We can't just sit around all day doing nothing. And we sure can't spend each day playing the same games over and over. And, well, after a while, you just need to do something new. And when your kid shows an obvious interest in learning, you can't just ignore it. So, we're homeschooling, for now.
We've been teaching Angie the basics of reading for a long time, now. We've always played games with letters and sounds, matching up upper and lower case letters, spelling a few special words, sounding out and blending three letter words with our alphabet building blocks and so on. And when Jennie told me about Bob books, I went ahead and purchased a set for Christmas. We started out slow, but we've slowly built up Angie's ability to sound out short words and she's read every one of the books in the first set. (I required 5 readings over several days before I pronounced her proficient and moved on to the next book.) We've started on the second set of Bob books.
And then, we went ahead and purchased the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. Now, we're learning to read phonetically in a much more organized manner. I was starting to question what to teach next after these short three letter words, so it's a good thing Sandie turned me on to this book. Angie is thriving.
We also got the First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind and we're working our way slowly through that.
We count things all the time and even do some addition and subtraction with concrete objects. But I didn't really know what to introduce when with Math, Science and Social Studies. I need a basic plan of attack before I begin altering it to suit our purposes, and I just couldn't find anything. Until Sandie found the Williamsburg-James City County public schools curricula guides for math. And they've got them posted for science and social studies too. And every other subject you can think of.
So now that I've got some idea of where to go, I can start building a plan for us.
Do we plan on homeschooling forever? No, not really. Do I know when we'll stop? No, not really. But I know that I can't let my darling laze around for a year (before she's "school aged") without engaging her intellect. We've done well so far without a plan, so I think we'll do great with a plan.
Now, if I could just get Maddie to cooperate with the idea of a learning schedule. But fortunately, she still naps!
And there are a few more things we need to work on. Now that I'm not tutoring in the evenings, I can get our act together and stop thinking that I need more time for me.
3 comments:
It's always good to have a plan. Of course, you know that you can look up NJ's state standards for Kindergarten, possibly even 4K. Exploration that incorporates levels of the scientific method that Angie shows interest in is a great place to start with science. Most children are still learning about themselves in K5, so creating collages about her family and her likes and dislikes is a great addition, as well! Good luck! call me if I can help at all! OOOOH - working on writing simple sentences using descriptive words would be helpful, as well.
Thanks. I forgot about the state websites. Elementary Ed's not my thing, so I don't know where to look for stuff.
http://www.state.nj.us/education/ece/code/expectations/standards/ptls.pdf
this is the link to preschool standards in New Jersey. Obviously, adapt it as you need, but it will give you a basis for looking at curriculum options. Hope you find it helpful.
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