Rachel's Week in Review

Rachel formally started pre-school this week!! Since I spend so much time doing school with big sister, I decided to actually plan out a little program for Rachel to ensure I spend time with her and to keep her engaged. She loves to make believe. She can play on her own for hours. But, she likes to spend time with Mom and thinks playing with others is fun too. So, if I don't plan it out, it doesn't get done here. My little program is the prepatory curriculum from Letter of the Week. It really is very easy and takes about 10- 15 minutes a day. We have a learning poster with various pictures in different categories: theme of the week, vocabulary word, shape/color, number, letter, and nursery rhyme. On Mondays, we go over the theme and vocabulary word and then one category per day the rest of the week. I gather up library books over the weekend that are about the theme. This past week the theme was cows. We read lots and lots of cow books! On Friday, we made a craft out of a paper plate of the cow jumping over the moon. And, that nursery rhyme was what we memorized (or tried to anyways!). This next week the theme will be jungles.

Rachel has really enjoyed her "school" and likes the fact she is doing something like Sarah. I combine this little program with a few workbooks for her age (Kumon), that she does once a week, and lots of good literature. Although I don't believe learning at this age should be forced, I do believe I can be purposeful in creating a learning environment!