Adventures are fun!

Zeru and I have NEVER gotten our photos taken-
I mean professionally or intentionally.
But I have this wonderful friend who happens to be a
photographer and happened to travel into town for
one day and who happened to have the idea that she would take our photos...
so Zeru is looking a little cuter than usual,
and I am sure I look a lot better than usual
 in these photos also- because Tausha is good at that.

So... I like having fun, and Zeru likes having fun, but sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I am doing, working, and keeping lessons on track that fun seems so far away!

it can be a lot of work to have fun! But I have determined that life is indeed short and I just need to slow down and realize I need to enjoy what I am doing.

like yesterday at the store when I should have grabbed a cart, but of course I did not and Zeru was frantically picking up the yogurts which were falling left and right off the tower of food I had piled in my arms! Do I get frustrated or laugh at how ridiculous I must look?

Innocent by-stander-customers were looking on as I hysterically made fun of my predicament and Zeru quite enjoyed the comical mood.

I want my son to really appreciate a good adventure and realize life is not always easy, we do not always get what we want, but we can have an awe and wonder about the beauty all around us and the love of people in our lives in this fragile time we spend on earth.

Every night we spend 30 minutes up to 2 hours reading from a variety of books (Children's bible, adult bible, Moby Dick -young reader version, Chronicles of Narnia, etc.) And I get to talk with him about so many things!

He loves maps, and discovery, and treasure! So for a lesson I hope to do next week I will make a "treasure map" from our area with familiar landmarks etc. and I will hide a special treasure somewhere. I will teach him (more) about N,S,E,W and how to follow a compass. I will show him how to follow the map. I may add some fun riddles, and some written clues he must practice reading, and of course some math for counting steps or other sorts of things.

Life should be an adventure. I want him to always remember that. but as we know- any good adventurer knows how to be smart, wise, safe, and clever. There always seems to be some unexpected surprises- sometimes good and often bad- on any worthwhile adventure, and almost all good adventure costs more than we think, so we must be prepared to pay the cost and know the worth of what we are after!

In life I think these are the most important values one can learn- and one is never to old to learn them! Know your priorities in life and live first and foremost for those priorities and you will be the most successful person in the world!



Zeru's idea of a silly face involves snapping his fingers.
He learned to snap his fingers nearly a year ago and is now
one of his favorite things to do.

When Zeru grows up....

We have been studying History, Science and Geography quite a bit this past week.

The earth's water cycle, different cloud types, Gas, Solid, Liquid, lightning and thunder, air pressure, and other earth science subjects.

For anyone else out there looking for good educational "stuff" or tools, I have found some (as well as made some!). So far I can say "Useborne" books are AMAZING! Zeru has two of their sticker books which are of course fun, but teach him history! He loves them!

From the book I have done basic reading comprehension lessons, a lesson on time-lines, geography, and also history lessons.

We also found several interesting books from a variety of sources on Archaeology, and Zeru has just gotten a dinosaur book for his Leapfrog Tag reader (The book came with a $4 off coupon!)

So today as I asked him about what he would like to be when he grew up he was pretty convinced what he wanted:

"When I am big and in the army flying my helicopter (he also has stated quite boldly, "I will not kill anyone when I am in the army") I will fly to super secret places no one else knows except me and I will be a paleontologist archaeologist."

We were also fortunate to get a fun "dino-dig kit" brick thing for free from a thrift store, so we had been digging in that as well.

While some days we take a break from math, English, and Amharic, we are always learning something! My hope is that if I begin with the basics NOW, later we can slowly refresh and add more complex ideas to the foundation already laid- that way he does not just learn it all at once in grade 9 and forget it all by age 20 (like me).

Animal road signs

Print and cut for the Road to Reading game! Road signs and flash cards...

Now folks, as you look at my comical flash cards, remember I am NOT an artist! Please feel free to purchase pre-made flash cards from the dollar shops or at www.mrprintables.com download for free! But I did ask Zeru "what is this" each time I drew something to be sure HE at least knew what it was!

It was fun, and they are certainly unique! My mom especially likes the "angry cat" and I was quite fond of my sheep and goat.

Amharic "hu lu" ሁ ሉ

Here we are practicing the second set of letters in the fidel.

I put the first tense for Zeru to see, and he had to transform it into the second set!

"Huh" ሀ  got turned into "Hoo" ሁ

"Leh" ለ  into "Lu" ሉ

and so forth.


