Kindergarten has begun!

We officially began our kindergarten year on August 3rd, so we’re going on week four even though schools in the area began their year yesterday. So far, it’s been going really well. J is loving and thriving in our curricula choices for the year, and he looks forward to our 45 minutes of school each day. We actually only do Monday through Thursday with only our main curriculum on Friday. Yet, he asks each weekend to “do school,” as well. Even though it can be tricky with the distracting 3 year old and demanding newborn, I’m really enjoying that special time with him. It does us both a lot of good to have that intentional time.

Our plan for each day begins with our main curriculum, Build Your Library Kindergarten, and then we go through a rotation of the remaining curricula until the 45 minutes is up. We have a chart posted, so he’s able to follow and knows what to expect and what is coming up. He currently always anxiously awaits doing math and a kiwi crate 🙂

Our Curriculum Choices: Kindergarten

• Build Your Library Kindergarten
• Math-U-See: Alpha
• All About Reading– currently finishing up the last few lessons in Level 1 before we begin Level 2
• All About Spelling: Level 1– to be started when we start Level 2 of AAR
• Handwriting Without Tears: Letters and Numbers For Me
• Life of Fred: Apples
• the remainder of our Kiwi Crates

I’m looking forward to what the next year brings and to see how much he grows!

Review: Math-U-See Primer

Yesterday, I broke the news to J that it was his last lesson in the Primer level of Math-U-See. I thought he’d be excited, but he got really upset about it! I think that speaks to the program quite a bit. He’s really enjoyed working through each lesson and looks forward to completing all of the worksheets. I was a little concerned that it would be too “workbook” for him, but he loves it. He doesn’t use the blocks as much as I thought he would, but he knows that they’re there when he needs them. A lot of the skills in Primer were just review for him, but he had no issue picking up the new skills. We now have a child who can tell time, and he’s so proud of himself! I’ve been really impressed by how the program introduces everything and feel very confident that we’ll be sticking with Math-U-See for awhile.

I showed J the Alpha books, and he wasn’t upset about being done with Primer anymore! He especially loved that the’re green! We won’t be starting it for a few weeks, but it’s ready to go! The Primer books are all put away waiting for the day G is ready for them, and I know he’s going to love it, as well.

 

Inching back in…

For the past few weeks (okay, months), J has been asking/begging to start his school stuff again. We just haven’t been able to swing it with how I’ve been feeling, so we kept just pushing it aside. It always made me feel super terrible (even more than the pregnancy was already doing to me). It’s incredibly difficult to see your five year old son get dejected and sad when you tell him that you just don’t have the capability to do a reading lesson. I love that he loves doing his “school work” and don’t want to discourage that!

So, today, after about three months off (talk about flexibility in homeschooling!), I finally got down his “Run, Bug, Run!” reading book from AAR and sat with him to read his next two stories. One green star on his chart later, and he’s beaming at me! He asked if that meant we could start his reading and math lessons again, and I reluctantly agreed. It’s not that I don’t want to do them with him. I do! The attention and direction that he gets while we do his lessons directly impacts his behavior in an extremely positive way, and we’ve been for sure needing that lately! I’m just nervous that I’m going to get in over my head with committing. I am, however, going to try. If nothing else, even doing stuff with him for a few minutes each day will likely carry him over to the next day if I’m not feeling super great. Therefore, I’m going to give it my best effort, and we’ll see what happens!

Raising a “Mathlete”

It doesn’t take much time hanging around with J to learn that he’s obsessed with numbers. He counts everything, and I say this literally. He has trouble handling a situation in which he can NOT count. He’s constantly adding numbers and is starting to do subtraction on his own, as well. He refers to Math-U-See as his math games and looks forward to his daily math time. When in the car, we’re either talking about numbers, counting things, or just counting in general. I get asked, “Can you count to 1,000?” and “How long would it take to count to infinity?” daily. Then, there’s the speed round to see how quickly he can count to 100. Math is just in his head constantly. It’s how we works, and it’s what he understands.

Admittedly, this has been difficult for me to fully accept. I have always been a reader, and I’ve always looked forward to passing on that love to my kids. Math has, by far, always been my weakest subject. I think much more in the abstract than logically, so I was left behind pretty quickly when it came to math in school. I’m actually quite curious to see if home schooling the boys will improve my math skills! Even still, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’ll always be partial to English/literature. That is what I got my degree in, after all. J did not take after me in this way, and that is very clear. He is, however, exactly like his dad. They understand each other, and Jony has no issues discussing math concepts and “talking numbers” with him for long periods of time, whereas I get bored quite quickly.

It started pretty early. As a toddler, instead of just playing with the cars (which I would do and get quickly told that I wasn’t playing correctly), he would sort them. Size, color, type of car; it didn’t matter. Once he was able to count, it was a game changer in his life until he’s reached the point where he is currently- obsessed. I have had to adapt to the fact that we will count everything in our life. If I put decorations up, it needs to be able to be sorted into different categories of some nature for him to enjoy looking at it. Not only will we discuss how many chickens are in our pasta salad, we will discuss how many there would be if we added such and so money or if we ate so many pieces. All of this has been a struggle since I don’t particularly enjoy counting, but I took it in stride with minimal issue.

Now that he’s beginning to read, however, it’s been hard to really realize how much is love of numbers overtakes his love of letters. When we’re looking at a new book, we have to look at the page numbers first to see how many are in it. The Table of Contents page in his non-fiction books is his favorite. He’s fascinated by the number of letters that are in a word. As his reading skills progress, I’m beginning to see how his way of thinking is guiding his path to reading. It’s clear that he likes to read and will enjoy it, but I think it’s safe to say that he’ll be much more likely to stick to his beloved non-fictions than to read novel after novel. And I’m okay with that! As long as he loves to read, of course.

In case you were wondering, G is very clearly the exact same way.