Mysteries & Change

As usual the world works in mysterious ways.

Just about the time we settle in and start enjoying the home school thing I am offered a great job working for the state.  I have been trying to get this job for a year and a half.  Decent pay, good benefits, good vacation… the problem is its full time.  8am-5pm Monday through Friday. 

Not only does this mean that Jillian will go into full time preschool, but I will have to change my coaching and program at the high school.  It means no more help with coaching with Doug for golf and no more hanging with him and Jillian during the many, many days off he gets as a teacher…  That part is pretty devastating.  I spent the better part of a day crying about it and trying to work through the emotions of not getting to see him and Jillian much.

There are a ton of pros and cons, but in the end I have decided to take the job.  I need to do what is best for the family, and right now that means catching up with bills and trying to stay ahead of the game.  Fortunately I don’t have to start until November 10^th, so I have about 2 weeks to get everything in line for school, work and arranging the house.

Jillian and I will still work on her school stuff in the meantime, but it will be a sad day when I have to drop her off and head to work.

So for those of you who enjoyed the blogging of my crash course in pre K home-schooling, I will do my best to keep up and potentially change this into more of a family blog as things start changing around the Walsh Home.  Thank you for reading and thanks to those who have been so supportive of us!!

Love and Hugs,

E

P.S. Just for fun, here is Jillian at the Freshman game on Thursday...

A New Week

One of the best things about home-schooling is that you can skip a day or re-arrange your schedule.  Because we did SO much extra last week with learning at the Harvest festival and on Sunday with brother John visiting from school we were able to skip yesterday.  It worked especially well since I had a meeting...

Back to it today!
Today Jillian actually fussed with the alarm clock that serves as our "school bell" to make sure that I wouldn't miss school! I think she starting to get into it.

We started with a review of Mary had a little lamb.  She is struggling with the length of it and reading the words instead of singing the song.

Then we started using the animal matching cards to work on matching animal pairs and types.  She used her Little People Zoo animals to match animals and learn about there types and where they live.  We spoke about all the monkey type animals, which ones were cats, where the animals lived, etc.

We reviewed our A and B letter and word cards today before working on the C Words. While she was coloring her C Card we learned about words that start with C and then on her own she put her words into a story! It was so cute!

After letters we worked on our number puzzle.  We reviewed our numbers and used the puzzle to count each image on the number.  She can successfully count to 13 all by herself.  Once we get higher she starts to miss numbers.  she knows 0-9 by sight now.

After the learning, we finished with a story off the book shelf.
Today was a good day, but again, an hour seems to be our limit.  

Tomorrow is Family Story Time at the Library! FIELD TRIP! 

A day of rest...

Because Friday was a travel day for Mama and the cheerleaders, Jillian got a break from school.  We did verbally review letters and sounds, but we didn't have a formal hour of learning.

Today was a very fun visit to the Sparks United Methodist Church Harvest Festival! So many wonderful crafters!  We got to visit with the wonderful lady that makes the blankets and pillows and the honey guy!  Such wonderful people.

The children's section of the Harvest Festival was wonderful! The activities included a haunted house, balloon animals, pumpkin patch, fishing, golf, face painting, crafts, music center, bean bags... and many many more!

Jillian had a wonderful time and came home with lots of wonderful "loot"!

A sigh of relief!

Today shall be the day of wiggles!  Today was a good day, but very wiggly! 

Today she successfully recited Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater to me! Yay!

I found these wonderful mats from Walmart that have the alphabet, shapes and colors.  We went through all the mats and worked on matching, colors, shapes, counting and reciting the alphabet.  I'm not sure if its normal, but she is still just in recitation mode when it comes to the alphabet.  I make sure that now that she knows the whole alphabet from memory that we point to each letter as we sing.  Hopefully this will start connecting soon as we are working daily on specific letters and their sounds and basic words.

Today was letter 'Bb'.  We learned upper and lower, the B sound and 5 B words.  She seems to like this part, but is not very excited about coloring the flash card.  I think because I make her go slow and stay in the lines.  

She also started working on Mary had a little lamb today.  She already knows part of it, so it should be more fun to learn.  

For our math lesson we traced the numbers 1, 2, and 3.  Again, she did great! I had her attempt a 2 free-hand, and while its still a wiggly line, it far more resembles a 2 than it did on Tuesday!  Baby steps!  Also, we tried to do a connect-the-dot today.  It was a bit of a struggle and she needed lots of guidance to understand how it worked, but I think once she gets it she will really like them.  

Our Motor skills part for today was to trace the line that lead the cat to the ball of yarn on a activity pad page.  It was hard for her to understand how to trace the line with her finger.  She wanted to jump around a little.  Again, more practice and she'll be fine.

Our two books for today were ones that were chosen at the library yesterday.  The first was a ready to read book, level 3.  It was a bit hard for her to understand and follow while I was reading it.  We only did one chapter.  We will do chapter two tomorrow (there are 4).  The second was "She'll be coming 'round the mountain".  One of my favorite childhood songs.  The book was not anything like I learned it.  I may have to dig up the version I learned as a kid.  Much more fun.

So after 4 days I have seen progress.  It is much harder than I thought.  I have started the process to start writing out the daily lesson plans in much more detail.  I will get a binder going and work on matching the curriculum to the goals.  Its going to be just as educational for me as it is for her I'm afraid! 