For the one set I cut out a red "arm" because as we all know- "Who has an arm?" ሁ

I tried to stick with the simpler more traditional arms and did not do "Roo" ሩ  as you notice!

The idea is to recognize the base letter, and then be able to transform or recognize the tenses afterwards!

In my opinion this is much more sensible then memorizing an entire row! And in this way- so long as you can pick out the base letter within the tense version (like "I see the "ruh" ረ  in that "ree" ሪ ) then even if one forgets each specific tense they can sound out the word generally.

But also this specific exercise reveals the similarities in each letter set per tense- Most all "oo" (second tense) letters have an arm for example. ሁ ሉ ሱ ቱ ሙ

Check out our old post "fun with the fidel" to see it in action!

most effective

We have been home schooling officially for a few weeks now.

At first it was so exciting we hit the ground running! Of course right after we were also hitting a lot of bumps in the road with unexpected "surprises" like family emergencies... But we kept on going!

Good thing for us we are on a 2 hour a day schedule, and an hour of it is reading at night!

But of all the fun activities we do (usually between 15 and 30 minutes long) the most effective learning activities seems to be Zeru's favorite, his Road game. This mixed with our nightly reading have really gotten him on a good start!

When we use the same "road signs" several times a week, he begins to remember the words very easily, and yesterday one of his worksheets was to add a word into the sentence.

The car is ______

with a list to choose from.

He read the sentence with no problem! Where as a month ago "car" was the only of those words he knew! We have been working on "useful" words on his Road game, which has really expanded his reading!

Today we will work on second tense Amharic. Adding an "arm" to several first tense Amharic letters.

We are still doing his calendar every week day while he is at the shop, and counting up to 30 in English and Amharic.
 

Amharic fidel

I hope in the next couple days to update and post handwriting lessons for beginning Amharic students!

Besides handwriting fidel chart, also sound of each character, and Amharic words using the character.

I will include some activities as well for practice!

More to come!

In the mean time remember:
Huh? Who has an arm? He has a foot. Hahaha! you have no foot! Hey, you have a boot! Hi's nose, Hoho joro (ear)

Fun with cars, and science on the side!

Yesterday for a quick lesson Zeru and I zoomed through his car road numbers lesson ('zero' thru 'ten' plus 'number').

Today we finally remembered to heat set the crayon with an iron. Every time we play with it he notices the crayon fading slightly because I have been a little slow getting around to finishing it!

(You can color most fabrics with crayon and simply put paper over it and iron with a hot iron to set the crayon/color into the fabric to make it more permanent.)

After hours of fun driving, and hours of entertainment coloring we sat together in the store's class room with the hot iron.

It was a perfect opportunity to discuss Solid, Liquid, and Gas.

Zeru pointed out that "Bama [grandma] puts water in their in the ironing machine."

I reminded him of one of our 'S' words from earlier in the day (Steam) and begun the conversation.

"What is liquid?" and he quickly rambled off all sorts of drinks, and just about anything involving strawberry!

"What is solid?" he figured that one out pretty quickly too.

"What is gas?"
"You know, the stuff we put in the car..." he began!

After a short explanation he understood that water is liquid, but when it gets really cold it becomes solid, and when it gets really hot it becomes a gas. Next will be explaining lava as a liquid rock!

Today I will find...

Today is cold and cloudy. With Amharic review.

Zeru came into work excited and ready to go! Before we barely began he was discussing and examining the weather. It is cold, he observed, and cloudy!

Immediately he ran to his weather station and asked if I were ready to start lessons!

What a change from the previous year!

Here is a sampling from today's lesson plan. keep in mind I aim for about 2 hours of planned lessons/schooling in the day and an hour of reading and reading discussion at night before bed. 9we do that during the weekend as well)

Today's focus was English. Zeru chose the letter "S" for today's adventure. He had to find a car. We drove all trough the store looking for things which started with the letter.

(Learning multiple languages with different alphabets, he is falling a little behind with this. He understands phonics, but when he pronounces words he assumes things like "chair starts with 's'!" or "train!" because of his little accent.)

Zeru wrote on his report sheet for his important job the letter S which we were hunting for. I wrote the words on the back of the paper. When we were finished he counted the words (21) and he put that on the front as well. Also noted is the date.

We practiced the words Today, Find, and Drive.

