After enjoying a fun 'Not Back to School' Day yesterday, this morning we woke up excited to begin our day starting Kindergarten. I've had a lot of people ask why we are going to do Kindergarten at only 3 years old. Here are a few of my reasons:
I looked at a lot of preschool curricula, and they were mostly letters, letter sounds, counting, color, shapes, etc. We are BORED with this right now. Elie could do most of those things before she turned 2, so I feel that she is ready.
She has already begun blending sounds together for reading. Preschool curriculum does not contain blends, while Kindergarten does.
I am fully prepared to do this two years in a row. I think the first year I will lay the foundation, and next year we will get more in depth. But with this expectation, if she is ready to move onto 1st grade next year, I will pursue that as well.
I decided that the best curriculum for Elie (and me too) is My Father's World. I spend hours at HEAV's Virginia Homeschool Convention looking at different brands of curriculum. Others just didn't strike what I was looking for. Some didn't contain all subjects including Bible, and My Father's World did. Some required an enormous amount of books to purchase, and we are just fine using a library card. While others involved having your child sit in front of a TV while learning (which goes against my personality/personal beliefs for homeschooling for lots of reasons - I want to homeschool, not have my child watch TV all day. I am my child's teacher, not a TV screen. I am not a big fan of TV watching for kids anyway. My list could go on, but I shall digress.) I will post another blog entry later as to why I love My Father's World so much.
We began our day singing "This is My Father's World". After practicing a few times, we sang along (only a little bit) with a great YouTube video I found. Here it is:
Elie loved the song because it was sung by a 'lady' (Amy Grant). Lately, she has been only wanting to listen to songs sung by women. I hope the pictures will help the song to stick and mean something to Elie...eventually!
After reading about the first day of creation, Elie created a page in her creation book - one for dark and one for light.
Next she labeled the front of her book "Elie's Creation Book". She is pretty good at her name, and I just told her what letters to write for the other words (not as clear as her name, but this is only the beginning).
She was super proud of her writing, and I was too!
We also worked on circling the date on the calendar with specific instructions (use a orange crayon to circle September 5th).
The purple paper on the top will eventually include each day of creation, cut and glued by Elie. At the end of the school day, she was able to remember that on the first day, God made the darkness and the light. I think the first day was a success!
We then went outside and took a few celebratory pictures for the first day. Elie decided we needed an impromptu lesson on sinking and floating. So we gathered a few items (all made by Mother Nature of course) and threw them into the water to test whether they floated or not. Here is Elie testing a leaf.
The Elie tried some strange poses with her 1st day of Kindergarten board. As soon as she laid in the grass, a huge butterfly landed on her dress. I tried to snap the picture, but it began to fly away. There it is at the end of the word Kindergarten.
Woo-Hoo! We finished our first day, and boy was it fun!
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