I'm not sure how I've been doing this a month so far and still have yet to tell anyone aside from a few friends and my dad. My dad is all about it. In fact, he ranted for quite a while about how preschool is just an excuse for parents to get rid of their kids, any parent can teach a 4 year old what they need to succeed if they tried, they can get socialized everywhere, not just in a classroom, how parents are suckered into paying expensive preschool costs for fear of messing up their children, etc. I know it's mostly just his tendency to hate the 'establishment' and see corruption in everything, but it certainly made me feel happier hearing someone support us.

I know that there have been a bunch of studies that show the benefits of sending your children to preschool, and that's exactly what made the choice so difficult. Much like breastfeeding, the advocates make sure that you feel like an evil, ogre-parent bent on setting your children up for failure in life should you choose another path than what they are explaining. Formula-feed your child, and you are poisoning them (and that's not an exaggeration, I've had someone on a message board tell me I was poisoning Kayla by giving her formula). Don't send your child to preschool and watch them falter and fail in all things academic and social.

When I discuss this with the families, eventually, I will not bring up the other studies that I've read that show that while preschool's short-term effects are well-documented and are the basis for all pro-preschool outcry,the long-term effects are non-existent and that the vast majority of children who showed some advantage over others because of their attendance at a normal preschool even-out with their peers in a few years and go on to score the same in all aspects of their schooling from then on. That'd just cause a fight. But it will be a nice, secret little knowledge that I keep within me and whenever I doubt myself or our decision, it will be my confidence and boost to keep on going.

Oye.

Second Week

Well, our second week of 'preschool' is in full-swing. Since it's Wednesday, we've already changed the theme, colored in the square to the color of the week, and changed the letter of the week to "b". The more that I do this, the more I realize that she's already very comfortable with most of what I'm teaching to her. I'm using these tools as a reinforcement method more than anything else.

This week's information (courtesy of letteroftheweek.com and slightly changed for our needs is:

Theme- Jungle
Vocabulary- vines
Color- red (instead of the their suggested green)
Letter- B
Number-2

I know that green makes more sense in correlation with the theme of 'jungle', but it's Valentine's Day next week and we'll be doing a ton of appropriate projects for the holiday, too. I figured that it would be just as productive to work with red as it is green. And besides, she knows green so much better than red already. For some reason, red and yellow are the hardest ones for her to grasp and she often confuses them. Green will be much more appropriate for next month when we're making St. Patty's day things anyway.

So far for this week we've drawn and colored several pictures of Jungles and jungle animals. I am in the process of helping her make a diaramma of a jungle- I just need to get some pipe cleaners to really get going with it. I found a bunch of little cut and paste projects to make jungle animals and puppets. I have a big board book called "Jungle Animals" that we've been reading. I will, at some point this week, put on Jungle Book for the first time and let her see some jungle creatures in action. Our Disney Journey is slowly beginning with Toy Story and a handful of other movies that she's enjoyed, so maybe Jungle Book will also hit home with her.

I lucked out with the vocabulary word, because one of her favorite shows- Dora- shows her swinging in on- yep! vines! in the opening song. Every time she's seen the show this week I've been repeating- Dora's swinging in on vines! Look! Dora's swinging on a vine!

This Sunday I was thrilled to find an area rug on clearance for Kayla's room- with letters on it! Yay! And so we've played with letters several times already! We jump around on the rug looking for different letters.


So for 15 bucks, I think it's a win!




And here's a few pictures from last week... nothing spectacular, but may as well post while I'm in the mood!

Hello, fine motor skill development:






("How Many apples, Kay?" ".... FIIIIIVE!"



Since it's been freezing, snowing, and I'm not interested in attempting to drive and get back up the drive-of-death, we've been kind of stuck inside a lot. Aside from the normal dancing, running, and shenanigans in general, we've called in the big guns and brought up the best investment we've made so far for Kayla....




The Step2 Up and Down Roller Coaster. Thinking about getting it? Do it. Easy to assemble and disassemble, lightweight but sturdy as heck. Hours and hours and hours of entertainment. We take this up every once in a while from the basement and let her play with it. On those days, she can ride this thing easily 50 times. Here it is in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7qGV9R4gF0
Then, of course, there are the other random things we did through the week:


Her finished poster:


Letter A:




Cut, paste, color cows



Random





There was a lot more done, but it's almost nap time, and I can't keep sitting here all day!

In conclusion... so far this preschool thing is going well. I'm very happy.

Mid-week thoughts

So it's Wednesday of the first week of the 'preschool' thing. I can't really judge so far how useful it's been, but Kayla seems to enjoy what we've done so far. It hasn't been too much, but I also think this is more of a review for her, honestly. She's really good with recognizing shapes, letters, numbers, and a lot of animals already so those things aren't too much of a challenge. She still is learning the colors but she's much better now with them than a few months ago.

So on Monday, we put a picture of a cow and the word "CALF" on her learning poster. We colored pictures of cows, made a popsicle stick cow puppet (which, incidentally, is already in the garbage because she kept ripping the limbs off!) and I've been repeating the word "CALF" as much as I can think to do. We've read Click Clack Moo Cows that Type and looked at other pictures and books with cows and calves in them. I showed her videos of cows being milked online. She's pretty good with the whole cow thing and if you ask her what a baby cow is called, she says, "yalf!" so we're getting there.

On Tuesday, 'square' day, Kylie wasn't here because of the snow so we did an art project involving pasting small squares on a paper. We colored things with squares and we found things around the house that were square shaped (napkins, dish towels, etc.). She really recognizes the shapes super well, so I didn't feel the need to force much of that on her. We had a lazy day of square-searching and that pretty much sailed us easily through the day until bedtime. Of course we kept talking about cows and finished up one project from the day before... a paper plate cow.

Today is the Letter A day. She really does know how to identify the letter without hesitation, so I am taking another easy day with her. We will color some pictures of A's and pictures of things that begin with the A sound. I'll look for the letter A in her books with her at some point today, and maybe fingerpaint later so she can trace the letter A with her fingers.

So far this week has been fantastic! I'll update with pictures soon.