For our afternoon lesson we usually do about 30 min. of mazes, puzzles, or other thinking activities. Today was Zeru's favorite! he was so excited! We happen to have a Lego dump truck 'kit" with step by step directions. Amazingly enough he followed the instructions (he calls them "constructions") and built the truck perfectly! I stood by for moral support.

Writing, reading, vocabulary, and adventure.

The fly final report and initial tally.
Zeru learned > < and = today!



Zeru in his place! Happy as he finished his lesson.

Today's lessons we worked on reading and writing a simple sentence which includes common sight words kids "should" learn. They are also words we like!

We will be writing and reading about finding a plane! After we get a plane each we will fly them around on a scavenger hunt of sorts to find people, trees, dogs, and cars!

We will keep track of how many we find and then later make a bar graph with them!

*Update:
It was very fun flying around both inside and outside! We took tally of the cars, trees, people, and dogs we found. Apparently Lego people count as well!

Afterwards as we made a "final Report" of our important adventure I decided today would be the day Zeru learned greater-than, lesser-than, and equal-to symbols. You can see it worked out well!

He made his first bar graph and did a great job both doing it and reading it!

Today's schooling was a fun success!




Find a plane and fly lesson!

Tally of what we found on our adventure!

Zeru at work creating a bar graph with his data from the flight.

 

Why it's called "Zeru's Place"

Zeru's work station behind the counter!

The reason I had been planning on homeschooling since before Zeru was born was that I travel a lot and I also really enjoy teaching.

But with all that comes the challenges of work. How do I continue to live my life with a kid in tow? that is exactly how Zeru's Place got started. Everything changed once you include a pint size participant! Whether at home (Zeru needs his own place at home) in social settings/when I am with friends zeru needs a place, and at work, Zeru needs his own place! A place where Zeru can be Zeru and I don't have to worry.

So here we are- at work- and here is Zeru, taking over! This is Zeru's place!



 

Integrating lesson plans

Making lessons practical, memorable, and doable!

So, as mentioned, we are doing YEAR-ROUND 7 day a week school. This means 340 days with 2 to 2.5 hours of learning on average each day!

We break it up into 30 min. or 1 hour blocks. By doing this I hope to integrate what we are learning into what we are doing, making it both practical and doable! To get my five year old to sit still and focus on "lessons" for more than 15 or 20 minutes is nearly impossible! Yet he is a smart whipper snapper! He works best when his hands are moving and he can do or see what he is hearing about.

At his level, lessons include time, days, beginning reading, adding and subtracting, etc. Nothing too intense, so at this point it is very simple to integrate lessons into every day!

Day one of school I had him use his fine motor skills by cutting out 62 little squares containing the numbers 1-31 (twice, in two colors)

His number recognition up to 30 and counting went into play as I had him put the numbers in order and glue them properly onto his June calendar.

We discussed seasons, months, the year, and days of the week as we put the calendar together and admired its awesomeness.

We talked phonics as we tried to sound out the days of the week.

All of this took about an hour from start to finish. And now we have a calendar to work with for the whole month!

We will do more integrating with all the lessons, and I hope with daily USE (not just "practice and memorization") these things will be more than taught, but actually put to use!

More to come!

*we used the FREE printable calendar from mrprintables.com
I highly recommend this site for a variety of fun idea to get started!

And we're OFF!

Let the race begin!
Yesterday, after hours of research, we finally OFFICIALLY began our FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN! (home school)

Zeru created this calendar almost entirely on his own!

This is SO exciting! Not only for me (I love teaching and coming up with new entertaining ways to learn) but also for Zeru who is getting some much needed undivided attention and momma time! But also for Zeru's Place because I've never been more motivated to coming up with fun learning than when I am forced to do it!

SO, keep posted for some fun new learning tools, ideas, games, printables, etc. in the weeks and months to come! Perfect timing for those kiddos preparing to go into kindergarten next August, or those on break between school!

(We are doing a year round school year with fewer hours per day, 7 days a week. I hope this will keep Zeru more engaged, help him forget less, and make learning FUN not BORING).
Besides that, I take Zeru to work with me, so this helps us to get school and work done!

Some subject we will be exploring this summer: Bar graphs, Dolch words (common sight words), Time & Dates, Phonics, Amharic (2nd language), Earth science (plants, biology, etc.), geography and culture, directions and maps, and so much more!

Can't wait to share the adventure with you!