourites and his responses to stories and nonfiction texts. He enjoys retelling favourite books and games and talking about the characters. He also creates new stories around favourite texts (especially games) in his imaginative play, creating complex narratives (using toys and speech) around the basis of the text.

He understands the difference between imaginative and informative texts. While he is comfortable with imaginative texts in games, he has a strong preference for informative books and videos.

He also demonstrates knowledge of the authorship of texts, especially as I am a writer, as is the father of one of his friends, and he's seen and handled our books (and read the dedication to him in mine!)

Learning Goals

• To learn the common letter sounds and diagraphs
• To learn about pronouncing new words with segmentation, blending and letter families
• To develop skills and practice with guessing new words based on known words
• To learn to sight read common "tricky" words
• To enjoy reading as an everyday activity: books, games and other text examples.

Australian Curriculum Links

English

Text structure and organization

Rainbow Fish. The horror.

This has been a heatwave week, so except for a trip to Nanna's for a swim, we've mostly been indoors. The soft play at the mall has been very handy in making sure Cai got physical activity and kid time.

He has a play date at the soft play tomorrow, while the weather is briefly better, too.

The week has been very focused on Youtube, board games--and through that, maths and motor /pre-writing skills.

Pokemon maths in action

To my delight, bringing out the Pokemon number bonds game the next day was a huge hit--in fact, Cai has brought it out every single day and asked to play "our Pokemon game". We focus on number bonds to make 10 with it, and also we do sorting and categorising exercises as part of "battling with the pokemon we caught". He loves it, almost too much. (It is less exciting for an adult!)


Today I think I'll add representing data on simple charts to the game, by adding his penguin maths manipulables and making charts of the pokemon of different types, colours--whatever he chooses to model.

The penguins are still a big success. We've made up several games with them, and Cai has been really eager to learn place value using them as a "trick" to count fast. I showed him once, and he demanded we do it together every turn after that. They've been a really good buy.

We've also been playing Pop to the Shops. It's great in terms of money maths, but what always impresses me when I play with Cai is the amount of imagination and roleplaying he brings to the game. The "shoppers" interact together, lend each other money, try out their goods, discuss with the shopkeepers the other things in the shop, and how much they have been saving... A game takes a good while, but it is kind of amazing just how much he puts into (and gets out of) it.

Pop to the Shops

Shopping List has come out of the games pile, too, and he spent his pocket money on an expansion to add more fruit and vegetables. Guess Who has been a huge hit lately, and he's been working hard on learning the right kind of questions to ask, logic and categorization.

New to our games rotation is Rainbow Fish. I'll admit it, despite the beautiful components, I loathe this boring pointless game. (I hated the book, too.) But Cai adores it so much he will tell me stories about it, imagining dice rolls and results. I comfort myself with the fact that it is good for learning decision making and subitizing--and, as always, creating narratives. Besides, no matter how boring the actual game, I have fun with him.

As to all these new games, I had a big haul of games and cards from Savers, and among them was Boggle Slam. Old, battered packet--sealed, unused cards inside. It's been another hit. We played it once properly, and then he made up his own rules based on the video game Letterquest, in which we make words to defeat monsters. I've been secretly using it to teach him about word families by swapping letters around.

Defeating bad guys with the power of words

My kid sits on the floor happily creating words from letters. How good is that?

I'm slowly bringing out games and cards from the haul, but I'm particularly pleased by a Cars set of maths cards, which will come in useful for some Maths games from junior primary maths books I borrowed from my mother, and Footprints, an amazing--and clearly unused--game made by the Science Teachers Association of Australia to teach about carbon footprints and the environment.

Games have been awesome for motor skills, too. Cai's aunty and uncle gave him Kerplunk, which he is mad on, and he spent pocket money from his UK grandparents on Operation, which is kind of amazing at working on pincer grip and fine motor skills while he has fun.

Australian grandparents gave him these awesome magnetic toys. He plays and plays with them--and I have so many plans for teaching geometry through them. ;)



I did a lot of reading on OT blogs about prewriting and children who suffer with sensory difficulties delaying writing, and learned that tweezers are perfect for pincer grip and hand strength. So... he made art from lentils, chickpeas and macaroni. He loved it, and I'm going to make it a regular activity.




