Preschool Priorities #2/#3 - Interests and those pesky Rs

If you missed Part I(plans and priorities) or Part II (A Rich Feast), check them out.

As I said earlier, my second priority is learning about what the kids are interested in followed by reading, writing and arithmetic for Lucy. Right now, for Lucy at least, those are often the same thing. 

Writing – This is her subject of the day season. She loves to write. If you come over to our house you’ll see tiny pieces of paper and notes all over the place. She’ll sound out words  by herself. Her CVC words are pretty accurate but the rest gets interesting. I just love sounded out some of the things she writes down because it normally makes a lot of sense auditorily although not visually. She also loves to write silly words such as “lulululubababawee” and then laugh hysterically when I read them to her.  And sometimes she actually asks for my help so I always take that as an opportunity to reviewing or teaching some phonics.

I’ve been hesitant to start anything in terms of lessons when it comes to actually handwriting because I know as soon as I do, she’ll move on BUT she consistently writes certain letters incorrectly and I don’t want her to learn bad habits so we’ll be working on writing. (She draws an e in three parts, first with a line across, then a swoopy bottom and lastly a curve at the top. This is probably the least efficient method possible. But it does look like an e!) While she’s interested we’ll do the copy work part of Alphabet path but if she starts to baulk, it will get dropped, especially the fine motor work.

Math – MEP 1 when requested (plus all that general everyday number fun we have). She's not in as much of a crazy math period as she was but she still asks for it a couple times a week. 

Reading – She got to Lesson 60 of The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Reading and stalled out. I tried not to ask if she wanted to do a reading lesson and just let her request but we had finished one of two lessons on the voiced and unvoiced th sounds and my ocd self couldn't take it and tried to at least finish up that but nope, when she was done, she was done. The little stinker wouldn't even finish the last half of a lesson! But letting that go, I realize that if where she is now is all she knows when entering first grade, I’ll still be happy and since we are getting review in with writing, at least for now, I’m content with letting this rest for now. 

If she or Jonah have other big interests that come up, I can probably fit them into a letter somehow or just take the week off to do fun stuff with that topic. With a whole year and only 24 of so letter weeks (a couple are combined), we should have plenty of time even if we take december and april off. And that's my plan.

I know it took me a long time to say it, but honestly, it isn't much at all and leaves us lots of time to play outside and in.

• Daily Table Time with bible work, hymn, poem, folk songs and French song practice (probably not each subject each day though).
• Music – Opera!
• French – Get me caught up, read few French picture books.
• Art – Daily open ended art time plus weekly picture study
• Alphabet Path Extension – Read lots of books and maybe do a few activities
• Monthly Preschool Co-op 

I think that's really reasonable. We shall see. I'm getting really excited for fall now - and not just because I'm ready for some jeans weather.