Smith School Progress

Since I am blessed to stay home another year with my girls, I really wanted to get serious about Preschool home schooling with Kinsey.  

Last year we started off strong and I was especially impressed with myself considering Brielana was a newborn and I was not getting much quality sleep. But by the time the holiday's hit things started to fall apart and my semblance of a school routine vanished. Now, I wasn't too concerned, since she had another year of Preschool to do anyway so being a little lax wasn't the end of the world.  But now that this is the "do or die" year before the big K-i-n-d-e-r-g-a-r-t-e-n I want to set her up for success. 

So, what does that look like?

Every Sunday I prep our week's activities.  We do one letter and one number per week and on Friday's we do a fun educational App to mix things up.  I'm big on making most of the activities that Kinsey works on (think tracing letters and numbers, cutting paper, lacing, counting, including one-to-one correspondence, and lots and lots of art; painting, coloring, clay/play dough.)  Along with the "musts" Kinsey is interested in sharks right now so we are doing a shark curriculum unit also.

My units generally last 2 weeks but if there is more interest expressed after those two weeks it can be extended.  Being flexible is key!  As long as there's more activities or information to be learned, I say forge on!  I'm not the greatest artist but that's not the point, the learning is. So I have sharks that look like this and it's not a big deal (even if it is pathetic, haha)

So far, we have brainstormed and come up with all the things we know about sharks and things we want to learn about them.  And we have checked out some books from the library about sharks.  Bonus: last weekend was Shweekend and that kicked off our unit in style.  (And guess who got nightmares after watching that?  I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Kinsey.  Sigh.  #overactiveimagination.)

I'm not going to lie, some days are harder than others when it comes to cooperation and those are the days lessons are about 10 minutes long.  But when the going is easy, we can sit for 30 minutes and enjoy the activities.  We don't sit still and bust it all out at once (because that would be torture) but total throughout the day I would say we get in 1-2 hours of structured learning and that will increase as the year goes on.

There's already a big improvement in her letters and she's beginning to hold her pencil correctly (in a pincer grip.)  Considering it's only been two weeks, I celebrate it!

Linking up with Beth.