I picked a perfect week to start school. Why? Because the tempurture every day was out of this world hot so staying inside was our only option. As I mentioned previously, I only started Pre-K with Josh this week, much to the chagrin of the other two boys. They kept asking, "Is it my turn too?". I do know I made the right decision though because this is allowing me to get Josh into a routine, work out the bugs in our routine, and spend time helping him focus. When the other two boys start in a few weeks, he'll need to be able to do some things on his own while I work with the others.
In case you are new to this blog and are wondering why we started school now . . .I have chosen to do a 6 week rotation for school. We do 6 weeks of learning and then get one week off. This allows us to take a break, gives me time to catch up on everything from cleaning to appointments, and helps us all not to get bored with the daily routine. By starting now, we will be able to take most of December off and also finish up somewhere around mid May. If we happen to get behind on some lessons, we can always work into December a little or even go longer into May and wrap things up.
Our first week is review. We are only doing our general K-4 work that I purchased from
Confessions of a Homeschooler for a very reasonable price. I really love this curriculum because it fits my style of teaching. She also has made everything so easy to use, print, and incorporate into our day. This was truly the perfect choice for us and, honestly, I wish I had used her Pre-K unit with Josh last year. (I'm using that unit with Nate this year.)
Here are a few snapshots from our week.
We started our lessons with a puzzle. Our review this week is of Upper and Lower case letters. Notice who is sitting on the table? He wanted to be part of school so much!
Lots of activities this week verses worksheets. Here he is matching clothes pin letters to a letter wheel.
During the afternoon, while the munchkin and princess were napping, the boys and I hibernated in their room (which was at least comfortable in the heat thanks to blowing cold air from our bedroom into theirs). We used various alphabet manipulative that I had to match letters to a game board.
On Tuesday, we had the A/C running in the boys room and living room so I set up the card table in their room to use as a work place for me as well as the place to do school.
I told my husband that sometimes Pre-K will make me want to poke my eyes out. This one of those moments. I had made two sets of spoons - one set with uppercase letters and one with lowercase. Josh had to match the spoons to the board. He did great but it took about an hour . . .between singing the alphabet song over and over, seeing if he could balance the spoons on his nose and more . .well, I'm surprised I can still see straight HA!
This is where we "live" right now :-) The boys and Darryl are playing cars and trucks.
What do you do when you can't go outside and play because it is too hot? Turn your kitchen set into an indoor slide HA!
Josh and I worked on his gaming skills. Here's the real deal - Josh has a hard time playing games. He doesn't like to follow the rules OR bends them to make sure he wins and he doesn't like to share or take turns. He is a 100% first born and always has to be in control. I'm using little games like this one to help him learn how to play. Today, besides reviewing letters and counting, we worked on taking turns and counting the right spaces. He actually won fair and square which was good for him. Next time though, he really needs to learn the art of losing . ..
So, he is smarter than the average bear. With this activity he had to match the clothespin letters to a wheel based on the beginning sound of a picture. He started with a few he knew as I had laid out the pins in random order. Then, after looking back and forth at the wheel and pins he said, "I'm going to put these in ABC order mom". He did, then he started with the "A is for Apple" and had it easy as he just went around the wheel one pin at a time. To his credit he did say the name of each picture before he pinned it.
There's a snapshot of our week! We did more than what is pictured but this gives a general idea of the activities we did. I had planned some other fun afternoon activities but those were post-poned due to the heat so hopefully we can get to them next week.
