Worksheets Galore

Colwyn's been in kind of a worksheet mood lately. I printed off a bunch of things from Enchanted Learning and he did them all really well. These are some that he did a day or two ago. On this one, the only one he needed help with to figure out the pattern was the bottom one. I was really surprised that he did so well on it.



Colwyn counted the bats, then I held his hand so we could form the numbers. This is also how we write his name on the worksheets. He wanted to work from the bottom up on this one, and I thought of how nice it was that nobody was forcing him to go in a set order to follow along with the class.



Ah, don't you just love my artwork? I wanted to see if he knew longer vs. shorter, which he obviously does. They're circled twice because we went back and circled the shorter ones after. Again, it's nice to be able to let him follow his whims.



Colwyn loves mazes. We did about four or five of them in a workbook today because he asked if he could do his "work." Sometimes he purposely goes down the wrong path so he can say, "Oh, no! Look at that! I have to go backwards!"



We did some other worksheets today but I didn't want to bore you with too many pictures.

Today the kids engaged in doll play for a good half hour. Colwyn dressed up in a kangaroo costume that has a little joey in the pouch, so he pretended to be the kangaroo mommy (normally I refer to him as the daddy when he plays with dolls, but obviously, only mommy kangaroos have pouches) and gave his joey milk, baby food, and a binky. Lachlann also played with his dolls quite a bit, it's so cute to see him feeding the babies and smacking his lips. He pushed the stroller around for quite a while (a bit faster than is acceptable with real babies, heh), then put the babies to sleep in his bed. It's interesting to see how differently the boys play with dolls vs. how I remember my sister and I did.. when Colwyn was giving the joey a binky, I asked if the joey was upset. Colwyn sad, "Yes, he's scared that the T. Rex is going to get him!" Any time Colwyn says T. Rex, in any context, it's always in a deep, scary voice. I don't think my sister and I ever mixed dolls and dinosaurs. :)

Oh, and we finally got around to correcting the color of two of the planets on our space display. I told Colwyn how I thought that we painted Mercury and Venus the wrong color, and asked if he would come help me find out what colors they're supposed to be. We sat down at the computer, and he watched me look up the website that I had found explaining the true colors of the planets. I explained how when we don't know something, that we can use a book or the computer to find out what the answer was. We talked about how silly we were to make a mistake, but how we just had to fix it and it would be all better. He got a kick out of the fact that we messed up.

While it's important for me to teach the kids some facts and skills, I think my most important job in homeschooling my kids is to teach them how to learn on their own. I don't want them to be the type of person to say, "Oh, gee, I don't know what such-and-such means, oh well" - I want them to go and find out. So hopefully this whole fixing-the-planets thing is the first of many "lessons" in how to learn.