This summer, like last, was spent debating whether or not we would enroll Anna-Lee in our local public school. In the end we kept her home, but didn't really do any official homeschooling. We watched a ton of PBS shows, she played on her Fisher Price Computer Cool School, and we practiced capital letter writing and letter/number recognition. But we weren't particularly consistent or structured. This was, in large part, due to me being miserable and pregnant.
So this year we were faced with the same dilemma. Anna-Lee is a smart kid. She has amazing potential. But I was feeling a lot of outward pressure to send her to public school. To give myself a break. To get her the speech therapy she needs. After all, I had both of the kindergarten teachers when I went to school, so wouldn't this be the best year to give public school a try?
I thought Kelton felt this way. Mostly because of his lack of opinion! He's the strong, silent type and it isn't always a good thing. Last night, after going through the motions of getting ready to enroll her, I asked Kelton if he felt as bad about the decision as I was feeling. To my utter surprise, he was!
So we are homeschooling! We have decided to not go with a formal curriculum. We have more of the add-on discs for her computer, and will be doing lots of activities on it with her. We also plan on utilizing our zoo's homeschool classes, going to the children's museum, etc. Our goals for the year are to get her writing upper and lowercase letters (and using them in the correct places), learning phonics and reading, and really work on numbers and counting. This is an area she has demonstrated a weakness. I don't think these goals are particularly lofty or unrealistic, nor are they so attainable as to leave her (or us!) bored and unchallenged.
I'll be posting more about our adventures in homeschooling as the year progresses. Right now I'm just excited a decision has been made and set into motion!
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