In some ways it is coming to me more naturally, in that this time last year I thought I'd spend some time working out how to homeschool and felt completely overwhelmed and unready to even consider the options.
Through the year ideas, thoughts, resources, have all come my way. And it is so apparent to me that even Alani's readiness has made me more excited and willing to delve in. A year ago we just were not "here."
We "did" kindergarten by not doing much of anything, other than trying to get her reading. Talking with friends who have their children in conventional school for kindergarten this past year, I found that Alani wasn't missing out on much other than time away from me and busy work. Some kids went into the year not even knowing their letters, or letter sounds and others went in as proficient readers. All came out as basic readers. (Here's our "first day of kindergarten" obligatory photo)
Alani is reading okay, not super proficiently, but she's reading. It helps if I read a page to her and then she reads it back. The information is fresh, some of the hard words she can remember but not read through. And I think it really helps her to HEAR the idea and where this page or story is going, so when she reads it, she knows why words are appearing or that certain words make sense in the context. I THINK she can put together a sequence of events from a book and repeat back to me the theme after hearing it.
In the past couple of months she has been more excited about reading, whether it's time with me or just interest in learning and getting better at something she's realized she actually CAN do, I'm not sure, probably a little bit of both. She hasn't been doing the whiny thing and doesn't get nearly as overwhelmed at pages with a lot of text, in fact, she often requests being able to read them. Today she said "this is a lot of words for me to read, but I can do it!" She was very confident. That's what I want her to be, confident. And she does have a handle on recognizing punctuation, reading accordingly, so that's really great.
I am completely overwhelmed on how to teach her spelling. If "ai" "ay" "a_e" "eigh" "ei" and "ea" all say the long A, how will she ever know which to use when??? The same goes for all of the vowels. She still mixes up lower case b,d,p and sometimes m,w. She is sometimes unsure of a j/g situation and of course, there's no hard and fast rule for when a c sounds like a k and when it sounds like an s. I mostly let her work through using the rules she knows, sounding out and flowing together one letter at a time until she creates some semblance of a word and then can often put together what that made up word sounds like, but she knows she doesn't know ALL words of the world and perhaps the word she's just sounded out is just some new word she's never heard and would now like to know the definition of. It works 8/10 times that she can work out a word and make sense of it.
Perhaps the spelling just comes with time and it's okay if she spells 8 "ate" until she's actually 8?! I try to point out things like the different ways to spell words, like "two, too, to" and when you use each version. She is noticing those things on her own as well.
I feel we have the arts and history covered with her extra curricular activities and story of the world. Math is coming along and I don't worry about it much, as long as I know what she should know by the end of her 1st grade year, I feel confident I can get her there. Science shouldn't be too much of a leap, I've been told they learn about plants. So I'm sure we'll touch on some of it while doing Earth & Sky with the GS troop and again, as long as I know what she needs to know about plants, I can be sure we have the resources. I think we're going to be okay this year!
I think it would be good to add in some social studies, awareness of where she is in the world, but we've been doing that a little at a time as she plays games on the computer and has started wanting to look at the globe, she plays a game where she has to put the states (or countries) into a continent (or country).
I wonder if a science time devoted to animals and outer space would also fit into this year? I'm sure they would!
This is also part of what overwhelms me. . .I love the concept of unit studies which tie in all subjects with one story. . .is this a way to go? or should I have a way of teaching math and history and L/A separately from one another? Can we build well enough, particularly in math? Perhaps I can pull some units I like and use those for our L/A portion, adding new stories to our repertoire, then adapting the math as we go?
And then there's always the option of just going with that one ladies full 1st grade curriculum, it has bible, God based history and science, basic L/A requirements, math games. . .all worked in.
I should probably sit down and write out a plan. . .but when is there time? School starts in a week or two or it already started a week or two ago and I feel under the gun now. . .except, honestly, I think we could take two more years to make some hard and fast decisions about our schooling and she'd probably still be right on par with her peers!
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