ABCs

Today was an unusually cool day for the start of August. On second thought, maybe it was nice to be away from the 100-degree mark. Either way there was a slight feel of fall in the air and that means that school is around the corner.

So many of our friends send their children to preschool. Some started as early as 18 months while others have held off until three. We have decided that JillyBean will not go to preschool. I have mixed feelings on this issue, though I am happy with our decision. One one hand I would like for Jilly to be with her friends. She had a great time at Vacation Bible School, though that was just a blip. However, I'm not exactly crazy about the public school system as a whole, although we live in a fabulous district. Also, kids are in school for SO long that I don't want to start her any earlier than she has to. Still, knowing that the public school here demands so much of kids at younger ages, I don't want Jilly to be behind if we do choose to send her down the road so we are going to do a home school program.

I am a little nervous about this and not too confident about my ability to actually teach her. That's silly, I know, because basically everything she will "learn" at preschool we are "teaching" during our daily routine. She knows her letters out of context, all of her colors and shapes; she can count to 20 (when she's not be asked to do so) and she gets sequencing, matching, rhyming and all of that stuff. What we need to work on are the sounds of letters and how to write - something I don't remember doing until first grade but something kids today master, in some cases, before kindergarten. Reading will follow soon after, which she is chomping at the bit to learn.

Jilly has been showing a lot of interest lately in learning to write. She understands that words are made up of individual letters and when she asks us to spell something for her, she makes a separate mark for each letter. She also seems to grasp that each word is an individual item and spaces her "words" further apart than the "letters" that comprise the words.

Knowing that she is interested and ready to learn should make this process a bit easier. Having never taught any form of school, I decided to purchase a formal preschool curriculum. I chose the program from a company called Sonlight because it is literature based and uses story books to teach science, social studies, etc. We are doing a program above her current age because she is ready for it. The curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds is nothing more than reading together and that is something we have done since birth. So she'll be in a pre-kindergarten program that will teach her how to write.

Homeschooling is something I have said that I would like to do for as long as possible but we are going to take it a year at a time. It is very exciting and Jilly is looking forward to mom being her teacher.