Lessons Learned

Adapting Education

Puzzles A-Z

When we first started using these puzzles I can remember only placing out a few at a time. We still do that on teaching sounds. But it was a joy to watch the girls build the alphabet with the bare puzzle boards & then work with the beginning letter sounds of each wor…
The decimal system

So I laid out the decimal system materials per Maggie’s request to play the fetch fame with the beaded material & wooden blocks. The idea is you give the child the symbolic numerical quantity & they match the physical materials to it. Eventually after thousands, hundreds & tens, units are fetched you can lay…
Rainbows and sunbursts

The girls decided what they would do this particular morning. I had other ideas but Lily immediately requested the rainbow after seeing writing works on the table. So we set up the rainbow instead. Lily combines the dollhouse toys with the rainbow. Lily builds with the rainbow. Maggie decided to work on the sun…
Animals & Worksheets

Continuing with the animal kingdom I set aside a few creatures to zero in on their body parts. I added familiar items like the puzzle life cycles to remind the girls of what they’ve learned. They were able to tell me the story of the visuals when I asked what we…
Chalkboard books & Handwriting without Tears

Lily found the chalkboard books that we haven’t worked with in a while & she was quick to pull them out. Armed with chalk Maggie followed to the table & they shared the books back & forth practicing writing skills. Maggie did a great job practicing her letters. She does well with these books as…
Painting with stencils

We prepared everything to paint. After all the materials were ready & on the table Maggie decided she had an idea. And she did. She came back with a box of plastic stencils that gave various shapes from counting to letters to pictures of objects. She decided we would paint with stencils. What a great…