Preschool Update

Continuing the updates...onto school.

Katrina and Alex are still doing Academy on Fridays. They are together for the first three periods (music followed by the assortment class - activities, snack, science experiments, stories, crafts, playtime, etc). Then Alex stays with the younger preschoolers for another assortment class based on letter of the week - coloring, story, Bible, play, etc and Katrina and the older preschoolers join the K-2's for gym class. Neither of them have anything structured in the afternoon. They usually join in the active games (often dodgeball, tag, or nerf guns) or playing house with their friends.

Katrina at home:
ABC-123: Been pleased with this in general. Overall I think I don't like how the math and phonics were in the same book. The math was cute (mainly number concepts to 20) but things she already knew. The phonics in the beginning was quite challenging for her but she has come a long way with it and now it seems to be right on for her. She is sounding out three letter short vowel words pretty well and we are starting on long vowel. I think it would have been better had the two subjects not been linked since she is at two different levels but it worked.

Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code: Katrina has like these - fun and pretty easy/straightforward. She is almost finished with the last book. The books have done the same skill introducing each letter in the alphabet and some basic handwriting practice. Because of them she is great at beginning sounds of words.

Math-U-See: I'm not a huge fan but Katrina seems to really like it (loves the video aspect) and she seems to be getting it. We've done shapes, counting, place value to 100's and now we are beginning adding. If we are given the next level I may let her keep going in it since it is fun for her but I won't be purchasing this.

Create-A-Calendar: I had always somewhat laughed at this idea thinking it was more of a craft than a learning tool (not that that is bad to have a craft!) but I really see it as a fun learning tool now. Katrina thinks she is just playing with stickers but is learning the days of the week, months of the year, number order, seasons, holidays, birthdays, etc. She's having a ball with it! I think I would do this for her again.

Alex:
Letters and Sounds: Alex didn't get into this book as much as Katrina did. He mainly draws giant circles on the pages. But he feels involved and has fun. Don't know how much he has actually learned...

Numbers and Skills: Again going slowly. He likes any cutting and pasting days.

Everyone:
Reading list: Moving along on this. They seem to like the individual stories better than the ones in treasury editions, even the ones that have all the pictures of the originals in it. In the future I may post what we read and ones I really liked. Animals have been a big hit.