One, Two, Three, SLEEP!

The third day seems to be a bit like the third day after a hard workout. I'm exhausted and sore... Both mentally. Last night we had a huge wind storm and Jillian didn't want to sleep in her room. We stayed on the couch for a while which translated into her sleeping and not me. Thank goodness today was supposed to be a light day. 

Jillian seems to be getting into it a little. At least she's excited for the school alarm to go off. Today we went over the calendar to learn that Wednesdays are family story time at the library! 

Since we were doing so much reading and interaction today I started with reciting our nursery rhyme. She's starting to remember the words. 

I purchased an oversized checkers set at the dollar store thinking we could use it for all kinds of counting, matching and sorting activities beyond the game. 

She did great with the sorting. 

When it was time to count she didn't want to stay focused. Eventually we were able to count all 24 checkers. 

She had more fun stacking them than anything, but was a bit of a negative nancy when it came to sharing and the stacking. She was whinny today and lots of tears. I assume more from lack if sleep than frustration. 

After checkers we played with wooden blocks until it was time to go to the library. 

Once at the library she did excellent with sitting down and listening to the stories. She was a bit shy to sing the songs but came around. The stories were great. Halloween themed. She perked up a lot when they read 5 Little Pumpkins. Perhaps tomorrow we'll decorate paper pumpkins to match...

She wasn't much interested in helping to make lunch today either. A blessing for this tired momma today. 

Still hoping for that nap, but I won't count on it!

Day Two: It's gotta be fun.

Mom's Log 10/14/14...
In this strange land we have stumbled upon, we find that patience is a scarce element and the natives will do just about anything to get to use scissors and glue...

Seriously, today was a little harder than yesterday.  Not sure if it was because Jillian didn't like the plan for the day or if I didn't execute.  

We started with breakfast this morning for our cooking lesson.  She has been bugging me to make smoothies for a while, so using frozen fruit, yogurt and milk we made smoothies in the blender.  She had about 1/3 of it before she decided she didn't like it. Truth be told, it needed to be sweeter.  

When the alarm went off for school time, we started with the Calendar, then read Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater and worked on memorizing it.  It was a color page that she had NO desire to color, she was more interested in free drawing.  So free drawing it is.

Next, we moved onto numbers 1 and 2.  One's are easy, twos not so much.  We started out trying to free draw them and I remembered the trick with dots.  I put dots on the page and she traces around to make the letters and numbers.  I feel like this is something that every PreK and Kindergarten teacher instinctively knows and I'm really behind the curve.  I am catching on, albeit slowly.  I doubt I'll becoming a career PreK teacher in the future...

We have this really great wooden puzzle that has numbers and on the board part each number has a corresponding amount of items on it.  Its good for counting and number recognition.  So many ways to 'learn' the numbers without feeling like learning.

After numbers I had her cut simple squares of construction paper from strips.  Then using school glue, she glued them onto an outline of a pumpkin.  She insisted that the pumpkin have ears and arms... A few observations with the scissors and glue.  she wants to make confetti out of everything and she doesn't use enough glue.  I'm sure that both of these tendencies will come in handy later.

We finished off with a great Little People book about transportation.  Lots of colors, counting and flaps to discover.  

At 10:40 we called it quits. 

Tomorrow is Family Story day at the public Library.  I think we will go to that and take a tiny break from structure.  

I think I need to say that our house is set up like "centers." She is allowed free reign to wander and play with toys, most of which are educational.  We ask lots of questions and talk about 'school' things throughout the day.   

I do really wish we were still napping...

We Survived Day 1!

We made it through! 
Only a few focus issues, one potty break and two middle name moments...

The alarm went off a 9:30 and we started with covering the letter J with stickers.  She did fine.  A few mistakes, but great job!

We sorted Halloween rings, by color, type and then counted them.  She counted on her own all the way to 14! 

Then we put two bat rings in a cup and pulled them out (with replacement) and recorded what color we picked each time.  Fascinating for Mom too! Turns out on 12 pulls we hit 50% purple and green.  Hmm, probability at work. She did a great job of circling the marks and replacing.  A little confused by the process at first, but by the end she had it. 

Next we colored a flash card and worked on the upper and lower case recognition of the letter Aa and also the sound and a word that matches.  She was awesome at staying in the lines and understanding the colors.

We chose a book from the shelf to read next. "Dora's Big Birthday."  I was long and I'm not great with my Spanish, but it was a good story. (Potty break here.)

After we read we tried to do a first day drawing.  It was a good drawing, but she was done with 'school' at this point.  she finished up and we moved on to snack time. For our snack we mixed food coloring into frosting and spread it on a graham cracker and sprinkled with Halloween sprinkles.  She did the mixing, spreading and sprinkles.  

It's 10:45, Two crackers, and a glass of milk we are done for the day! In total it ended up about an hour and fifteen minutes.  Pretty good!  Lots of wonderful work to show dad and hang on our "look what I did" board.

Later today we are headed to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to pick out more books. They are only $0.50 a piece and there are so many to choose from! Maybe we can find some more Halloween or Farm Animal books.

Tomorrow is a new day... number recognition and pumpkin bingo!
-E