Art and Language Arts

Zach has known his letters and their sounds for some time, but hasn't really tried to read much and I haven't tried to help him much. He has done some sight reading, recognising a word today, forgetting it tomorrow. I'm in no hurry, so I left it alone.

Now Zach draws ALL THE TIME. This is no exaggeration. So does Simonne actually.... but let's talk about Zach. Because of his constant drawing, his handwriting is pretty good for his age. His fine motor is very strong. He started to copy letters from the cover of books as part of his drawings (he would draw the cover of the book). Then he would copy each page of the book, so would copy a word from the page on the drawing. He wanted to know what letters were in 'cow' so he could put it on the picture of his cow. He became fascinated by writing both the words and the pictures so I could ask him what words he wants to write (read that 'what pictures does he want to draw?'), he would tell me, I would write them on paper, he would copy them and then draw a picture depicting the word.

If I wrote the word 'tiger', he would write the 't' then ask "What word does 't' make?", then write the 'i', then ask, "What word does 'ti' make?" etc, till he's furnished the word.

I've been fascinated watching him explore sounds, words, and integrate them into his art.

Simonne is a good reader, but was a reluctant writer until the art frenzy began in our home. Now, her writing is beautiful. She takes the same pride in her writing as she does in her drawings. Now, she will actually write a few sentences as part of a story that she has already done some drawings for (the drawings are loosely related, hopefully the story will tie them together!).

She now studies the illustrations in the books we read, thinking about how they were done: paint, pencil, markers,... and listens to the stories for the details she saw in the illustration! This one is a biggie. It translates the other way too. Her memory of the details in the stories is getting better, as she flips to a later page and recalls some detail that we had read before.

I'm excited to be watching this process unfold!

I LOVE markable maps!!!

This picture shows why I love markable maps. Well, first, let me give some background. I hated geography. I just didn't relate. Drawing the shapes of countries and rivers and hearing about their weather and vegetation did not interest me.

This year, I've decided to more fully use the Sonlight curriculum that I have had for some time. I started one of the grade 2 readers with Simonne, Clara and the Bookwagon. The setting is Maryland in the early 1900's. We talk about setting, then follow Sonlight's encouragement to find Maryland on the map. Well, I didn't know, so we found out together. My goodness! A whole new world was opened up. We continued by finding all the states we could recognise, then Simonne found a puzzle of the U.S. that was labeled and she spend a long time using it to identify states on our markable map.

THEN, I decided to continue on this vein, and introduce continents and oceans. Can I tell you that I had no previous idea about any of the oceans before this? Honestly, I remembered the location of the Caribbean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It was really exciting for me to find out where these were and have Simonne eagerly labeling the places. I even offered to write the labels for her and she just point them out, but she wanted to write herself (this is the former reluctant writer!) We have a cute little song about the continents and oceans singing and Zachary is singing along. I love homeschooling!!!

Every day since, in every book we read, we note the places mentioned, and look for them on the map sometime shortly after. What a life!