I also read about using a sock with two holes to force proper pencil grip, something I have really struggled with teaching him. I came up with a writing "challenge" using a cute toy sock with two holes in it.

Wow. Magic. It forces correct grip, and Cai can do this for ages. To get his interest, the first time I put tiny money prizes at the end, but after that he picked out tiny toys he already earned to award himself as prizes each time. I'm going to keep this up daily for a few weeks, and then see how he improved from his first attempt. He was already showing improvement at the end of the first session!


He remains committed to his Youtube channel, and I think it's an awesome way for him to work on communication and presentation skills, especially as he is explaining how to play things. I'm also sneakily incorporating a teaching typing game into it. ;)



Otherwise, lots of reading, with us and with Skoolbo. He always chooses maths, science and geography. He also watches the Skoolbo money management lessons over and over, funny little thing. Playing with magnetic tiles to make shapes. Measuring while cooking. Lots of creating his own levels and games on video games. Just... life and learning.

On Sunday he turns five, and on Monday school goes back, so...

...I guess we are officially homeschooling as of next week!

I have no doubts. Cai is learning so much, making real friends, and as far as he's concerned, it's all play. He will say "I want to homeschool!" and mean board games, or baking, or Zombie Maths on my phone, or Skoolbo, and it's all sheer delight to him. But he's learning every minute.

I just wish it wasn't about to get really really hot again.

Overview

Cai is really interested in making his own games. For now, the Basic evolution of the card, we are looking at designing his own levels in kid-friendly games that encourage this.

I am already planning a first evolution in which he will start to make basic games in Scratch Jr and play "learn coding" video and board games, but that will come later.

As part of showing what he learned, and his new project of making his own Youtube channel, Cai made a Let's Play video demonstrating making levels in Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-a-rama,  incorporating literacy and communication goals as well. He also helped me design channel art. We discussed at length what he likes about Youtube Let's Plays and what makes an entertaining Let's Play.


I am already planning a first evolution in which he will start to make basic games in Scratch Jr and play "learn coding" video and board games, but that will come later.


As part of showing what he learned, and his new project of making his own Youtube channel, Cai made a Let's Play video demonstrating making levels in Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-a-rama,  incorporating literacy and communication goals as well. He also helped me design channel art. We discussed at length what he likes about Youtube Let's Plays and what makes an entertaining Let's Play.


He learned and practiced the skills of the game development cycle of prototyping, playtesting, iteration and further playtesting. He proved to be better at game design than me, and fixed my own attempts to get them to be challenging enough while not frustrating!


He was really engaged in making his levels fun and thinking about what would make someone (me) enjoy them, including building minigames in Disney Infinity. I was really pleased with the work he did on theory of mind and empathy.

Learning Goals

• Creativity

• Spacial skills (designing levels)

• Probability and prediction

• Design: planning, prototyping, testing, iteration

• Communication and presentation

• Persistence, practice and coping with mistakes

• Considering the needs and point of view of others

Australian Curriculum Links

Literacy: composing texts

• compose spoken, written, visual and multimodal learning area texts
• use language to interact with others
• deliver presentations

Arts: Media Technologies

• Evaluating
• Collaborating and managing
• Use media technologies to capture and edit images, sounds and text for a purpose

Mathematics

• Shape
• Location and transformation
• Data representation and interpretation
• Answer yes/no questions to collect information and make simple inferences
• Describe position and movement

I missed a weekly update because--so sick. So very sick. Cai came down with gastro at a borthday party, and we followed, and then I followed with health issues of our own. For a while our house was its own circle of Hell.

So, what, apart from the time lost to illness, have we been up to?

Cai's birthday girl friend loves games too, so that's been a big thing. He played games with her that I would have thought were far too challenging for such little kids--she's just turned four!--and seeing them play Rory's Story Cubes and make up stories was a revelation. They had story races, seeing who could make up a story first!

 I went a little crazy at the Kidstuff 20% off sale--Cai has a birthday soon!--and put most of it away for later. Seriously, with an unlimited budget I would fill several houses with stuff from there.

