New Centers!

Avery's new supplies arrived today! I love getting packages in the mail! It's like Christmas every time. And he'll be super excited when he gets home Monday morning and sees new centers!

They're perfect for him since he's a tactile. Plus they're actually nice to look at... and that matters because, for now, our 'school room' is our dining room.. lol! 

Next week is letter H! 

Week 1: Pp

The first week actually went a lot better than expected. Having the curriculum was so helpful. Cohen had a hard time Tuesday (who can blame the guy after such a long break?) but, surprisingly, by Wednesday he was pretty much back into the swing of things, with only occasional resistance lol. He does seem to have regressed a bit, though.. He went back to writing his name in all caps at first, and is suddenly having a hard time with patterns which he never had trouble with before. I don't know what that's all about, but we're going to work on them some more next week.

Rustiness aside, the kid is brilliant. We've been working on phonics for all of 4 days and he sounded out the word pepper all on his own Friday!! And of course, as he reads it I think to myself "Oh my gah. My child is a genius! Only 5 and sounding out words! He's still a baby! A-ca-believe-it!"

I'm know, I know.. this is probably totally normal for his age, and yes, I know 5 is not technically "a baby" to most people.. I won't spoil my his moment with rational thinking. Ain't nobody got time for that. ;)

Anyway...

Week 1: Pp

Phonics, Printing, Patterns, Pretend play, Pouring with pitchers, Paper Maché and 'Pink Peppermint Play-dough'

(p.s. I'm loving this letter theme thing! So up my alley) ;)

 

Note to self: I need to take more pictures of him during the day. Especially during experiments..

Hearts In Bloom

Today we enrolled Cohen in the Hearts in Bloom homeschool group and signed him up for Money Mania and World of Science. So he'll have classes every Friday morning starting February 1st. He was super excited about it and as we were leaving he whispered all excitedly "I'm gonna get to do SCIENCE!" lol! I'm super excited to be a part of the group as well. It'll be a really good experience for both of us and it will be awesome to get out and hang out with people our own ages lol!

More later on our first week!!

Last semester...

Last semester was a little crazy. I wasn't sure what to expect going in, so I had already braced myself for a challenge, but I was still caught by surprise! Even though I did extensive research on what he should know by kindergarten, I was still unsure.. Every guideline I read was different, but for the most part they all seemed way to easy. I'm talking ABCs and counting to 20.. stuff he's been doing for years.. So, I combined all of them together to form one basic list of goals and, then, I added some of my own (I mean, I didn't want him to be under-challenged and become bored with the whole idea of school before it really even started, right?). 

So I got to work. I bought all the basic supplies, and wasted a bunch of money on stuff I thought I would need, but now know I don't, & spent hours on end creating/scrapping/re-creating lesson plans every week. Now, don't get me wrong, these lesson plan were pretty amazing (not to toot my own horn or anything ;)). I covered just about every subject there is. The problem is, I was stressed. Not just a little. A lot. 

I was stressing so much over lesson planning, which subjects he really needed to be learning and which he didn't, whether or not some subjects were too easy or too advanced for him, etc, etc, etc. Obviously, I'm his mom and I worry about everything, but I also happen to be a crazily overprotective, hovercraft mom.. So, naturally, when it comes to something as important as his education, I was pretty much killing myself. So, in October, I decided I needed a curriculum.

I did a lot of reading and decided on Pre-K Scholars Kindergarten Readiness program because of it's rave reviews and awards. Oh, and because it meets/exceeds state standards! Now I can rest easy knowing he's learning what he is supposed to be learning :) It's not a typical curriculum (turns out they don't make those for pre-k lol), it's separated into 22 lessons with each lesson lasting one week. Each lesson is focused around a letter of the alphabet and it's character in Scholarville and also integrates math, science, art, social studies, etc. into the lesson by relevance to the letter. The best part is it's all done for me! No more up-all-night lesson planning! It only took me about an hour give or take to plan this week out! Yay for sanity!!

So anyway, we'll be starting tomorrow and I'm really excited! We'll see how it goes!