July 1, 2013 - Jonah's Journey

June has gone by so fast! Jonah graduated his public preschool and we are now officially doing home school, starting with a modest pace summer school to ease into more learning at home.  My ideas to educate my son Jonah for kindergarten include of course the basics, but also I’m planning to incorporate many other subjects to make it fun and interesting! His subjects include: Nationality/Citizenship/Virtues; Language Arts/Reading; Writing Skills/Spelling & Fine Motor Skills; About Me; Christian Studies; Social Studies;  Science/Weather/Animals/Geography; Math / Shapes / Measurement / Money; Speech/Communication/Listening; Technology; Arts & Crafts / Colors / Cooking and Food; Music/Dance; Physical Education/Gross Motor; Play/Imagination; Health & Feelings; Experiential Learning; Life Skills; and Socialization/Social Skills.

Some highlights of our June learning include watching a video about Greece (he liked pointing out the boats on the water) and dancing to some videos of children from Greece singing songs and dancing together!  Opa! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAS3P9ONxas&list=PL2AC588BEA8052B99 Jonah has been hooked on his Teach2Talk verbs and nouns videos this month and wants to watch them over and over. He especially likes the hugging and kissing part! We have been looking at animals and videos of animals (Signing Times and Rock N Learn). I made a book for Jonah about baby animals where he can read and sign the sentences and it includes pages where he can match the baby animal with the mommy. (I can email this PowerPoint to anyone interested). Jonah loves songs and singing the songs particularly Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, Buckle My Shoe. We talked about the sunrise (sun waking up in the morning and going to bed at night).  We enjoyed Norah Jones’ song Sunrise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7pEg3KXNcs . We went on the airplane to visit family and friends in Utah so that was a very good experience and social activity; he really enjoyed the hotel, swimming and seeing everyone! He even had a little sweetheart on the flight home – the little 4 year old girl in the seat in front of him kept reaching around to hold his hand throughout the flight and then they met again just outside the plane and gave each other the longest hug – as if that hug would need to last forever! The little girl headed away with her head turned Jonah as if to show him “I will always remember you!” It was the cutest thing ever!

I’ve been working on teaching Jonah counting and math (counting many things in daily activities, looking at basic addition problems showing apples to represent the numbers and also using the abacus). We also have been reviewing colors (Jonah does great with recognizing colors and signing them, but we are working on correcting his modified signs).  Fine motor is very difficult for him so it is difficult to make the correct signs. Jonah can match all his upper and lower case alphabet letters, but we continue to review them often and I repeat the sounds they make.  We’re working on shapes; most shapes he can recognize, but some are a little harder for him.  Jonah does not like to write or color, I think because it is so hard for him to hold a crayon or marker, so we have been working on this doing some tracing, trying to write his name and just coloring on blank paper. I make sheets with pictures of all our vocabulary words and he seems to do great with learning new words. We have been working on having good manners, look and listen, asking for help and helping to clean up after himself (picking up toys, putting clothes in the hamper). We are working on feeling identification, words to describe feelings and signing feelings. Jonah is still not potty trained; this has been a slow process and I need to come up with a new plan and efforts in this area. Sigh…

I enjoyed going for a walk and seeing Jonah notice our shadows for the first time – the wide eyed look of amazement in his eyes was priceless!  Jonah and I walking another day and when we were looking at American flags in our neighborhood he signed “music” as we have been watching and singing patriotic songs  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDxGQcNq0QI ); I was so happy he learned to recognize that indeed America has music to recognize our country!

Jonah loves his trips to the park, swinging, swimming, playing in the water on the patio, going down his slide, and he had fun at the Splash Pad. Jonah also had fun this month going to the San Diego County fair and he loved the rides and of course the French fries! He was not to keen on the animals – one goat looked at him strangely it seemed and he let out a big scream! Mama loved seeing the black baby goat!

This has been an emotional, challenging, busy and wonderful month! I know as I work on teaching Jonah I need to continue to work on myself – my faithfulness, my hopefulness, my thoughts, my energy and ways to refuel. I need to continually remind myself just to stop and breathe and take in these beautiful blessings of JOY with my boy along the way. I am so grateful to God for the gift of Jonah and for this time to spend with him. It is not an easy journey, but it is beautiful and it is our journey!

God please continue to bless my beautiful and amazing boy and God Bless America!

Blessings also to you!

Sharice (Jonah’s Mama)