The one thing I did bring out immeditely was Penguins on Ice, some maths manipulatives that have been a big hit. I really like them. There are ten bars of "ice" and 10 rubbery, solid penguins of each of ten colours. The bars snap together horizontally or vertically.
At first Cai just happily sorted them for ages. He also made up his own games. I've also made up games using a ten sided die with them for sorting, subetizing and place value, which have been big hits.

I was particularly pleased with how quickly Cai took to place value--once I taught him "a trick for counting fast" he wanted to use it to do it every turn, and for me to write down the numbers.

I have plans to use the penguins as a resource for number line addition and subtraction and for multiplication, but I will find and adapt or make up those games later. It's also, I think, a really good (and cute) way to build a foundation for arithmetic abacus/sokoban skills that I want to introduce later on.  And the Base 10 set I bought in a rush of enthusiasm when he was three. :D

We just have to be really, really careful not to lose penguins, which may be a challenge.

We also introduced UNO, which has been a massive hit. Almost too massive. Played other card games, too.

 Lots and lots of reading, especially math and science books. Concentrating on the concepts of place value, skip counting, fractions and number bonds in book choices. Reinforcing the concepts while cooking. Geography books, especially about the US (his mecca). And his other mummy made a huge hit with a book about microbes, which has led to constant questions ever since.

Cai really, really takes to maths. When I reached the hot stove part of cooking the other night, the part he can't help with, he pulled out a list of addition number facts and read it to me, with exclamations of excitement and cheers. It's so cute. He really is a unique child in some ways.

My big failure of the fortnight is something I need to try again. I was reading a book of maths games. Many of them mentioned using Numicon to teach number bonds.

 

 Well, Numicon is expensive, and Cai loves Pokemon, so I designed a set using Numicon colours and shapes but using pokemon instead of plain colours, and designed a pokemon hunting set to go with it. This was right before I got sick.

Yesterday, I got my printouts, laminated and half killed my hands making the card pieces for the game while Cai played. (How much do I now appreciate all the work my mother did as a junior primary teacher, and in her own time?) He came across just as I was cutting up the final few, and had a complete hysterical meltdown at me "ruining" the Pokemon by cutting them up. NOT the reaction I was hoping for.

They've been set aside for a bit, and I'm hoping to bring them out and actually try the game later on... Bit of a disappointment for now.

 The other big things have been finishing his game development badge by making levels in several games, and his decision to be a YouTube Let's Player, which I've been working hard on fulfilling. No usable videos as yet, but I think this is a good learning experience for him. Lots of learning for me, too... He's helped me design channel graphics, and we're getting there.

 I know not to let him read the comments when he does. Ethangamer, for example, the little cutie, has comments saying they want to punch him in the mouth. I have no idea what would lead adults to comment like that on a kid's video. It's vile

 I still worry too much about Cai's writing, but he's actually done some colouring (!) and I know I'm being silly. He'll get there at his own pace. He' not even five. He's playing with blocks and lego and playdough and these are all important prewriting skills, getting his fine motor skills better so he'll be able to manipulate pens and pencils. Might do some clay work with him today.

His colouring is very below his age level, but his sensory issues mean I am ecstatic he did any at all. Maybe I can convince one of his friends to colour with him and get some peer pressure going. ;)

Apart from illness, life is great in our little homeschool. This week, I look forward to more social and outdoors play, getting his Youtube channel going, and trying out some science activities in another book we found at the library.

How to be Good at Maths by Carol Vorderman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really, really good.

From a relaxed eclectic homeschooling perspective, this looks far more valuable to me than any curriculum.

It covers key primary school numeracy contexts clearly, with brilliant diagrams and examples, and in highly visual ways that will make it really easy to translate to practical activities with manipulables and games.

A library borrow, but I want my own copy as a reference to make sure I "don't leave anything out" and that I'm aware of logical ways to teach.

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2, 4, Skip Count Some More by Thomas K. Adamson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bright, cheerful and colourful introduction to skip counting. Conveys well why skip counting is helpful, and gives chances to practice.

It's pretty simple, with every day examples that get more complex as they go on: how many slices of bread needed to make five sandwiches? How many fingers do these children have? Which kid is missing a sock, and why does that mean there are an odd number of socks? Which lego bricks will fill this gap? How many packets of hot dog rolls with two rows of four buns need to be opened for two packets of hot dogs with two rows of five sausages in each? If each scoop of ice cream in a graph represents three children, how many children prefer each flavour, and how many kids overall?

