Starting PreK

Last night I was chatting with an acquaintance and the subject of school came up. He asked "what will school look like?" for my 4.5 and 3.5 yos. Happily, I had an answer. I told him we would do some beginning handwriting and beginning reading as Lil Princess is very interested in those things. Lil dumpling not so much yet, but I suspect it won't be long. Lots of trips to the library for books books and more books, field trips, the zoo, the park, the museum and gardens and more books, of course.

 We will use Handwriting Without Tears for learning to print. What I love about this program is how it gives you so many tools for developing the small motor skills. Lil Princess struggles with small motor challenges, so we will have fun making letters from play dough, with a chalkboard, and coloring until she is ready. For beginning reading we will use a combination of basic phonics and sight words. Lil Princess is already trying to sound out words so I suspect she will take off quickly. We will read through the story Bible this year, and begin memorizing Bible verses. We will begin exposure to Spanish, with videos books from the library. Of course we continue speech and occupational therapy as needed- for now we have 3 appointments a week.

The most important things we will do this year is establish habits. Habits of obedience, doing you best job, not complaining, curiosity, and kindness will make all the years to come go much more smoothly!