Learning With and About Our Children

As I observed Samantha doing her  physical science lesson on Motion, I learned some things....not so much about science, but about my daughter and areas that we need to improve on.  There were vocabulary words in her lesson that I thought she should know already, but because they're not words that we use every day, like slither and burrow, she was not familiar with them.  So in addition to adding these words to her weekly vocabulary, I'll also have some homework for myself and the rest of the family to use these words whenever possible in conversation. Because Sam has Down syndrome, if she doesn't use or hear a word on a regular basis, it's more reasonable to understand that she is not going to be familiar and, therefore, not understand the meaning of the word. So when she was given a selection of vocabulary words and asked to select which of these words indicated motion, she was not sure when she came to slither and burrow whether or not to select them.

At her age, she likes to work independently. But even if our kids are older and don't want mom looking over their shoulder at all times, we're still their parent and teacher and we need to be close by for guidance. Before I get off subject (because I do have an opinion on the 'helicopter mom' metaphor), it's because I was looking over her shoulder that I noticed she was having trouble with some of the words. So I used my handy dandy Google tool and found some pictures of burrowing. This helped her to decide on her own whether burrow is a type of motion. I try not to give my kids the answers; I want to help them find the answer on their own. See, I'm the type of homeschool mom that when my kids ask me how to spell a word, I have them sound it out.  As a matter of fact, even if it's my husband, I'll have him sound it out.  This mom doesn't take her homeschooling teacher hat off for dad either. ;)

As we were doing the lesson, there is something else I learned. I need to get Samantha started with an art curriculum. There was a portion of the lesson where I left her alone because she was asked to draw pictures of something in motion.  As I was taking the towels out of the wash and putting them in the dryer, I heard Sam laughing so hard that I had to go see what was so funny.  I mean, I thought she was doing science! Well, I just have to post a picture here of her drawing.

She thought her picture of her dog was so funny, she couldn't stop laughing.

Next she was asked to draw a picture of an animal in motion, so she chose a bunny rabbit. This time I helped her out by showing her the different colors and tools she could use within the program to help her with her drawing.  I gave her some tips here and there on how to draw the bunny, too. I'm sorry.  I'm not such a great artist either. I'm looking forward to starting the art curriculum, not just for Sam, but for myself too.  We may learn a thing or two together.  I'll keep you all posted on how that goes. But in the meantime, what are you learning about your kids as you are teaching them? As we go through curriculum teaching our kids, sometimes we learn right along with them, and sometimes we learn about our kids.