Back in the Swing of Things

We've been back on the homeschooling pretty loosely for about two weeks now.  It's come with it's challenges, mostly because homeschooling a three-year-old is a challenge in itself, but for the most part, things have been pretty smooth.  I have to say, I'm surprised at how well my daughter can play dumb.  She's really a lot smarter than she lets on.  I know this kindergarten work is much too easy for her, yet still she persists in telling me it's a challenge.  She just doesn't like reading and phonics.

Yesterday was our math day.  We tend to spend an unbalanced amount of time in math with my daughter because it's her favorite subject.  I'm sure science will be right there with it.  There was an introduction to measuring in her work yesterday and she thought that was fun.  I can see her being my little scientist.  Then again, I'm not surprised that math and science are favorites for her.  I love math and science too!

I think it's only logical for kids to fall in love with math and science first.  Science is sort of the first lesson any child learns.  It's how they explore the world around them and get an understanding of it.  Even getting an understanding of language can be seen as science.  It's all about logic.  Since math allows further understanding of science, it only makes sense that it would follow closely.  After all, with science, we can know that there are some goldfish crackers on the table.  We can figure this out by using scientific observation skills, looks like a goldfish cracker, smells like one, tastes like one, must be one.  We can figure this out by comparing them to something we know are goldfish crackers.  Well, all we know is we've got "a lot" of them.  With math, we can count them, measure them, divide them up evenly among friends, etc.

It seems a lot of kids have delays in reading, writing, and phonics.  I suppose in some regards, it's all just another science.  You learn to break down the sounds, add those sounds together to make words, then put those into equations to make sentences.  However, when you already know perfectly well how to communicate through spoken language, why do you need to know how to read?  If you do need to read and there's someone around to do it for you, then where's the incentive to learn to do it for yourself?  Besides, reading and phonics are so much harder than math and science.  Let's face it, the English language is hard!

So, here we are, back in the saddle on the whole schooling thing.  Yesterday we flew through about thirty pages in the Spectrum Math Grade K book.  My daughter has been loving that one.  Of course, it's probably been too easy, which is why she loves it.  Today she's working on the Spectrum Phonics Grade K book.  I have to say, I really like this series.  I think I'm going to keep using Spectrum.  They may not be any formal homeschooling curriculum, but they are excellent learning tools for math, phonics, reading, and writing thus far.  Getting back into things, I didn't know where to start, but now I feel like I've got some guidance towards a more formal homeschooling system.  I just hope that this good start gives me a small base to expand on my other homeschooling activities.  At least it's an introduction of math and reading skills for that level and I can work from there.

This year isn't exactly off to a roaring start for my daughter.  It would have been much better had we jumped straight into grade two like we were originally supposed to, but at least now she's finding school fun and we're actually flying through the review material.  If we keep flying through at this rate, we'll be on grade two material before Christmas!