Hurray!!!! This ("Unwind")is our series name to categorize all the blog-posts related to our evening 1 hour fun time :)
You thought I really took this long to decide? hehehe...Not at all!!!! I had kind of made my mind before I click the Publish bottom in my previous blog post. (For those of you who missed the first two scenes of the movie, you can go read here and then here. I hate to miss the first few scenes of the movie however bad it is. Its more like a deciding moment whether you want to stay glued to your seat for the next 1 or 2 hours :). Same here i guess!!!! Go read them however bad they are :) but do comeback once in a while because we are the process of improvisation.)
I am a working home. And my kid goes to kindergarten. We are physically parted by few kilometers and for few hours in the day.This makes our evening cuddling time more important than anything else. Its my de-stress mantra!!!! and my kiddo already has a masters in the art of hugging, kissing, and pleasing his mom :). So we need that 60 minutes of mommy-kiddo time. (mommy-kiddo time starts from evening till night but this particular hour of the day - mama doesn't do any chores and kiddo doesn't turn on any gadget)
And we slowly started finding ways to keep our feet grounded in one place, doing something that is interesting to both of us. Sometimes we sit and watch a cartoon movie together, sometimes we go out to bicycle, sometimes we sit do a puzzle or LEGO. But we slowly learnt by experience that when we repeat the same activity in near future it kind of becomes a routine, which both of us don't like. Yeah, we cant stick to patterns!!!!
That's when I started reading about, researching about, googling (Love this word!!!) about (which is more apt) teaching concepts to kids. I didn't want to teach him phonetics, cursive writing or mathematical tables. I left those to the experts. I felt these are easily(best) learnt by kids when they are taught in group and by those who are professionally trained to do this. Miss. Lexie is already doing a great job!!!!!
I took the concepts from Homeschooling websites and decided to follow unit studies. Unit studies are really fun and informative to these little hyper-active cognitive brains. It kind of caters to all their Ws and Hs. And we progress little in language, numbers, science and arts at the end of every unit study.
We don't follow textbooks but of course we read a lot of storybooks related to the topic of our unit study.
Then we watch Rhymes (I think he is little too big for them now, but i still use them if I have to make him rote something) interesting videos, or cartoons related to our study subject. (To my surprise I found many of the kids storybook has read aloud with cartoon images by the authors themselves which makes the study time more fun for us).
We do use iPad to play Apps related to our subject again.
And a lot of coloring, tracing, drawing on papers.
We make the place more messy by cutting, pasting, gluing, etc. We follow "Excuse Us!!!! This place is Messy as we are busy making memories" (Of course no excuse to mama who has to make the room as the tidiest corner of the home for next day's fun :( as part of her nightly clean routine )
I think you would have got the glimpse of what you can find in the upcoming blog posts. Yeah, Loads and Loads of Links and Creativity.
**PS: We don't make this strict everyday. We still go to park, bicycle when its sunny, take a bus to Library, go to Judo and Swimming, freak out on Friday evenings, We sometimes don't do anything productive on weekends. Like all these Unit Study time is just another activity :)
So how do we encapsulate all these memories and mess that we are creating?. Of course I click and record a lot when my boy is on his mission. Then I found this concept of Lap-booking. Trust me I am obsessed now. I really want to do one by myself for every unit study. But I forcefully take a back step and leave it to his imagination. I am sure you too will get hooked too!!!!
More gyan\info\facts about Unit Studies and Lap-booking as we really unwind more!!!!! Lets keep it simple to start the ball rolling. (and by that I get more time to find more about them...hehehehe)
I am for sure every mom will have a story to share on how they spend their cuddling time. How do you spend your evening family time?. My ears are all open!!!
