Do you set yourself goals as to what you intend to teach for the week?
Not necessarily a routine, but a few things you want to introduce your child to.
This week, I want to develop my daughter’s independent play. Adding a little twist to an activity which usually bores her after a few minutes. This week it was playdough. I gave her a baby knife and a few plastic shapes for her to spend time on her playdough station. So far it got her interested in playdough. Yesterday I gave her overipe bananas to cut with the same knife. It was a great success (but a lot of mess to clean up afterward
Sometimes i decide to focus on a theme. This month the emphasis is Chinese.
So remembering to put on a chinese dvd once a day (dora, wink to learn etc), putting a chinese music cd on the background when she plays and giving her the audio pen once a day to discover the books.
I have a list of things I like to do every week. Some are Doman-related, some are not. I have a theme. My poetry, homemade books, and read-aloud books all have to do with the theme, usually something she’s already in to. We do an artist and a composer every month.
We have either a color or a shape every week. This is more for my sake than hers. I can make flashcards, books, powerpoints, crafts, etc. ahead of time. I tend to focus more on one thing for awhile and then move on. I’m still doing the other things but my emphasis is on one “subject”. Lately it has been great artists. For awhile it was our reading program. We worked on games and crafts more for awhile.
I figure as long as I keep my program going, I can change it up to suit my interests as well as hers.
We started at 11 months. She is 2 now. I write everything in a notebook. I keep it open on a shelf so I can see it in passing. Some weeks I check off things as I go. That way I can keep up with what we do.
I have all her reading words in an excel file. Powerpoints have their own list and are highlighted by color and language.We are doing bits in three languages now. I place a mark in either blue, pink, or yellow next to each one so I know which language we’ve done. I use palmchristy’s bilingual template.
As for the other activites, I follow letter of the week preparatory curriculum rearranged to fit us better. I also follow the tot school blogs. You should really check them out. Wonderful ideas!
Hi
I don’t hv a goal actually. I just keep on introducing new concept or go over the same staff (eg recognition of letters, numbers, shapes, those basic staff) using different set of material.
I would say now I am trying the thematic approach for introducing new material.
I don’t follow a routine as well. I simply keep everything that I want my son to use in a tray on the floor. So he can access them easily, whatever I play with him depends what he picks up fr the trays.
Basically I have trays for music, art, language, maths, right brain games n games like puzzles, blocks, iq games, etc). I also flash cards to him. So I just go with the flow of my son.
Hi Shadah,
You look like you’re well organized, I wish…
I’m curious how do you manage the three languages, do you do all three in one day or you have different language days? Could you pls share more details? Also, do you teach reading in all three languages?
You say you use ‘palmchristy’s bilingual template’, what exactly are you referring to?
Thank you for sharing!
We do OPOL (one parent one language). I speak German(non-native) and my husband speaks English to her. I do reading in both languages. I do Ek mostly in English. People and places don’t change much, anyway. Works of art and music etc. depend on country of origin.
The third language is Spanish. We just started that. I add phrases and words every week. I only use things she already knows in other languages. Once I add it to Spanish, I only say it in that language. So a conversation would go like this: Go get your shoes–Spanish. Put your shoes on–Spanish. Let’s go outside now–German.
Or like this. Do you have a red crayon?–German. See, this one is blue–Spanish. It will get better and more complex as she learns more. She could do more now, I think. But, I need to take it slow. It can be confusing sometimes to remember what language to use. My Spanish is not very good vocabulary-wise. I sign with both languages and my husband also does Spanish. I am hoping eventually to use Spanish as a “family” language.
I don’t do a reading program in Spanish. I am only working on speaking. I am considering starting a reading program in Latin, though. Has anyone thought of that? Tried it?
http://www.happyfamilynet.com/baby/
Here is the website with the reading template I use and the one for bits. If you want the bilingual one pm me. I put the link through google translate. They have a lot of neat stuff.
Shadah, thank you for taking time to explain, even though you still have me a bit confused. You say you do OPOL, but than you mix in spanish. We tried to do OPOL too , but you can’t really do it with three languages, we would need another parent in the family… So with us it’s basically the same, one language just gets mixed in. So far I was afraid to do reading in more than one language, because once we get to phonics, we’ll have a bit of confusion on our hands, but I guess I’ll just go ahead and trust that my smart boy will eventually figure it out.
I think I won’t get into those templates, we use LR and I’m super happy with that. But thanks again!
