I’m a big
believer in two things at the preschool age: books and play.
We all
love reading and we spend a lot of time each day curled up on the couch or in
somebody’s bed. We’re still reading through their daily devotional and we’re finishing up another run through the Jesus Storybook Bible. Along with that
we read a daily poem from either A Child’s Garden of Verses or Where the Sidewalk Ends, and all kinds of fun picture books. We read fiction
stories, fun science books, beautifully-written picture book biographies. A few
recent favorites have been What’s New? The Zoo! // The Human Body // Mary Engelbreit’s Nursery and Fairy Tales Collection // Queen of the Diamond:The Lizzie Murphy Story // Actual Size // Gingerbread Man Superhero
// Secrets of the Vegetable Garden
// Nibbles the Book Monster // Summertime in the Big Woods.
We learn
around five new Spanish words, write a letter to a friend or family member and
write a story in his journal each week. Otherwise, we play.
He has a
really impressive four-year-old grasp on geography which I attribute to his
love for puzzles, including our USA puzzle (and his excitement about reading
lots of books that will let him color in states on our USA reading map). He’s starting to sound things out and to
spell simple words (B-O-T, boat! F-R-E-N-D, friend!), and I think a lot of that
comes the word games we play and the fun he has putting letters together on our Scrabble board and asking me what they say. He’s got a good grasp on his
numbers and I think a lot of that is from all the time we’ve spent playing
Chutes & Ladders, a simple version of Uno, Go-Fish, and hide-and-seek. He
loves ABC and 123 dot-to-dots and loves coloring them in afterwards even more.
This has
been fun all along. It makes me really happy when he makes a connection in a
story we’re reading, when I catch him teaching his little sisters a letter or a
number when they stumble across one, when he suddenly and randomly wrote six
letters by himself one day, when he says Spanish words… but lately, gosh. Watching him put letters together
and start slowly figuring this all out has been so amazing. I’ve sent Ryan
probably 20 different text messages telling him about some super cool new
development and then telling him I’m crazy thankful he’s on board with
homeschool.
This has
all been such a blessing to me. I am not naïve enough to think it’ll stay fun
and easy forever. I mean, math.
Chemistry. Eventually parts of this homeschool thing will really stink. We
might have to tackle a learning disability down the road. We might have to deal
with a constant power struggle with one of them… but for now, pretty much every
minute of it is fun and amazing. And I get to be the one to teach him and to
learn beside him. That has to count for something, right?
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Thanks so much for your comments! I always read them, don't always have time to answer quickly. Sorry about that!