Preschool Update

I am still very excited about my decision to homeschool Bella, and later Abbigail. I began doing some preschool work with her in the fall and she did really well with it. This spring we have been a lot less structured, mostly because I have been very busy! I practice dental hygiene Mon-Wed in a general dentistry office, and I am an adjunct faculty in the ETSU Dental Hygiene Clinic on Thursdays for the Spring semester. On Friday mornins we do attend our Homeschool Co-op, which we both enjoy very much.

Despite the fact that we are a little more unstructured at this time, Bella is learning by leaps and bounds, as all children do at this age. My mother and I have both been working with her on math skills and pre-reading. She has preschool workbooks that she really enjoys, and in the past couple of days she has started doing simple addition problems! I can ask her to tell me what five and four is, and she will count it out on her fingers and tell me nine! I am super proud of her, especially since math is definately NOT a strong point for me.

She has also learned to recognize all the upper case and most of the lower case alphabet, and we are working on some of the sounds. I'm not pushing it, she isn't even four yet. She is also practicing her handwriting, and can write her name. My goal for the summer is to have her learn all her lower case alphabet, and do lots of reading aloud. She loves to be read to, and right now she is very interested in volcanoes, thanks to a Discovery channel program she watched with her daddy. We have checked out several books on volcanoes from the library and now she can tell you all about them! We are also working hard on obedience and manners.

My plans for fall ("Man plans. God laughs!") are to begin Saxon MathK and also a reading program. I am still looking into reading programs and talking to other homeschool moms.

Now, I'm sure some people are wondering (because I didn't know much about it until I became interested!) about homeschooling, if it is legal, how expensive it is, etc. Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states, with varying degrees of regulation. For example, Pennslyvania is one of the strictest states to homeschool in, with lots of accountability and documentation required. Other states just require you to notify your local school district. For more information and to see the homeschooling laws for every state, you can visit http://hslda.org/ .

As far as expense, homeschooling is about like anything else in life: you can get the cadillac or the used Honda! Both will get you where you are going! There are many, many resources available for free online and in local libraries. You can buy used curriculum on ebay or craigslist. Just google "homeschool curriculum" and you'll see just how many products there are to choose from. You can choose a "boxed" curriculum, which is pretty much everything your child would need for a particular grade, or you can pick and choose different subjects from different publishers.

I have been researching homeschooling for over a year now, and am still learning a lot! I am out of time for now, but maybe in another post I will list some books / websites / resources that have been helpful to me.