What day is it again?

Shock realisation of the week was that Little H#3 doesn't know the days of the week in sequence. :o  I can share my homeschooling lows as well as the highs! He's doing well in maths (but the curriculum we use doesn't embrace days of the week until later, I know that from skipping the relevant lessons with the older 2, and being shocked that it was included in the curriculum at that point... ha ha). He's learning to read with a mix of methods. Somehow I have failed to notice that he doesn't have a concept of the week in his head yet.

After the initial shock and horror of that discovery, homeschool brain thinks there must be something that I can do about this immediately. I remembered from the vague distant past that in our primary school classroom, the black board always said "Today is..." and I THINK we had to copy it down on our work.

I printed out the words in an outline primary font (Edward Primary) which is the most similar to handwriting. I gave the sheets out and all the boys coloured them in for me. We laminated them and now have a changeable display on the wall just above the table where they work / play and where we eat all our meals. Little H#3 and Little Miss August can change the day together each morning.

Finished calendar.  Looks like we made it on Wednesday. :)

Not only that, I had found and passed over initially, some name of the day coat hanger labels for organising a pre-schooler's wardrobe. I am SICK of the stress getting the girls ready each day. It's a combination of the wardrobes not yet being organised well enough to keep the clothes easily sorted... and having a super fussy 3YO when it comes to what she is wearing. Not how it looks, but how it feels. She is the classic Spirited Child in that sense. Little H#3 was like this at the same age, and has gradually grown out of it. Now at 6 I don't have to have any dramas over his wardrobe, except he still finds the transition of season hard - getting used to wearing jeans after shorts all summer, etc. I have learned to just go with this, and Little H#3 is living proof that 'this too will pass' and it's not worth me stressing over it. I just have to find a way to get through the season.

So all of a sudden, choosing the clothes all in one go, labelling the coat hangers for each day of the week... started to look pretty attractive. Plus... we get days of the week practice!!!!!

The beautiful printables are on Etsy... and you have to pay for them. The crafty homeschool mum sees the education in the making of the labels, is too poor to buy the beautiful ones, and loves any excuse to laminate. :)

(The beautiful printables are here: http://www.afewofmyfavorites.com/2009/08/days-of-week.html )

So... here are our labels. Again of course everyone was enlisted to "make" and we were all very happy with the results.

 Everyone colouring in the labels that I made in Word using word art (for the outline words) and shape art (for the hanger shape).

 In use after 20 mins of sorting through the wardrobe so that I could ready make 8 outfits.

Why 8?

 I realised (because we happened to have a party to go to yesterday) that we needed a 'Party' label. I can't dress her in party clothes till we are ready to go to the party, and it made sense to make another label.

Of course I wouldn't have had the extra label if I'd bought the beautiful Etsy ones...

So far so good. Getting dressed on Saturday morning was a breeze. She chose the day of the week, discovered the clothes and 2 mins later was dressed. Wow.

Ta da!!!!

We went downstairs and straight away she picked the correct name of the day for the calendar.

Happy with the morning's activities. 

Mummy was a little ecstatic that the getting dressed idea has worked. I spent the same amount of time weeding out summer clothes and sorting out the outfits for the week... that it normally takes me to get the girls dressed.