During the tough times on the onset of Covid19 where fear of the unknown seemed to lurk at you, I was still faithfully helping the boys in their education while being locked at home. Juggling many tasks and emotions while making sure the boys coped well being locked at home, I was not able to blog. Looking at all the photos I took, I wanted to compile them into a homeschooling journey blog.
Beginning of 2020, Jansen was still learning ABC, more towards him needing to build up his hands and fingers muscles and coordination before he was able to grip the pencil, plus all those brain-muscles connection. So, I prepared various activities to help him with that besides the conventional way of just-writing.
1. STICKERS ABC
I had all those code-colour stickers bought sometime back for the purpose of homeschooling and I incorporated it here. A simple activity to recognise alphabets — big or small, then sticked at correct boxes. I learned that using stickers helped the development of fingers and coordination. Well, we found out he could not really took out the stickers, so big brother came to help.
I remembered after few weeks playing around with this type of stickers, eventually he grasped it and finally able to — peel off stickers. I thought it was automatic for every child because when my eldest was young, he peeled off stickers like he sticked his fingers into nose. Lol. Homeschooling allowed me to learn and relearn, to realise what challenges Jansen faced.
2. PRACTICE WRITING
That time, we were halfway through this 'Practise Writing Book' which I think I blogged once before upon the start of it.. Yayyy for the halfway through.
Before writing ABC, the book led the child to draw different patterns of lines.
I don't follow the school way of must-focus-all-the-time. I know children are meant to explore and play and whole set of wonderful imagination. One could see it here, halfway through the practise, he started imagining something, put all the markers cap on his fingers and roared. So, we played along. Haha.
3. CUTTING
Still continuing his cutting book. By that time, he had mastered holding the scissors well, could cut straight line pretty confidently but not twirling lines. It was okay, just keep cutting.
4. CUT AND PASTE
Didn't know pasting was a skill to pick up too for some kids until I homeschool Jansen. The items to cut here in the book were fairly small, so mostly I cut and he learned to use glue then to paste. He enjoyed this.
4. WRITING
By that time, he was more confident in writing too although he did say his writing not like his brother. Alot of assurance to let him know it didn't matter. For hands so small like his, it was all for fun and building hands muscles. And the fun of using pencil.
When he finally finished his ABC writing book, he was proud of himself.
Big brother also had his own study to do, mainly his was using the school's way, a lot of workbooks to be done. He quite enjoyed it but not for too long span of time.
Jansen doing some activity book.
5. JUST SCRIBBLE
His doctor did mention to occasionally just let him scribble on a piece of paper and let his imagination guide.
I noticed he likes this the most. He could really zoom into his own world and scribbled few pieces. So I always bought drawing papers in bulk. Haha.
Big brother reading his Chinese text book.
6. Creative alphabets activity
Just some extra creative activities I let him try. Yayyyy, we were at XYZ already. Group the alphabets with same colour, and fill in appropriately, either the missing alphabets or missing circles. He loves colours. So I found out when I incorporated colours into his learning, his learning came to life.
This was my homeschooling journey or some sort of compilation of what we did in the beginning of 2020 and throughout 2020. I enjoyed every moment and on days, I wasn't up for it or Jansen was having some pain, we would lie down to read books or play ipad.
Hope you enjoy this little compilation.
Thank you for reading. Stay bubbly. Stay hopeful.
❤️Love from me❤️ 