Let the Learning Begin!

So today was a very big first for us...



Natalie misses the cutoff to start Kindergarten this year by about 5 weeks. For about a year now I have had the idea of homeschooling floating around in my brain. When I first started thinking about it, I really didn't think it was a reality for us. It's a bit overwhelming when you think about what all it involves. Plus, she loves her 1 day a week preschool SO MUCH that I wondered if I could make it as fun. As time went on and I gave it more and more thought, this is the conclusion I came to:

We'll give it a go!

She is SO ready. And really, with our situation it works out perfectly to try it out this year and see how it goes. If it goes well, we'll continue. But if it doesn't seem to be a good fit for us, then she'll start public school right on time, NEXT fall.

So, I plan to document as much as I can here throughout the year. I'm doing this for my benefit, as my blog is as good a place as any for me to reference. So for the half a dozen people that still read here, this is what you're in for. :)

She knew we were starting today, and she was very anxious to get started. So much so that she helped me do dishes, laundry, and gather trash so we could hurry and get the chores out of the way before we began.

We started out the morning doing our calendar and the weather. Then we jumped right into the letter A, and learned quite a bit about ants. Her favorite bit of info that she learned is that their noses are inside their feelers. Both girls followed a trail of ants(paper ones!) and put together our memory verse and found out what we could learn from the ants.

We read Those Amazing Ants and then practiced writing the letter A.

I am using a combination of stuff for our curriculum.

For our main lessons we are using ABC, I Believe.
I'm also using this really cool Berenstain Bears Curriculum.

And thanks to a dear friend I have the 4/5 Sonlight Curriculum that I will be incorporating in.

And while I do want to have a structure and a bit of a schedule on paper. I'm not being really rigid with it. We'll go with the flow, and a lot of what I do will be based on what she wants to do. She loves doing crafty stuff and she loves to color, cut, and glue. In fact she knew I had planned for us to make an ant this week and while I've been typing this, she's wanting to know when we're making it!
If you'd like to see any of the other resources I'm making good use of, I have them all HERE on my Homeschool Pinterest board. You just click the images on Pinterest and it will take you to the website.

So before we got started this morning...

The girls had a helper. For now, our main instruction time begins when he goes down for his morning nap!

Then after our main lesson the girls wanted to color. On our homemade "clothes line" from left to right we have:
* our ant trail they put together with our memory verse (Proverbs 6:6) and our ant motto, "Do your work/chores without being told to do it."
*What's the weather today
*Our letter A which will get decorated later in the week
* A craft from Bible class
* Her Letter A writing practice worksheet.

A plan to use this "line" to display as much as I can of what we are working on for the week. An interactive bulletin board so to speak.
Oh and sidenote..notice that from the 1st to 2nd picture Abigail went from her regular clothes to her princess attire. Ha!




Both girls love to color and I got lots of preschool workbooks for Abigail because she wants to be included in School too!
We'll wrap up this afternoon with a sight word lesson, but Day 1 went really well!