This Week

October 11, 2010, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

This week is brought to you by the letter 'A'.

I've decided it's about time I get myself in gear with this homeschool preschool thing. We decided not to put Kinsley into a "typical" preschool this year. Since she doesn't turn 3 until the end of this month she would miss the cutoff for most of them anyway and honestly there isn't one close by I feel enough love for to fight to get her into. We could have put her into headstart but it's 5 days a week and 5+ hours a day. Those are some long days and would make a really long week. I just didn't feel like it was the right thing for her (or me) right now.

So we're going to have "school" at home. She loves to play school so we're just going to run with it. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So I'm just sort of making it up as I go along. I've been doing some reading on unschooling and different teaching/learning techniques so I have an idea of how I want to approach this but it's still sketchy.

She can already count to 10 and sometimes 20 although she repeats 14 for some reason. She can sing her ABC's minus the L-O-M-O-P that she insists is correct. She knows her colors and shapes too. So far I'd say we're doing pretty good. Right now we are relearning the sign language she knew as a baby and adding a few more words that are pretty common in our daily lives now such as "Stop" and "NO", those are pretty handy. She's excited to learn and remember them and is thrilled to start teaching her baby sister too.

Today marks the first official day of our school and she is soooooo excited, especially when she gets to be the teacher. We started with the letter 'A' at her request and we will be focusing on one letter each week. So this week will be filled with all things related to 'Aa'. Today we've practiced writing the capital letter (which she is doing pretty well I'd say), recognizing the letter on things around the house and discussing different words that start with the letter 'A': alphabet, animals, ants, apple, alligator, airplane, etc. And keeping with the theme for snack this morning we had apples.

We're going to hit the library tomorrow for some related books and the grocery store for some more 'A' foods. I'm thinking apples, avocado, animal crackers, almonds, apple sauce and ants on a log. Okay I know the last one is pushing it but ants is one of our 'A' words and I've been wanting to try them on her anyway.

The main problem is that I can easily see myself running out of good ideas for each letter before the week is up so I'm trying to group them together and pace myself. The first day of the week I think we'll focus on finding the new letter and creating ideas of what we can do that's related to it. Brainstorm words and activities that relate and that sort of thing. Then we'll expand from there, but still work on writing and locating the letter during the rest of the week by doing letter searches and things on paper in addition to getting out and "living" the letter. This week we're going to focus on Autumn one day and go on our walk and look for ants and acorns and talk about what makes this season autumn. Then one day we'll focus on Animals. Talk about and find pictures of the different animals that start with 'A', play animal charades, etc.

I would love any ideas that you guys have to offer on the subjects of homeschooling, unschooling, preschool and really anything you might feel fits us right now. Like I said, we're making this up as we go along.