As our school year draws to a close (just two weeks to go!) fun with math manipulatives, anatomy lessons with Q-tips and tons of other fun stuff have been filling our days. If the school year is this fun, I can’t wait to see what the summer will bring!
For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.
Whew! I’m pretty sure we did about three days worth of kindergarten today! Last week we lost a day to Labor Day, and tomorrow we’re going to the zoo with friends, which made today a catch-up-and-get-ahead day around here.
Today we…
…made M-sheets,
… made a rainbow,
… and made Egyptian jewelry…
… and then walked like them!
Romilly thinks she’s in kindergarten, too, as I thought she might:
(She’s mastered most of the important letters!)
Not to mention Bible, math, nursery rhymes, reading aloud, learning to write our address, studying Egyptian culture and reading about weather. It was a busy day!
In the middle of all that somewhere, we went out to the post office and drug store. Our sweet neighbor (who knows we homeschool) asked me, “Aren’t you doing school today?”
If only she knew!
It occurs to me that I haven’t really said much about our homeschooling adventure since this post before we had even started. The short version of the update is: we loved it, and we’re doing it again this year. Pippa’s kindergarten curriculum arrived this week and we’re starting school on Monday.
I had been viewing Pre-K as a trial period, after all, many children don’t do any formal schooling at all before kindergarten, some even later. How much damage could I do?
As I look back on our trial year and assess, I am amazed at the year we’ve had. At the beginning of the year, Pippa really had zero interest in or patience for coloring. Her early perception workbook exercises were scribbled and hurried, usually just in one color. By the end of the year she was staying in the lines, carefully choosing her colors to be accurate and attractive, and more importantly she was *enjoying* it!
This same attention to detail and pride in workmanship extends to her “writing”. There was no official handwriting curriculum this year, but Pippa has always loved writing her letters, so at every opportunity she would write cards for friends or sign her name and her sisters’ on everything. She can clearly write all of her capital letters now, though I know we’ll have a few bad habits to break as we start a more formal writing curriculum this year.
I was, at first, skeptical of Sonlight‘s wait-till-they’re-ready approach to teaching reading and writing, but I am so thankful now that we didn’t push these things this year. After a year of just enjoying books together and writing only “for fun”, I can tell she is ripe and excited to learn to read and write now. I feel all at once overwhelmed and incredibly privileged to be the one to get to teach her these things.
The Bible stories and other read-alouds were a joy. We found so many opportunities to talk about them and continue learning from them throughout our days together. At least once, Pippa told her Sunday school teacher how the story was going to end. We quote from Milly-Molly-Mandy, The Twins, and other stories all the time and laugh together as we see similar situations arise in our day-to-day-lives. (Billy Blunt and Milly-Molly-Mandy ate their lunch so early on their fishing expedition that when they rushed home for dinner, they found the family just finishing up their lunch – those crazy kids!)
Despite all this, it was with a little bit of sadness that Pippa first agreed to homeschool again this coming year. Some of her friends are starting “real” kindergarten, and I know there was a part of her (and me!) that wondered what she might be missing out on. We wanted to include her in the discussion, but recognized at the same time that it would be foolish as parents to let a 4-year-old have the final say in such a crucial decision. We used a little bit of propaganda (Boy, we sure would miss you on Wednesdays at Grandmom’s and zoo days with our friends if you were in school…), and she conceded that maybe one more year at home would be okay.
All of that hesitancy vanished this week when our box of kindergarten supplies arrived. Math manipulatives, science supplies, big kid workbooks… she can. not. wait. to start school! She has already asked if she can do “the next thing” (first grade is beyond her realm of experience) at home, too. We were going to wait until after her birthday and Labor Day, but one of the beauties of homsechooling is its great flexibility. We’re going to strike while the iron is hot and get stuck in this Monday, and I might be just as excited as she is.
Romilly should technically be two years behind, so I shouldn’t even start Pre-K with her until next year, but, well… she might just be doing some Kindergarten with us this year. Yet another reason why homeschooling’s flexibility is a great bonus for our family.
