Teaching Tuesday

I feel a huge responsibility to teach Wesley all I can. I am always searching for new ways to get him interested in learning and actually want to sit down for more than two seconds. I have tried various different things, and they seem to work for a little while and then he loses interest.

So I always have to try to have something new up my sleeve to pull out for him to get him engaged and learning everyday. I also try to do this with things on hand or very low cost. Thanks to the fabulous Internet world, we have some great things here in our "classroom" at home.

I use "classroom" loosely. We basically have a part of our office/craft/exercise room dedicated to learning. I have two wire shelve units that have very involved learning activities such as puzzles, fake money drawer, easy reader books, my first leap bad, tag junior reading system, lacing activities as well as some other fine motor skills. The other part of the classroom is his own personal desk with a flip flop alphabet block like this

that i found on clearance one day at TJ Maxx. And a set of paper cubes that hang on the wall with each individual letter. As we find small items that start with certain letters we add them to our cubes if they will fit. Some of these items are little wood pieces he has painted or things from 25 cent machines.

Next to his desk is another wire shelf that contains crayons, dry erase books, coloring books, and my binder of different learning activities sorted by letters. Some of these learning activities are flashcards, tracing pages from Thomas the Train given to him by his great grandfather or other tracing books. As well as this ladies awesome home school "Walk Beside Me" curriculum that she has so graciously given for free.

Here is a link to her curriculum. http://confessionsofaslackermom.com/category/preschool-curriculum/walkbesidemepreschoolcurriculum/  (This is so amazing all the work she puts into it. Some of it is a little "old" for Wesley but I use my judgement and we utilize what is on his level.)

All of the curriculum I print from her website, I then laminate and put in this binder. This allows us many uses from each sheet and saves paper. Any worksheets that I have tore out of a workbook I slide into a smooth sheet protector and those can be used with dry erase markers as well to get multiple uses out of each sheet.

Wesley loves to sit at his own desk and paint, color, or do puzzles. Just recently we have tried both of these. Both were a hit and both occupied him for quite some time.

Letter puzzles here: http://tiredneedsleep.blogspot.com/2009/10/build-letter-templates.html

and Pom Pom letters here: http://www.fabnfree.com/2013/03/20/free-printable-alphabet-magnetic-pom-pom-sheets/

What's your child's favorite learning activity? How do you get them to sit down and learn with you?