The combination of explanations with pictures makes the processes very clear.

My going-on-five kid enjoyed it and wanted to read it in one go.

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Due to the holidays and a nasty cycle of insomnia and migraine, I've been slacking off on weekly reports.

Example relaxed homeschooling day, yesterday:

We "slept in" late, as it was Izzy's first day back at work after the holidays and Cai was clingy. We played with his baby doll, Cai initiating toothbrushing, feeding, giving him water and talking about teeth: how they grow, how they decay, how adult teeth push out milk teeth. This is an issue that gives him a lot of anxiety, and I've noticed he uses his baby doll a lot to work through anxieties.

Side note: Cai announced the other day that his baby doll is mostly a boy (called Baby) but is a girl when called Izzy after his other mummy. "That means he's an insect."

It took us a few moments to realise he was trying to say "intersex." :D

Oh, well, that's one educational goal down. Our child, before five, has a better concept of human biological sex being a non-binary continuum than a lot of adults. Score one for a pro-science kindergarten education.

We also did a lot of wordplay in bed, something Cai loves. I remember reading somewhere that it's an ASD trait. Whatever it is, he loves combining and inventing new words.

We also played Fight List. Obviously Cai is as useless at categories like Justin Bieber songs as I am, but in some categories--reptiles, for example, or symbols of Christmas--he comes up with answers faster than I can Swype them. Fight List has become a daily routine.

Once we got up, Cai played with Lego a lot, which I love because it works on his fine motor skills, and did a lot of pretend play.

When I suggested "Let's do some homeschool work!" Cai elected to do workbooks yesterday,, and ran eagerly to the table. In practice it didn't go very well, perhaps due to my headache and general exhaustion, but we finished off the Learning Addition workbook--way too easy for him, but I liked finishing--and did some Thinking Skills work.

The only real success from that was that he liked using coins to measure the height of clowns--which matches with an Australian Curriculum goal, measurement using everyday objects, so yay. He also liked to put them on the clowns' buttons, and cover clowns completely, and count them. This is a general thing: Cai doesn't tend to stay on task. He chases rabbit trails. He answers things differently--in the same session, questions about words starting with the same sound, he delighted in answering "wrong" but by twisting the word--"Frog" matches "frelephant", for example. These are things that are great in a one on one context, but would be disruptive in a class, which is one of the reasons I think homeschooling suits him.

He also never stays still while working. He gets up, bounces around, moves. He "answers" by spinning a mini fidget spinner on an answer. All things that are probably helpful in a kinetic learner, but would be a major pain in a classroom.

He also struggled with writing answers. When he had to trace out letters, he insisted on using two hands, or didn't press hard enough to make marks, and resisted correct grip. He defaulted quickly to ignoring the shapes and making circles, which are easier for him. So this remains something we need to work on.

So now I list it, we got more out of the workbooks than I thought. Nonetheless, he got sick of it soon, so I suggested playdough, thinking of the fine motor skills lacking in his attempts at writing. We made it together, Cai assisting with measuring, and we played with that instead.

Vax game in progress

Later someone on the Gameschool Community asked about games about vaccination and the immune  system. I googled, and ended up on this insanely addictive app: Vax

This turned out to be the perfect example of serendipity in relaxed homeschooling. Cai was fascinated by the process of preventing the spread of disease through using vaccination to isolate disease carriers from the herd, and the way "grey" (unvaccinated) people could be protected by other people being vaccinated.

Now, Cai is rarely sick. He saw a paediatrician and occupational therapist for a while because of his low height and weight and autistic and sensory issues, but he sees GPs as terrifying places that stick needles in him for no reason. "To prevent you getting sick" has no weight with him, maybe because he doesn't have much memory of being sick.

But this game really resonated with him. We looked at the people who were protected, and the orange vaccine refusers who make it harder. We talked about people who aren't vaccinated--tiny babies, for example--and how they are protected by being isolated off from potential disease carriers by vaccination. We talked about the diseases his mummies and our parents got before there were needles for them, I showed him my chickenpox scars, and we looked at googled pictures of chickenpox, measles and mumps, and I talked to him about how scary it must have been for my parents.

