Homeschooling

Now that we have a few weeks of homeschooling under our belt, it's time to make some changes.  I expected to make changes, of course, but I was thinking I might be expecting too much of Bethie. As it turns out, she is horribly bored already, and we need to speed things up.

We started out with a "Letter of the Week" concept, and I had created school days that very closely mimicked a regular preschool - lots of songs, hands-on activities, stories, etc.   What Bethie needs,  apparently, is a lot less of what I consider to be those filler activities and more hardcore learning.  If we sit down and try to learn a song she just rolls her eyes and sighs at me (seriously.  We call her a "threenager), but if we sing a song as we're doing laundry or cleaning her room, for example, she's all over it.  Same thing with the art projects and hands-on activities.  Within the parameters of the school day, she wants nothing to do with them, but if I ask her if she wants to do a project at any other point, she thinks it's great fun.  So, forget the songs and dances and crafts in school.  Those are things we do around here anyway, so from now on, school is about reading stories and working on our letters and numbers.

Bethie will sit and write her letters and numbers over and over and love it.  She plays with her BambinoLuk (http://www.thinktonight.com/bambinoLUK_Starter_Pack_p/lukb4804.htm), which is this incredibly cool math activity, and right up her smart little alley.  She is also sounding out words.  Yep, my three-and-a-half year old is starting to read and spell.  We've been keeping it to simple three- and four-letter words (cat, dog, farm, etc.), but she is getting quite good at sounding them out.  She also loves to be given a word and then to figure out how to spell it by listening to the sounds.  I am amazed by her.  

We also read stories all throughout the day, and she has excellent comprehension skills and an incredible memory.  I used to worry that I was expecting too much of her with school, and now I worry that I won't be able to challenge her enough, which is not a bad problem to have!