Monday, February 7, 2011

If at First They Don't Succeed, Try Again In a Unique Way

Today during school time, we came to the most exciting and favorite part (okay, I'm being a bit sarcastic): Handwriting. I was trying so hard to motivate Evan to keep going and not give up. He was in tears, I was remaining calm, and got an idea. I put some rice in a large container (rectangular shaped) and took it back to the homeschool room. Evan's attitude changed from one of frustration to once of curiosity. I placed his finger in the rice and helped him write a number 3 in the rice. Within minutes, he was excited and writing 3's with no problem! Succeed!




If you are finding a particular subject/task to be frustrating, switch it up with something different. Take school outside and make it fun and interesting! Don't forget, children need a lot of stretch breaks, and aren't meant to be in a seat for too long. Children do much better when given frequent stretch breaks from their school work.



By the way, I'm in no way brilliant. The rice in a container idea I've read from many other homeschool mommies, and in creative activity books. Venture out onto the internet and see what you can find on blogs. There are a lot of great homeschool moms out there that are veterans, and a plethora of knowledge!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love it Shannon!! You are such a wonderful teacher and mom! Another fun idea for handwriting is pudding or shaving cream. Just put it on wax paper and start writing. The kids love the pudding because they can lick their fingers and the shaving cream is amazing on classroom furniture...it makes it so clean!

Keep up the amazing work you are doing with little Evan!

Love you!
Mindy

Shannon Wallace said...

Mindy, thank you for the sweet compliment, and other ideas! I will have to buy some shave cream and pudding and give that a try too!

Love,
Shannon

lizziejoy said...

Hey lady! That is so inventive. Thinking outside the box has been one of my hardest homeschool struggles. With Aiden, we write everything for him in marker and then he traces it, or find papers with lightly written letters on them. I honestly thought he would spend a few years doing things this way. He was ready to spell, but couldn't make his hand do the letters. It has worked great. For math he has numbers I have written on on round dots (like for garage sales) and he picks the number he needs and puts it in his answer and then traces the number. He is now writing about 75% on his own w/o me having to do this :) I am going to try the rice idea. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

Shannon Wallace said...

Hey Liz! You know what, if time allows, search the internet for Christian Homeschool Blogs! That has given me a plethera of ideas. BLOGGER is a great resource for what interests one's mind!