I have decided to homeschool Jonathon. Before you hoop and hollar too loudly, remember, he's only 4 so this would be Pre-k. Still, it's new turf for me.
How did I ever enter this experiment? Easy. He turned 4, asked when he could go to school and then made me pinkie promise I wouldn't leave him. "Promise you will stay all day with me, mom." Whoa. What am I, Miss. tell-the-truth, suppose to say? So I said the only thing I could. "I'll eat lunch with you and visit whenever you have a class party." He dropped the subject, appearantly pleased with my answer.
That night, visions of kicking and screaming on the first day of school filled my head. And that was just me...never mind Jonathon. So I devised a plan to ease into it. The following day I went to a local store that caters to homeschoolers and teachers and bought some supplies. I made a name plate for his desk, (our coffee table) and made it exciting by buying glue and scissors and other things 4 year olds love to get into. On our first day, he wrote his entire name by copying his name plate and learned shapes, colors, numbers, and letters. I knew we were achieving some level of success when later that week, while in the grocery store, he looked up at the aisle sign and said "Look mom. Number 4. We're in number 4." Talk about pride. He now knows some sight words, can count to 50, knows some of his alphabet, shapes, colors, and a whole lot of other things not-related to school. Like making his mom proud.
We've made our first project called an "I Spy" bottle. We took an empty 2-litre bottle and filled it 2/3 of the way with bird seed. Next we filled it with things around the house: thread spools, a penny, nickel, dime and quarter, buttons, chaulk, an erasure, a paper clip ect. It is addicting to turn the bottle looking for objects. The most challenging items are the coins. Because of their weight, they like to sink instead of becoming easily spotted.
My sister told me yesterday that Jonathon seems more mature and confident in himself, and then she said it may have been attributed to homeschool. What a compliment. What a compliment!!
