Homeschool Preschool

I realized the other day that my baby girl is growing up. It's hard to believe, but I registered her for kindergarten. She starts August 15th. She's so excited to go, and get to ride the bus like her sister.

I realized something else, though. She's nowhere near as prepared to start school as Bethany was. Bethany had two years of preschool before kindergarten, since we ended up delaying kindergarten a year for her. We had planned to put Meagan in preschool when we moved here, but with the uncertainty of selling our old house and settling in and everything, it never happened. By the time we were settled enough to do it, many preschools were full. That, and I didn't want to just start her in the middle of the year without knowing what they'd been doing all along. She only knows about a third of the alphabet, she can count to ten, but not beyond, and I'm not sure how many numbers she can recognize. I didn't want to send her to kindergarten like that--even though I'm sure there will be others who will be in the same boat--because I want to smooth out the experience as much as possible for her. So I decided I would teach her myself.

My first attempt was before the holidays. She couldn't even spell (let alone write) her name at that point. I admit I kind of messed up to start with. I tried to do too much at once. I tried to teach her all the letters of her name, how to spell her name and how to write it all at once. I got frustrated and she got frustrated, and I kind of abandoned it for a while.

I wrote to Nate's sister Tabitha for advice, since she used to teach preschool. (That's when I figured out I'd done too much at once). She told me to introduce one letter a week. Oops. So this time around I am more prepared. I found a couple of websites with free worksheets I could print off. I've also set some clear goals for myself. My current plan is to have "preschool" three times a week. We'll have it right after I clean up breakfast and wash dishes. I want her to be able to write her name, know all the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower) and be ablt to use scissors. Each lesson will consist of name writing practice, something about one letter, and some other worksheet/activity. I've got a bunch of worksheets now on scissor use, concepts like big and small, matching, colors, etc. I thought today that doing a puzzle might be a good idea, too. I'm sure I'll come up with more stuff as we go.

We've been at it for about a week now, and so far it's gone well. Meagan is somewhere inbetween loving it and resisting doing things my way. For example, I'll ask her to trace a letter or something, and she wants to color or do something else first. I'm trying to help her understand that she has to follow instructions, and she needs to learn things to get ready for kindergarten. I think she's getting the idea.

She picked up more from my aborted attempts than I'd realized, too. She can already spell and write her name. We're still working on legibility and forming letters properly, but she's already doing very well, almost as well as Bethany does now. I might have to start Bethany on handwriting practice, too. Their school uses a font called D'Nealian, which is almost a blend inbetween normal block letters and cursive. It supposedly makes learning cursive a lot easier. Bethany had to pretty much learn a new way of writing. I decided to just start Meagan off on that right away, and she's doing pretty well so far.

Our biggest remaining obstacle is Sean. He wants to sit down and do whatever it is that we're doing. I've started making a second copy of whatever worksheet we're doing, and giving him one to just scribble on. He learned the word "neatly" today. Meagan was boasting that she was coloring neatly (she wasn't really) and Sean picked it up. I doubt he has any idea what it means, but he kept saying it over and over as he was scribbling. He seems to be a bit jealous of the attention I'm giving Meagan, too. About halfway through our lesson today, he shoved his paper over in front of me, climbed off his chair and came around the table and climbed up in my lap, demanding I color with him instead of looking at Meagan the whole time. It worked okay today, but last time he was a real distraction. I've thought about doing it later in the day while he's sleeping, but there are so many other things I try to do during his naptime that it would never work. Hopefully I can train him to be more patient, and figure out a way to give him more attention.

I never pictured myself doing anything like this, but it's actually been kind of fun so far. I hope it stays that way.