Mother Goose Monday: Back to School!
Today all the local kids headed back to school (as well as what feels like every single family on my Facebook feed). This is the one day of the year where I feel just a little bummed about our choice to homeschool. Its not really a serious feeling, but something about all the smiling kids with their backpacks on, and their happy classrooms, and the stories of my friends having a quiet cup of coffee after the kids got on the big yellow bus leaves me feeling a little left out.
So we deal with that in our own way- we have a NOT back to school party of our own. Today, we slept in way too late. And then we headed off to Denny’s for a special breakfast out.
After breakfast, I took the kids to our local library to kick off our new school year. We’re still camping in our house (and our furniture is still no where to be seen- very frustrating!) so I needed a place with tables to get the work done as efficiently as possible. All in all, our lessons today went very well, and I am super excited about the few changes we’re making to our curriculum line up.
Some things though, are staying the same, and Em’s Mother Goose Time preschool is one of them. Up until this point, I haven’t really “pushed” to have her do every aspect of the program, because she didn’t show signs of readiness to start writing yet, but in the last couple weeks, she’s been growing like crazy.
Em now knows all of her letter sounds, and has mastered tracing letters. She’s actually become a little obsessive over it, which is really neat to watch. The boys learn in an entirely different way then Em does, and it’s really fun to watch her just take off with something. Today, she’s been working on writing the letter “M” and is doing it again and again on every piece of paper she can get her hands on.
This year, starting with out September “My Body” curriculum, I’m going to start working with her more intentionally on her letters, writing and early reading skills, using every bit of the lessons instead of adapting them to a younger child. I’m excited to see where it goes!
This week though, we’re still working on the camping box, in a loose, summertime lesson kind of way. The crafts and lessons have been a bit of a free-for-all with all three kids getting in on the action. I am SO glad we’ve had it to keep everyone occupied in the empty house. We all have a bit of cabin fever going on!
p.s. Yes, my kids have been wearing the same clothes multiple days in a row. Fingers crossed that our washer and dryer arrive soon so I can stop rationing clothing! I promise, they don’t smell bad! LOL