Amy‘s post about the Junie B. Jones books reminded me that I’ve been meaning to blog about this book for months! Junie B.’s full name is Juniper Beatrice, so on the surface of things, I can see how someone might mistake me for a fan, but they would be wrong. In fact, I had never actually read one until shortly after our little Junie was born, though I was aware of them and had even bought one for my aunt Junie as a “fun” little birthday gift once. Little did I know! Junie B.’s harsh language and defiant attitude ought to strike fear in the hearts of parents and teachers alike, but for some reason words like “stupid” and “smelly” and “shut up!” along with a healthy dose of foot stomping and door slamming must seem endearing coming from an adorably illustrated six-year-old. I believe that there is an attempt to bring the stories around to a reasonable moral – Junie B. does learn that the stupid, smelly school bus is actually pretty cool – but I’m not going to take the chance that my girls will figure out for themselves that her behavior while on the road to enlightenment is not okay.
And so, I commend to you moms of little girls (and little girls at heart) an alternative: The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook, by Joyce Lankester Brisley. This book is hands-down my favorite of all the wonderful books we’ve read together this year doing Pippa’s Pre-K homeschooling, and it had some tough competition. Millicent Margaret Amanda (not quite as fabulous a name as Junie B’s, but still pretty great) is an only child who lives with her father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and uncle and aunty (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) in a little cottage with a thatched roof somewhere in the English countryside. Do you love it already?
While the books are not overtly Christian, they were originally published by Christian publishers, and paint a better picture of Christlike home environment than any I have ever encountered in a children’s book. I have found myself on several occasions referring back to these stories for examples to the girls of frugality, unselfishness, helpfulness and thankfulness. I’m not sure a little girl as lovely as Milly-Molly-Mandy has ever existed, even back in the twenties when some of these stories were first penned, but I’ll take a role model over realism any day!
The chapters are short and self-contained, with lots of repetition of certain words, so these stories are ideal for new readers, but also super fun to read aloud together. We’ve also used them as a springboard to go to the internet and learn more about things that are now less familiar to our modern American minds, like blacksmiths and thatching a roof.
Here is an excerpt from the chapter, “Milly-Molly-Mandy Has a Surprise”, in which Milly-Molly-Mandy has just helped clean and redecorate the jam storage space in the loft, not realizing she has actually been helping to convert it into her own little bedroom so she will no longer share a room with her parents:
The next day, when Milly-Molly-Mandy came home from school, Mother said, ” Milly-Molly-Mandy, we’ve got the little storeroom in order again. Now, would you please run up and fetch me a pot of jam?”
Milly-Molly-Mandy said, “Yes, Mother. What sort?”
And Father said, “Blackberry.”
And Grandpa said, “Marrow-ginger.”
And Grandma said, “Red-currant.”
And Uncle said, “Strawberry.”
And Aunty said, “Raspberry.”
But Mother said, “Any sort you like, Milly-Molly-Mandy!”
Milly-Molly-Mandy thought something funny must be going to happen, for Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty all looked as if they had got a laugh down inside them. But she ran upstairs to the little storeroom.
And when she opened the door,… she saw…
Her own little cot-bed with the greencoverlet on, just inside. And the little square window with the green curtains blowing in the wind. And a yellow pot of nasturtiums on the sill. And the little green chest of drawers with the robin cloth on it. And the little green mirror hanging on the primrose wall, with Milly-Molly-Mandy’s own face reflected in it.
And then Milly-Molly-Mandy knew that the little storeroom was to be her very own little bedroom, and she said, “Oh-h-h-h!” in a very hushed voice, as she looked all around her room.
The suddenly she tore downstairs back into the kitchen, and just hugged Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty; and they all said she was their favourite jam-pot and pretended to eat her up!
And Milly-Molly-Mandy didn’t know how to wait till bedtime, because she was so eager to go to sleep in the little room that was her Very Own!
* * * * *
Junie B. could learn a thing or two, and I’m hoping my girls will, too! They adore these stories (though I think not *quite* as much as I do) and I think I may just make them required reading for each girl every year once they can read alone. In the meantime, I’m more than happy to read it aloud a few more times.
Thanks, Deb!
Thanks, KT and Shanna!
