Growing Pains

The last week or two we have had some growing pains in our house. One of them has been in regards to starting homeschooling with our 4, almost 5, year old. She is a smart cookie, but there is a learning curve for me to determine how far and how fast to go. Yes, I am an occupational therapist, but I can sincerely say that I am NOT a pediatric therapist. Some have told me that they believe that teaching children early usually only makes them hate learning. Yikes! Yet, I have tried to balance all the advice as best I can. So, the last week or so has been an exercise in admitting to myself that she is not ready in some areas, but she is ready and eager to do others.

Even though the current curriculum that we chose teaches cursive writing in kindergarden, I decided today that she is not ready for that. I had guessed that, but now I know for sure. I talked to my husband today when he called from work and he said, "I didn't think she was ready for that." Sometimes I have to be hit over the head before I'll give up. We're going back to the preschool Handwriting Without Tears and that has gone well. There are quite a few manipulatives to make it fun.

We're going to read more. I went to the library and got quite a few books. One that we read today was on the flood in Grand Forks, ND a few years back. It prompted quite a bit of discussion with my children about floods like people are experiencing in the south. We then went outside in the sand and made dikes to protect our "city".

I had made some cardstock fish, painted them with the children, and then had them laminated awhile back. We put paperclips on them and went fishing with magnet-ended fishing lines today. Dry-erase markers work well on these, so I wrote some single-vowel words on the back that she had to read if she was going to keep the fish. I had been doing some reading with her before, so these were review words and she ended up keeping them all (even though she had to throw some back and catch them a couple times!) Then we went to her "house" to clean and cook the fish she caught.

She has to have fun and I have to have fun, and then we both learn a lot!