Having a kid is overwhelming. I find myself constantly checking up on myself. I try really hard not to compare myself to other moms, but we all know that is much easier said than done. The thought of raising a child that will have an impact – good or bad – on the next generation is a lot. I realize that children make their own decisions, but I also know that a major part of what he will become is up to me and David and how we raise him.
A friend of mine that teaches Kindergarten was just telling me some of the things that kids now have to know before they even get to Kindergarten. I’m not going to lie, it kind of freaked me out. It seems like, back in the day, Kindergarten was where you learned your letters, numbers, colors, etc. Now you pretty much have to be fluent in a second language to qualify to get in. I realize that requirements vary from school to school, but I want JD to have the best possible opportunities available to him. I think he’s a pretty smart kid, but I want to help him along any way that I can.
All that said…JD and I finished our first week of “school”. Now, don’t get all crazy on me. By school I mean that we have spent a few minutes of our day working on a letter, number, shape, etc. I created a “School Skills” board on Pinterest a while back. I looked back over what I had pinned and did some extra searching to see what I could come up with. I saw a “curriculum” on Pinterest that I thought I was going to follow. This lady had some serious plans. She had lesson plans, printables, posters…the whole shebang. After I got to looking it over and doing some planning of my own, I realized that wasn’t going to work for us. I did like the idea of breaking down the “lessons” to one a day and thought that would be a good basis for a weekly plan. She had a weekly theme with vocabulary words that went with that. Being that JD is still learning to talk, I thought that was asking a bit much. Maybe her kids are geniuses or maybe she’s an overachiever. I don’t know. I did know that I didn’t want to set JD or myself up for failure by asking too much of either of us. I wanted to do something with structure, but also keep it fun.
This week we looked at the letter A, the number 1, circles, and cars. And by a few minutes, I literally mean that. We lasted longer on some days than others, but it wasn’t any great length of time. It took some planning and a little bit of money to get us going, but I really think it’s going to be easy to maintain. I did a lot of my shopping at the Dollar Tree. They have a really great section of school props and supplies. Every time I am in there, I take a look at what they have. There are some things that I hope to continue all the way through, but I also know that I will change my approach as we progress. It’s always good to keep an eye out for things I could use later.
Ok, so this is kind of how it breaks down…
Letters. We will work our way through the alphabet a letter a week. This is kind of the basis for our schedule. There are 26 letters in our alphabet, so it will take us roughly that long to get through our “school”. I say roughly, because I know we will get off track along the way. I know we will be out of town or just flat out busy. I like structure, but I am also a realist. Getting things together for letter recognition was fairly easy. There are a ton of resources out there for that. I printed a couple of coloring sheets. It seems to help JD get motivated when he can color at the beginning of our lesson. While he colors, I talk about the letter and point it out. I also helped him trace the letter. I got a poster board from Dollar Tree (2 for $1) and some punch out letters. Each week I plan to add our letter to the board so he can see them and they will be easy to review. We did some water color painting too. I took a sheet of white paper and drew a big letter A on it using a white crayon. I mixed some water color paint with water and let JD paint the paper. Because of the wax from the crayon, the paint didn’t stick to it. It pushed through, showing the letter while the rest of the paper was colored. It was a pretty neat project and JD loved painting. The last thing we did with the letter A was to paint a canvas. We did this on a separate day since I had so much other stuff planned on Letter Day. I bought a pack of small square canvases and some painters tape at WalMart. My hope is to do this with all 26 letters and then hang them somewhere. I taped a Letter A on the canvas and let JD us finger paint to paint it. When the paint dried, I removed the tape so there is a white A in the middle of his artwork. I will say that this was by far my favorite craft that we have ever done. He had a blast painting, and I love the way that it turned out! I know that seems like a lot, but it really wasn’t. Plus, we worked on the letter longer than we did any of the other things.
Numbers. Numbers will go along with the Alphabet. We will do 1-20 then hit some of the bigger numbers on the last 6 weeks. I did the same thing with the poster board for numbers since they were included in the punch out letter pack. I also printed a few coloring sheets. We talked about the number, traced it on the coloring sheet, used our finger to count, and I pointed out all the number 1s that I could find around the house. I bought a set of window clings with letters and numbers and we have been hanging those on our sliding glass door as another reminder to talk about what we learn throughout the week. Number day was probably our shortest work day.
Shapes and Colors. In order to get us through the 26 weeks, I decided to combine shapes and colors and alternate them. This week we learned about circles. I chose that because I knew that JD was already familiar with them. Thankfully, thanks to a puzzle and some other toys that we have, he already knows a few of his shapes. I figured it would be easy to get some of the ones that he knows out the way early so that he will be a little older when we get to the harder ones. I had another coloring sheet for JD to start with. I helped him trace the circle on the paper and then we used the roll of painters tape to draw several more circles on his paper. I gave him a paper plate and several circle stickers to put on the plate. I spent some time pointing out some things that we could see that were circles and that was that. It took us a little longer to do all that than number day, but that’s because JD loves working with stickers. I don’t mind letting him put them on paper. I had some stickers that I’ve accumulated over the years, plus a few packs that I have picked up for cheap along the way. This really does occupy him for a while and helps his fine motor skills.
Fun Day. I kind of liked the idea of having a topic for the week. Like I said, I didn’t want to take it as far as the lady I mentioned did, but I did want to do incorporate some sort of topical fun day that we could do different things with. I made a list of some things that JD is interested in (or I thought might interest him) and that I knew we could do fun things with or go fun places to see. I decided to start this week with cars. JD loves cars. He loves to see them, hear them, play with them, “drive” them, etc. I found a craft using a paper plate and decided we would do that. We painted the car and added on our circle wheels. See how I’m combining what we’ve learned.
I’m also hoping to add in a Spiritual Day where we learn about Bible stories and verses. I am ordering a program and will see about using it. If it doesn’t work with what we are doing, I will probably do some crafts and stuff on my own.
I have been trying to point out everything that we have talked about whenever I come across it. So far, JD has done pretty well at remembering what all we talked about. We will see how the next few weeks go when we add to all that. I’ll keep you updated.
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