Here is an attempt to touch some highlights, anyway... Lots and lots of boardgaming, all of value. The gameschooling thing is serving us well as a method of learning that never, ever needs coaxing. Covering maths, observation, deductive play, reading, and lots and lots of pretend play.
The pretend play is particularly prompted by a board game I picked up for $3 at an op shop, Whatever Next? Cai is fairly obsessed with it. There are lots of prompts for pretending on the cards you draw, and Cai gets so into his narratives and acting out that a single turn can take what seems like hours and hours... :) He gets incredibly much out of it, and also sneak learning happens, such as explaining why sheep need to be shorn, and what the qualities of wool are...
Cai asked to learn about the solar system, and as my own knowledge is pretty sketchy, we've been learning together. We've been using child friendly videos mostly, but also books and games. He soaks it all in avidly and asks bright questions. As for me, I feel like I'm learning all kinds of cool stuff along with him. :)
Another interest we've been reading about together a lot about the human body, and how it works. I'm fascinated by what grabs his little mind.
Playing with his friends has been very much of value. As an only child, he doesn't get much chance to act out disputes with other kids, and I've been really pleased to see that he can clash wills with them but still love them hard.
Still working on fine motor skills a lot--tracing lines, threading beads, absolutely anything I can think of that he will enjoy doing. I really want to get his muscular and motor control down. The weather has been hot, but he's got in a lot of climbing and swinging and things regardless, especially with friends to prompt him. And he is always in motion.
Cai's let his Youtube channel slip a bit, but I don't want to force it, despite the time I put in. He'll come back to it, or not. I have to remember not to impose my own hopes on him.
His maths aptitude always astound me a bit. He will make mathematical conclusions spontaneously--"Six? That's easy. Three and three!" he says, as he picks up three toys in each hand. We also accidentally ran into long subtraction through playing Prodigy Maths, and he really seemed to grasp and enjoy doing it in concrete ways with his Penguins on Blocks, taking away groups of penguins and rearranging them to make blocks of tens and "extras". I love teaching through manipulables and games
And speaking of manipulables, his fifth birthday meant I pulled up his Balance Beans, designed to teach algebra. So far, he likes just free play with them, which I think is of lots of value itself at this stage. But his other mummy enjoyed the "very hard" challenges...
I feel like I'm not reporting much despite getting a lot done, and I have to change that, because it slips my mind so fast. I need to get in the habit of recording everything he does, for the purposes of later reporting.
Tomorrow--the museum! The trip and meetup were planned last week, but hideous weather intervened.
