Jul. 26, 2007: Our journey so far

has been a great experience. We just started last fall with a PreK4 Pirate so we've had lots of room for error. We had gone through 3 different curricula last year, all Christian-based. The one we're using right now, My Father's World K is working pretty well. Since we had some adjustments to make, we didn't start the program until January, so it will take us into Christmas. Then we'll finish out my son's official Kindergarten year with unit studies and lapbooks. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of that. There are so many great materials out there that it is hard to pass on some of them.

I have gotten a lot wiser about what we're looking for now though so I will be even MORE selective going forward. There's nothing like browsing through the Sonlight catalogue to entice you to go their route. Winterpromise has come out with a Children Around the World program that seems really great too!

My daughter, the Princess, is starting PreK3 on Monday! We have Winterpromise PreK from last year for my son. It turned out to be a bit remedial for him, especially with the math subjects. We were using Singapore Math anyway but it seemed like the WP was a bit too crafty and not as challenging academically for him. But it will be perfect for the Princess since she's a year younger than he was last year and she loves animals! The Pirate was done with animals before we finished the first of the four units (Farm Unit, Pond Unit, Zoo Unit, In the Garden Unit - all about animals in each area). We never made it to the Pond Unit. That's when we switched to MFWK.

The Pirate will be in VBS next week so that will be perfect for the Princess and I to start school so that I can focus completely on her and see how it goes. The following week, the Pirate will join us for schooltime and then my new job as teacher of two will begin in earnest!

The Pirate is reading so well now! He's only learned the primary sounds of the letters (no long vowels yet technically) but he is working his way through a lot of words at a pretty good clip. I am so impressed with him! :) MFW will take him through the rest of the alphabet that we haven't covered yet (with this curriculum). When we're done with that, we will pick up with Winterpromise's Language Arts PreK/K pack. We had gotten that last year along with the WP PreK "I'm Ready to Learn" program but it was a lot of work (i.e. writing on small guidelines) for him at that time. Anyway, since we had switched to MFW which incorporates its own phonics program, we put the WP on hold. We'll review the letters we had already covered when we were doing the WP LA , and go forward from where we left off. It gets pretty intense by the end of it for a first year phonics program. It's a vertical phonics program so it covers all sounds of each letter the first time the letter is introduced to the student.

Anyway, I'm going on and on - reason being that I've been mulling things over in my head as we get close to our first day of school. I'm pretty excited. So is the Pirate! Tonight, he said that he really wanted to do homeschool now. :D I told him that he would be busy with VBS next week and not have time until the following week.

I asked the Princess if she was ready to start school and she was amenable. ha ha ha! We'll see what she thinks next week.