School

For those of you who don't know, I've been "homeschooling" Emily this year. I loved her preschool last year, the weekly swimming was the best, but decided we could use the money for other activities for her. She's done swimming, ballet, and gymnastics this year for way less than what I would have spent on preschool. And it lets me use some of my SVU education.
So here's a summary of our school. Emily loves having school, we only do it a few times a week just like "real" preschool. I love that now that I am entertaining the idea of homeschooling, anything can count as school. We take trips to the creek, go on nature walks, read a lot of books, draw, paint, you get the idea. Not that I am required to keep track or anything, I just wanted to see what it would be like.
Emily misses the cut-off for Kindergarten this year (by 11 days) and so this fall she will be homeschooled as well. She has shown interest in wanting to read and make signs. Her first sign said "WEBRS YES", it's a sign for our bathroom. She sounded it out and everything. Her most recent sign was "NU PRSINS ULAD". Translation--No persons allowed. Although today she saw the sign and said "I forgot to put an E, I just did a R (in persons).
We use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I highly recommend the book. We are on lesson 37. We do about 6 or so lessons a month. Emily has read me two books, Pop, pop; and Muff and Ruff. I pretty much just do lessons when she or Thomas ask. They get a gold coin (chocolate inside) when they are done.
I have recently stumbled across "nature study" I love the idea behind it. Basically it's take the kids outside, let them observe nature, and then let them talk about, read/research about it, draw about it, anything they want. First I have to say how impressed I am with the kids and how far they have each improved. Thomas joins us whenever he is here. We've had a few lessons, yesterday's lesson was on a pine "branch" that the kids found on a walk.

It's a little out of focus, because I tried to make the photo bigger. Anyway, here is her rendition. I had her sign and date it because I was so impressed.

A little explaination on the extras. The yellow part at the top is a stick I was using to hold down her paper because the wind kept blowing it. The circles on the right are a face she drew but the eye was too big to make a second eye so she tried to make the head bigger, then she just drew herself on the right side. Other than that, I think she had it right on.

Just so you know, I used (without permission--I hope it's ok) my dad's camera for these, I thought this was too good not to be "published" to the web.