Letter H...

Welcome to Homeschool Oregon, this week we learned all about the letter H! It is officially summer over here which means we are switching into a different schedule for the time being. What this means for us is a lot more activities, sports, and family trips. This also means that while we will still be learning throughout our summer, the posts may be spaced farther apart until summer is over. Now back to our week of learning: We kicked off this week with learning how to trace and write the lowercase and capital H's from our workbook. We also kept in rotation filling our very own capital letter, this week being H with all words, animals, etc. that we could think of.

 

 

This has by far been our best addition to our weekly learning, our preschooler loves finding words that start with the letter H. This is something simple you can do each week, it helps them associate the sounds of letters to actual words which can really help down the road when it comes time to start reading. It is a win, win for both parents and children. The word exercise also really helps our preschooler figure out what we should do for our letter of the week crafts, this week we agreed on doing a house for capital H.

We took a break from our conventional home studies to go on a learning field trip at A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village that you can read all about here. This way a great fun trip for our whole family to get out of our homeschool room and get to do some hands on playing (it's just playing to your toddlers ,but they are learning throughout the experience). Since we were having a relatively slower week in our learning and are nearing the end of this week, we decided to wrap things up with adding a new idea to our rotation, learning wise that is. Now that summer is upon on us, we are going to be stepping away from our homeschool area for a bit and getting out in the weather while it is still nice. So, while our calendar is filling up with more recreational activities for our children and family trips for us all we thought this would be a great time to introduce reading chapter books with our preschooler. A great way to expand their vocabulary while working on their listening skills and patience since this requires listening to longer stories. Also just a great way to get more one on one time with your children in general, you can make a goal to read one book together each month. I like the option of letting our toddler choose what we read together, going in theme with our letter of the week our son chose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

*As a note I realize that there are some out there who would firmly not agree with reading this book to our preschooler. While there are a few areas that I "edit" to make a little more appropriate for our younger audience listener that it really depends on the child. And I will leave it at that.

To wrap up this week, we added our very own letter H to our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree. Now that we are in our summer season here we are going to be changing the pace of our lessons and learning. While we are still going to be learning and sticking to lesson plans, they may just be spaced further apart to make time for extra activities right now. We currently have two toddlers in four different activities, as well as some fun family trips planned. So, as you can imagine we are shifting some things around to make time for everything and my blog posts will also be pushed back from weekly to every other week or so until summer is over. We really hope everyone out there reading enjoys their summer and pop back in to see what we have been up to throughout the summer.

Field trip day: A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village!

Summer has kicked off over here and to celebrate (also to just give us a little break from our homeschool routine) we decided to take a trip with our toddlers to the The Gilbert House. If you are from Oregon and have yet to visit them, I encourage you to do so. This is the perfect way to spend a day learning in a fun, interactive environment as a family. You can check out all their information here. Let's get started with our trip!

There are about twelve different rooms/activities to explore, as well as a playroom just for babies and an outdoor area for exploring on sunny days. They have a little bit of everything to offer, their rooms range from dramatic play to storytelling and learning, to building and tinkering. (Since there is quite a bit here, I am just going to cover what we loved best) When you first walk in, if your kids are anything like mine they will flock to the village grocery store. This is such a great little mock set up of an actual market that is filled with pretend foods, reusable grocery bags, kids carts, aprons, and even a pretend check out area. It is the perfect dramatic play area that really engages toddlers to play together. We also loved the Go Figure! room that was filled with classic storybooks and learning games that corresponded with the stories. As you can see from our picture below, both our toddlers loved this room.

 

We also loved the Oregon Room obviously! This room was seriously awesome, it had a little bit of everything that Oregon has to offer. There was a milking cow simulation, garden game area, both grass area and ocean area with a pretend beach that you can clean up. Our kids really loved this room and if you are like our family, you may have a very young toddler who can enjoy the baby playroom that is located right next to this Oregon room.

Another dramatic play area we literally couldn't get our kids to leave was Village Vet Clinic, where our little animal lovers could help fix up and care for stuffed animal patients. This room had everything from cages for the pretend animals, an operation area, to a wash area and potty area. The room was complete with children lab coats, stethoscopes, and velcro bandages for the animals. I cannot express enough how great this room was!

 

 

The last bit that our children (and my husband) absolutely loved was the different tinkering rooms: Tinker Tracks and Imagination Playground. Both of these rooms offered hands on building that really engaged problem solving thinking to figure out how to get the tracks to work. It was great to see their little minds working out the ideas to get the marbles rolling and to build their own little worlds out of foam pieces.

 

 

There is much more to discover here, we just covered our favorites for the time being and plan to visit again soon to explore the outdoor area. We are also hoping to explore the other options that A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village offers, as a homeschooler I love when local areas offer different ways to continue the learning especially during the summer. They have a wide range of what they call discovery days for families, homeschool days specifically made for us homeschooling families in mind, and small summer camps for in depth learning. We hope you are all enjoying the beginning of your summer! Stay tuned for our letter of the week post all about the letter H!