The Start of the Adventure

On Monday, September 18 Jewel woke up, came running to me and asked "Is Dora on?" (her first question every morning) followed by "Are we doing school today." I answered "not yet and yes" and was greeted with jumping up and down with clapping. She was so excited to start school.

We are using SonLight Pre-K material along with Singapore Early Bird Math (SEBM) and (evenutally) Handwriting without Tears (HWT). So far, for the most part the fit seems good. She loves the SEBM workbook and is doing great at match vs. don't match, big vs. little, tall vs. short, etc. And her coloring skills are improving dramatically as she works in the workbook. She is doing really well learning the memory verses and then teaching them to Daddy at dinner time. She likes the readers, but her favorite books by far are "What People Do" and "Bernstein Bears" for science. We are currently working through the almanac book. Two weeks ago, Jewel had no idea about the seasons, only knew the names of 4 months, and had very little intro to "holidays" like Valentines Day. Today she can tell you the four seasons, that this season is fall but in England they call it Autumn, that January February and March are winter and April starts Spring. She is talking about making hearts for Valentines and that people play jokes on April Fools Day. I think she is comprehending what we are reading. It is great.

Flower is spending school time drawing or building with blocks or sitting in my lap listening to the stories. In addition to the 50-90 minutes of "school" time we are building with blocks, working puzzles, going for walks, going to the library, reading lots of books that aren't "school" books. Oh, and of course, she is still watching Dora, Backyardigans and Fifi.

Today we went for a walk through the neighbourhood and practiced "left vs right" and she picked out houses that "matched" or "didn't match" which is pretty simple since there are only 5 house styles in the neighbourhood.

So far, so good. Watch this space for our homeschool journey.