The First Day of School
Today I formally started to homeschool the girls. I guarantee you, you have never seen two four-year-old girls so stoked about anything in your life! We've been doing it sporadically since they turned three, reading and adding and writing, as they felt the urge to do so. But today was a day to help me realize that it's time to get down to the business of scheduled, planned, purposed schooling.
So last week, I set up half of the office with a bulletin board, bookshelves (stocked with all our supplies), and a white board. This morning we added the table and chairs, and voila! instant classroom. I think it's pretty cute. If I knew how to make Linux download pictures off of my camera, I'd show you. (grumble, grumble, Linux. . . )
Our schedule was simple. It went something like this:
Reading and Writing: 30 minutes
Math: 20 minutes
Journal: 10 minutes
We started with prayer, and went to work. They took turns during reading and writing time. For writing, they worked alone on word problems in a basic 1st grade skill book. For reading, they did the first lesson in a 1st grade primer. For math, we used manipulatives to prove all the ways to add to 10, using whole numbers. And for journal time, they wrote a sentence about their first day of school.
I LOVE THIS. This is so much more fun and relaxing than teaching a classroom full of junior highers who don't care a whit about Spanish, and whose parents are less concerned about it than the kids. The girls are working at their own pace, having a blast, and begging for more.
I'm sure it won't always be this easy, but now I can't imagine doing anything else.
P.S. Anna called me "Teacher Mommy." :)
posted by Rebecca @ 2:31 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
And you covered science the day before on your nature walk. . .
Sounds like fun! What do Jonah and Naiah do during school time?
Oh how precious. Each and every post I read about homeschooling pushes me that much closer to it...
still not sure which side of the fence I will land on, but I am starting to think God is dropping me hints like rainfall about this little (and very important) issue.
Good job teacher mommy!
Lisa-- Jonah has a shapes and colors workbook to play with. He doesn't have anything near the attention span the girls had at his age, so he doesn't stick around more than 20 minutes. I'm just glad he's showing interest, because up til now, he wouldn't even sit through a whole alphabet book. Naiah naps in the morning, conveniently.
Sarah-- I know what you mean. I had no idea what we'd be doing (unless we ended up living overseas and far from a good international school) until we moved back to Ojai and saw the difference in the homeschooled kids we know there.
Plus, I don't want the girls to be labeled as 'the twins' as if they were one personality. People say horrible things to them like, "Which one is the smart one?" and "Oh, you must be the pretty one." And they're identical, so few people use their names correctly. I just don't want their identity wrapped up in that. They don't need to get the idea in their heads that if Sissy is good at one thing, I must be good at something else. And I'm ranting.
Tammy-- :)
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Does one hour equal the amount of learning in a public school or are you starting slow and building up to more? I thought most homeschool stuff was like 3-5 hours a day...or am I way off?
Kindergarten doesn't take long. In one hour they're doing more than what the local school is doing, especially for kindergarten. You have to take into account all the shuffling of kids at school and the busywork and the play and the standing in lines. The girls are learning things like the parts of speech and addition and reading comprehension packed tight into a solid block of time with no pauses at all. Later, they'll do longer hours. Today it was more like an hour and a half. But they're doing first grade work at the age of four, so I don't want to push them too far out of their age range. We have to let their motor skills catch up with their reading and math skills, so they can easily write down the answers they're giving me. They still write like four year olds. They can tell you the answers and how to spell them, but they can't make their hands write the letters correctly, even though they know what the letters should look like. It's kind of freaky. Once their hand-eye coordination is good enough, we'll let them go as fast as they want.
Cool. I forgot they were still four. I thought they were Michaela's age and in 1st grade already. Joey has one more year of preschool, but like your girls is doing some 1st grade level stuff and some kindergarten stuff. Its all very exciting.
Yeah, we should get them together when we come down at the end of the month, if you guys aren't too swamped.
Sounds fun!! Let me know when you will be here.
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