Also I wanted to add a little comment on the original subject of weekly goals. I’m making a chart/calendar for each week using tables in the Word. In the first column I put ‘subjects’ /everything I’d like to get done everyday/ and than the rest of the table are dates. I do my planning at the beginning of the week and than every evening I just tick off what we did or write down a number for how many days we’ve been doing a certain program. It helps me to keep track and also it’s easy to see when it’s time to move on to something else. I hope it’s understandable.
Bebita, would you like to share this document? (if it’s not too personal)
Ideally, if i had the courage :wub: to prepare such a document, i would at the top put the weekly goals (with all the suggestions and i would tick two or three) and then columns with days and many subject so I can tick the ones we did that day.
But I would need to print all the subjects otherwise I would probably forget to include them that day.
I have a little diary (really tiny) where i write down the dvd we watched (so i alternate), if we did LR/LM and all the new words she says. but it’s too small to write down what we did that day. I’d love to write down the Montessori-related activities we do.
Yes we have weekly goals woth my 25 months old.
-Each week my daughter learns different chinese words, different spanish words and of course english words. I make different presentations in each language and also print the flashcards.I try to play with this words thru the week. We use color red for spanish,blue for english and green for chinese flashcards.Once she learns this words I move on with new words for next week.
-Also I try to look for new activites that will help with her hand -eye coordination. Like cutting,coloring,drawing,spooning exercise, open and close different objects maybe pastic bottles, we do walk on the line as well for body coordination.
-We practice our song everyday, when she learns one we move to the next one.
-We count every day and learn new numbers a week.
-We work with scissors even if she can’t cut yet but it is a good practicing.
-We work on our letters sound, two new letters for week.
-She needs to do her own lundry once a week.
-She needs to accomplish at least one house chore activity a week, last week activity was showing her to help mommy to set up her place in the table, which she happily does.She gets her plate,cup,silverware and platemate.This week activity will be to read a sentence from the bible on dinner time. and also to set up dady’s place in the table. and next week will be mommy’s.
-After dinner we all dance for 15 minutes…we started doing this last week
-Ohh well I think I am forgetting something else…I actually try to accomplish more stuff with her that is part of our rutine…
If you have anymore ideas,please give me some…ideas are welcome.
Hypatia, I’m attaching an example of my chart/records sheet. I don’t have a scanner, so I just filled in a few examples in my blank sheet. Some ‘subjects’ we do for a week, so I put in the number of the days we’re on it, other ‘subjects’ I just tick off. It’s very simple really. Right now I have a whole month on one paper, but soon we’ll probably need two, as we add more ‘subjects’ and activities. I find it more handy to have a printed copy, it’s more accessible and I’m more faithful with it. It’s kind of fun to look back over the whole month and to see all that got done. I hope it’s a help.
Attached is my list of weekly goals…ha…I just corrected my spelling mistake…I wrote WEAKLY goals…maybe that would be more accurate! Although this may look organized, I am much less than that! I post this on a door in my kitchen where I see it many times a day. It gives me a bit more focus and often a kick in the butt if I see that I haven’t been doing something for a long time (like the YBCR books & word cards!)…it also gives me a chance to not be so hard on myself if I see that we’ve been legitimately busy with other things (French playgroup, music class, day with Daddy, etc).
I like Bebita’s Month at a Glance, though. I’m sure you’d get an even clearer picture of what went on. Mine’s a little larger because I like to print what activity we did do in regards to the subject area: Ie. MYC (Music For Young Children) - CD number, instrument we focused on, or “theory” item. By doing this I’ve noticed that “modern” music has happened more frequently than “classical” music training and that I need to pull up my socks in that regard.
I keep a general list at the bottom of ideas for materials to pull if I’m in a hurry and my brain just doesn’t want to think! I’ll try to switch things up as much as I can in any given week.
We also have a goal!!!
It´s important to have organization, practicty and dedication to follow a program and consequently find your goal. Then it´s interesting you have videos to have fun, in our case, I always use the Brillkids materials from downloads, they are excellent, after that I change them in our mother tongue and in English together, and in the end of each slide section I put a video from youtube related to what we are learning. This is followed everyday, of course, always thinking in my children acceptance.
Thank you too Kizudo.
I’m wondering whether I should just print out many copies of your weekly schedule (adapted to leave room for motor skills and Montessori-like activities) and make a little book/diary out of it. It’s really neat and much better than what I could have done myself. lol
I think Dad Dude does something similar, but on the computer.
I hope Dad Dude read these and he post some of the sample weekly goals he did for his baby.
I’m just starting to organize and give a schedule plus a weekly goal so that I know what my baby accomplish at the end of the day.
I’ve attached it. I’m unable to do the changes I’d like (to shorten some themes like Chinese and to extend the days…) If you are gifted with Word, maybe you can better it. lol
