Overall, I think we are having a very successful year and have been enjoying our homeschool time very much. I love being the one to work closely with Savannah and see her learn new things and get so excited when she masters a new task or concept. Savannah enjoys her learning time with mommy very much. When adults ask her if she goes to school, she proudly responds with, "I'm homeschooled!" We get mixed reactions to this from both the public and also from some family members (as I'm sure all homeschooling families do). Some people want to know if we need special curriculum from the district or if we need "permission" from the public school district. (The answer is no! Savannah is only in preschool right now anyways, which is not part of the public education system.) I have a family member or two who wants to know how long this will go on and when I will put her in public school. (I don't know.....maybe never!) We have met some other homeschooling families at church and I always love to chat with these other mamas about how they structure their days and it's great to have some support from others who are in the same boat as us!
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| Handwriting practice. |
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| Love that tongue sticking out as she concentrates! |
I am still very happy with our curriculum choice. Savannah is learning so much! She is doing great with learning how to write her letters and numbers, she gets so excited each week to see what our book of the week is and loves to read it over and over throughout the week and do fun literary activities, she has a lot of fun with the hands-on math/science activities, and she is learning a lot from the Bible portion of the curriculum, too. We are doing the Year 4 curriculum, even though this is technically Savannah's first year of preschool. I chose this curriculum for her because she was an "old three" at the start of the year and it seemed more appropriate for where she is at academically. The only thing I've found is that I need to go beyond this level for her in phonics and reading. We are stepping up to the Year 5 curriculum for this. Year 5 covers the phonetic sounds of each letter (most of which she already knows) and incorporates sight words. We also have gone even one step further and I have been printing out decodable readers for her to work on. She is starting to sound out words (like nap, pan, can, etc.) and it is really exciting! One major question I have is whether we should start kindergarten next year (she will turn 5 in November) or do one more year of Pre-K. I'm really torn on this. I am leaning towards doing another year of Pre-K but just letting her do more advanced reading, but we will see. I don't want to cut her childhood short by one year by speeding things up (I'm looking ahead to how old she will be when she starts high school, graduates, goes off to college, etc.) and also Savannah is very physically small and a little less mature emotionally. She does better with kids that are a few months younger than her (she is in the three-year-old Sunday school room because of her late fall birthday and does really well with those children, even though she is one of the oldest). We are praying about it!
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| This is a game called phonics swat. I lay out some letters in front of her and she gets a spatula. I say "which letter says...." and then I say a sound. She swats the letter that makes that sound. Sometimes I will tell her pick a letter to swat and then have her tell me which sound it makes! |
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| Getting ready to read our book of the week together. Excuse my paleness... by this afternoon I was running a fever and by the evening I was throwing up. So this morning I was starting to feel kind of yucky, but we went ahead with school anyway. |
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| Discovering which items would sink and which would float. This has been her favorite math/science activity so far. |
One major adjustment we had to make took place just weeks into the school year when Hailey dropped her morning nap. We no longer had two quiet hours to do school alone. At first this was really difficult. We moved our school table upstairs into the playroom and this helped a lot. Hailey joins us when she can, when we are doing Bible time, arts and crafts, or fun games. She colors when Savannah works on handwriting. If Hailey is not interested or if Savannah and I are working on reading or something, Hailey has the freedom to just play in the playroom. This set up is working well and I think we've all adjusted. Occasionally we will do school during Hailey's afternoon nap if the morning is particularly hectic or we have a lot of errands to do or something (although I often work during this nap time). When the school year started I wrote up a strict schedule that involved us starting our school at 8 a.m. and being done by 10 or 10:30. What I've learned is that I can't run our homeschool the way I did my classroom when I was teaching. Our school life and our home life is very much intertwined. The time we begin school varies depending on what is going on that day. Sometimes we will start right after breakfast. Sometimes the girls are playing for an hour after breakfast so nicely together that I just allow it, and then we start school around 10. Sometimes, as I mentioned, we will do something else entirely in the morning and do school in the afternoon. Sometimes we will do a little school, leave the house for awhile, and then come back and finish up. I have learned to be flexible. I write out lesson plans, and these are a big help to me in giving me a loose plan to follow, but things never go just as they are written (and this was also the case when I was a classroom teacher). Flexibility is key! And sometimes our school is baking, learning how to sort laundry, or talking about etiquette when visiting others' homes. This is why I love homeschool!
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| Playing with her princesses while mommy and sissy do some school. |
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| Joining her sister for some painting time! |
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