He looked at the circles in the game that were larger because they link to most people and can spread disease faster, so are vital to be vaccinated, and he brainstormed people they could be, being proud of himself for thinking of childcare workers.

He was really, really into the idea of protecting babies from getting sick. Cai loves babies. He really got the concepts of herd immunity, cushioning and social responsibility.  He went from hating the idea of needles to stabbing his finger at the screen saying "everyone gets needles!"He finally accepts that, yes, flu vax will happen every year. Frankly, he now understands the concept of vaccination as a social responsibility better than many grownups.

We also had productive conversations about vaccine refusal and their reasons. I avoided the MMR autism myth as yet, because  there is too much autism phobia and shaming for me to want to approach it with my own ASD kid just yet.

We did talk about how people don't remember epidemics and just how bad and dangerous they were, because they've been protected so long, and a little about relative toxicity (not in those words) and how people don't always understand it, and that people don't always understand how the digestive, renal and circulatory (not in so many words) systems work so they think that eating something (formaldehyde) in an apple or steak is safe but much tinier amounts are dangerous when injected.

He's wanted to talk about it this morning, too, and why my being sick is different and people can't catch it, so I can predict a lot of little rabbit trails into biology and social studies from here. And this is what I love best about homeschooling: rabbit trails.

I foresee a Pokemon badge with Bissey holding a syringe in his future...

Anyway, this was a day in which I had low energy due to pain, we didn't leave the house, and I didn't think Cai had learned much: until I started to think about it. It was a day in which, frankly, I played a lot of Love, Nikki and Cook, Serve, Delicious--and that's another thing, Cai initiated creating a "healthy" menu for the game and picking out balanced and healthy foods. More incidental, child-led learning.

I may not be a radical unschooler, but I am very, very grateful to them for teaching me to "see the learning" and understand that education need not come from traditional sources. I mean, as I type this, Cai is watching a video on the life cycle of rattlesnakes that he found for himself on Youtube.

Other catch up things:

There have been lots and lots of board games, rarely missing a day.

Thanks to his  Australian Nanna and Poppa, we added Pop to the Shops to our board game lineup. Cai loves anything shopping themed, and Pop to the Shops is excellent for numeracy because it involves paying for purchases, giving change and figuring out if you have enough if you draw an expensive item--bearing in mind that you "get paid" in the centre. Really lovely game.



I've been really pleased to see Australian Poppa get into the idea of incidental learning, teaching Cai about things like water safety flags and channels in the harbour. It's awesome.

Social skills: lots of incidental playing with other kids, family celebrations over the holidays, and something I was really particularly pleased with: picking out presents for family members that he thought they'd like, and taking into account their feelings and tastes. He saw Poppa playing with my fidget cube, so Poppa got a fidget cube. Izzy mummy got a necklace in her favourite colour. I got perfume, and he was very serious about smelling samples (bless the kind and indulgent Chemist Warehouse perfume counter lady!) Australian Nanna got a candle in peppermint "for Christmas".

Cai is also interested in learning card games now. We've started simple, with things like Snap and Fish, to teach him procedures.

Speaking of games, I joined a Facebook community called Gameschoolers which looks at using (mostly board) games for educational purposes. They run the gamut from school-at-homers who allow strictly limited screen time and only educational board games to radical unschoolers, with lots of eclectic homeschoolers in between. Nonetheless, they are my tribe, I think. I'm particularly intrigued by those who see themselves as using a purely game and experiment based curriculum.

Personally, I've been letting my own goals drift a bit, and I need to get on track. Every health and social professional I've seen reminds me that I am not just a mother and it's best for Cai if I pursue my own things as well. So I want to get back on track with my writing career, toy making (which I have already revived) and Japanese learning in particular. And get back in contact with a couple of old friends.

Speaking of looking after myself, I still have post-migraine malaise, but I have a prescription to fill today, and I really want to get Cai out of the house and playing with other kids, so I need to go out. I have a lot of housework to catch up on, too, and some shopping to get done by tomorrow, as Cai has a play-date with two little friends.

So time to stop analysing and start living!