I decided to take on a different approach to teaching Genevieve her letters and the phonetic sound they all make.  Instead of the old fashion flash card, or making her write the letter over and over again until she remembers it, I gave her a ball of playdough (after making 8 colourful balls) and asked her build each of her letters with playdough. 

She decided on her own to build both the upper and lower case letter. It was amazing to see how quickly she grasped the ones that she was a little uncertain of. I have tried so many times before with flash cards, yet the information seems to go in one ear and out the rest. 

Not only did she get to learn the shape of the letter and the sound it makes. She had fun playing with the dough and developed fine motor skills too.  

Here is the perfect playdough recipe for you to try at home:

1 cup cake flour
1 cup warm water
¼ cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon oil
food colouring of your choice
food essence of your choice (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together in a pot and place on the stove on high heat. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon scraping from the bottom and the sides until dough forms. Remove the ball from the pot and immediately knead the dough until smooth. Leave to cool and place in a plastic bag to keep from drying. Dough can be kept for as long as it is soft (mine has kept for over a year in the past). It is also non-toxic so no need to worry if they eat it.

I use essence in my dough to give each dough a unique smell ie. orange essence in the orange dough, lemon in the yellow, peppermint in the green, almond in the white, etc. This just adds to the sensory experience. 

I have spent most of this last week on Google trying to find a reading programme to supplement that which will come with the Sonlight Curriculum. I guess I just feel that reading is so important and opens so many doors. It makes life just that much easier if you have a fantastic reading ability and more importantly, a great comprehension of what you are reading. 

I initially looked back into my own schooling career and remembered a programme that we used as kids in Primary School at Cliffview Primary. It was the SRA Reading Laboratory and I recall what an incredible programme it was. Living in South Africa however, with our exchange rate between the USD and GBP, makes it almost impossible to use this programme as it is just too expensive to purchase. I then looked at a few more reading programmes originating from Australia, but once again, the exchange rate does not favour this. Then I had recalled a South African based programme introduced to me by Juliette's current teacher -  Readers are Leaders. 

The reason I never really looked into it any further was because I have a love for books - real books - not the kind that are all computer based, and the Readers are Leasers is exactly that - a computer based software. But after really going through the programme in depth, I have realised that this is in fact, the right programme for me to be using for my 3 little angels. 

Time to face reality and realise that our kids are growing up in a time of technology where everything will be done on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Might as well embrace it and give them the advantage.

Even though we have not officially started our home schooling adventure as yet, we have already started discovering how much fun learning can be. Today we decided to cover Marie biscuits with different coloured icing.  But the trick was that for the girls to get the colours they wanted, they had to guess which colours you had to mix to make right colour.  They then got to mix them up into small containers so got to see exactly how the colours mixed together to make the colour they needed. All the colours you see were made up with exception of the yellow.  

They also spent time having to separate colours with the Smarties and Astros and had to count along with each Smartie/Astro they placed on their Marie biscuit. The kids had so much fun baking that they never even realised that it was actually a learning experience and already can remember all the colours that need to be mixed together to come out at orange, light blue, pink, purple and green.

Today is the day that the SA Home School Mum finally went live. Still lots of tweaking to be done, but for now, at least its up and I can start blogging about my super home schooling adventure.

Went to sleep a very excited mommy last night! Purchased the first little piece of the curriculum for my girls for next year - South African History. Decided of the San of Africa from Footprints. Download is quick and easy - you get an eBook of the topic you have selected and then along with the eBook all the templates and instructions for your kidlings to create a Lapbook! Sure the girls are going to be over the moon as they love nothing more than an opportunity to cut and stick and colour in! 

This is what they will cover during the course of next year.