school time

Lydda Grace's school time is going well.

The best parts are: she LOVES it, I really like having structured activities planned instead of just aimlessly doing stuff with her, she's making good connections based on what we talk about, and it's really just fun! The worst parts are: some days I'm a slacker and don't plan well enough. So it works out well that we're just doing this for fun!

We do a new letter every two weeks and starting in August I'm going to switch to one week per letter mainly because I don't want it to drag out forever. Lydda Grace already knows almost all her letter sounds so we focus on these types of activities:
- identifying lowercase and capitals
- distinguishing between different letters
- reading books about something that starts with that letter
- focusing on a theme that starts with that letter (i.e. this is R week so our focus is rainbows)
- doing crafts related to the letter (we did a rainbow color by number and made a "Rainbow Fruit Salad")
- we use her easel a lot to draw pictures of everything we can think of that starts with that letter or to practicing "writing" letters (aka.... she draws lots of lines and says, "look Mama a "K")
- and then we have some structured games/activities that we mainly do during school time (i.e. her opposites puzzles, color games, and the tangrams that she's doing in the picture)

I'm sure a lot of people would think this is overkill for a 2.5 year old, but it is so neat to see how excited she gets about learning and I'm a firm believer that kids really thrive with structure. It's nice that this isn't truly school in that we don't HAVE to do anything and if she doesn't seem to like an activity I just don't force it.

Sorry to blab on about this, I'm kind of curious when Wade is this age what I'll do the same and what will be different with him. I am seeing so early on how each child is different in their own sweet ways!