Last week I mentioned a couple of the changes that I had made to our homeschooling schedule. A month in to the new year and we are still going strong without the need for a break and without any whining from my son about SCHOOOOOOOL? AGAIN? I’d say that this year is definitely off to a good start.

One of the biggest changes we’ve made is that we pulled Cindy-Lu out of preschool. Yes, after all those discussions with my husband about whether or not we should send her to preschool, I’ve pulled her from her class. She loved going to what she called baby school, but it was smack dab in the middle of our morning of school work. We start school at 9am and try to get done before lunch. On the days that Cindy-Lu had preschool we wouldn’t get done until late in the afternoon. It just wasn’t working for us.

Cindy-Lu now holds the title of homeschooled child as well. In the mornings, before Eeyore is awake, the two of us color pictures together and say our ABCs and count. I’m not doing anything structured with her yet and I probably won’t until she is ready for kindergarten. Right now we are just focusing on letters and numbers. She recognizes most of the letters from the alphabet, thanks to the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD (I HIGHLY recommend this video. Cindy-Lu will watch this all day if I let her and she knows the sound every letter makes from watching this!). Some days she will sit with me and Eeyore as we read his history or science books and she loves for Eeyore to read her stories throughout the day. I think she will do just fine at home.

Eeyore and Cindy-Lu have both started a couple new extra-curricular activities this winter, including tumbling, chess club, piano and a Spanish class. They both get out to meet other kids and play and they are doing great. All of these activities they do are in the late afternoon so that they do not interfere with our school work.

Taking Cindy-Lu out of preschool has really helped us to not feel rushed in the mornings. We don’t have anywhere to be until after school is finished and I don’t feel like a mean mom telling them to HURRY HURRY HURRY all the time.

I made one more change this year and it involves math. I’ll tell ya about that next week. (And yes, I took the advice of a few of you who commented on this in the past.)

by Karly Campbell

[tags]kids, children, parents, parenting, homeschooling, education, preschool, abcs, abc’s, letters, reading, literacy, extra-curricular activities, tumbling, chess[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by Shanubi, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved