We've been trying to decide what to do with Hannah for schooling for awhile now. Our school district doesn't offer any 4-K program. Even if it did I'm not thrilled with sending Hannah to school already. I feel like you get precious few years with them at home, why hurry them out the door? We checked into a few local preschools but they operated more like a daycare and even if they didn't, they cost more money than we had or were willing to put into preschool.
So...that left trying to teach her something at home. I didn't know where to begin, though. I needed some guidelines but everyone I'd asked for tips had not really given me anything more than a grab bag of suggestions. What I really needed was a structure to follow. And so I started searching for something. It had to be something easy for me to do, after all I still have a 2 year old and 6 month old at home, too. And it had to be something that Hannah could do and be encouraged about school, not frustrating and dreading it.
I fell upon a site that had a pre-formed curriculum called "Letter of the Week". After looking it over I realized that it was pretty good, and that I thought Hannah really could probably do most of it. Probably more importantly, I felt pretty confident that I could teach it to her and do a good job.
We started Monday and so far it is going fairly well. I think we'll do better as the weeks progress. For instance, I had glanced over the science and social studies topics but hadn't put any thought into how I was going to teach it. A couple days before I realized that I had no idea. So that consisted of a mad scramble for some library books about alligators and astronauts! I'm hoping that future weeks will have less "scrambling" and more "pre-planning". In fact, I already have all the books I need for the letter "B".
This weeks' art activity was to make "Animal" puppets. Hannah made a cat and Grace a cow. Here is the puppet show they put on for us for your viewing pleasure:
