Bonus Post—Lily’s day at Farm School

Bill's summary of Lily's Lesson

OCTOBER 6, 2010

GOAL:   Foster language development; recognition of letters and numbers.

OBJECTIVES:

1.    Be able to connect the names and shapes of CAPITAL letters of
the alphabet.
2.  Be able to connect the names and shapes of numbers.
3.   Follow directions in games.
4.   Understand the dangers of heat and electricity.

ACCOMPLISHED:

1.  We played an developmental stage-appropriate version of HANGMAN.
We each had a hangman wheel to keep  score and squares with capital letters.

Lily was the first to guess and I put up four letters (LILY) with the
blank side facing Lily.
I asked her to pick any letter  in the alphabet, to see if it was one
of the four.
She picked "A" and I said it was not one  of the four and she got to
turn the wheel.
I gave her a hint:  "Try a letter in your name..."
She guessed "Y"!
Correct!  I turned the letter to face her.
We continued until she guessed all four letters and "won."

My turn to guess and Lily filled the 7 slots with seven letters,
blanks facing me.
As I suspected, the 7 letters did not make a word, but I guessed anyway.

I guessed: "C"?  And she indicated she did not know  what a C looked
like, so I showed her one of my "C"s and she compared it to her 7
letters and said: "No Cs!"  She got to turn the wheel.
This continued for about 5 letters and she was losing interest.

2 and 3.
  We played Chutes and Ladders.  I explained the rules and she was
able to spin the wheel and we counted the spaces together.  We moved
our tokens up and down as we landed on a chute or a ladder.  I  noted
the number of the spaces we landed on:  "Hey, you're already on number
68 and I am way back behind you at 34!"  We played and entire game and
she won!

4.  We toasted some waffles that she and I made the day before.  We
noted that the red color in the toaster indicated hot and hotter.  We
were able to hold our hand WAY above the toaster and still  feel the
heat.  I explained that electricity came from the wall plugs  and
that it would give you a shock.  We understood that we never put our
fingers or other objects on the plug.  She compared a shock to
getting burned.