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!