Finding our groove

Every once in a while I have a confident parenting moment where I just know I'm doing the right thing for my kids. We had one of those moments at preschool this week. I think we're finally finding our groove. And I'm loving it.

We made the switch to the Kumon letter-learning method this week, which works on the premise that kids should learn the easy-to-write letters first, and build on those foundations until they're able to handle more complicated letters. Kind of seems like a no-brainer now that we're doing it, but when I first started reading about it, my organized mind did not find it at all appealing. I'm glad I got over my need to hang crafts on the wall alphabetically and decided to focus on what works best for Abby instead. We enjoyed fuss-free, tear-free letter time this week, and Abby was encouraged by her great success in drawing simple straight lines, which she quickly recognized look just like the letter l hanging up on her bulletin board.

We reached a compromise when it comes to writing her name to avoid the frustration of failure that seems to set her back so easily. She draws the parts she feels confident about, and I fill in the rest. This week, that meant she would draw a letter A with a straight line next to it, then hand the crayon to me to draw a circle to complete the lowercase letter b. Then she gets the crayon back to draw another straight line, and I complete the second b. And to wrap it up, because she feels so good about her ability to draw straight lines now, she'll happily take the crayon back and write the letter y all by herself. I'm learning that simple tasks move very slowly with a child who would rather give up than fail at something. I shouldn't complain...she gets it from her mom. Together, we're learning to break tasks down into a series of manageable steps.

Caleb, meanwhile, is working on his proper lefty grip. Or rather, I'm manhandling his little man hands until he grips the crayon properly, and he's tolerating it for about three seconds before reverting back to his chubby fist hold. I may put this goal on the back burner for a while.

But the bulk of our preschool days have been, and will continue to be spent like this. We read a lot of books each week. A lot. We read books from the Sonlight Preschool curriculum. We read books that highlight our letter of the week, including My ABC Bible Verses (featuring great life-application stories that focus on a verse in the Bible and how kids can live it out), our BOB books (pre-readers that allow Abby the opportunity to read some simple words that we practice beforehand), and letter books from the My First Steps to Reading series (stories that highlight repetition of the sound of each letter of the alphabet).

When the weather's nice (and lately it's been perfect) we spend as much time as possible outside enjoying God's creation. There are no chores to be done on preschool days. There are no grocery trips to be completed. I get to enjoy my kids and teach them whatever I've put in my lesson plan for the week, and they get some focused mommy time. And when the occasional doctor's appointment interrupts us, we take preschool with us and make it a learning experience, like the time we brought Abby's baby doll and some books about babies to my prenatal visit, or the time we read about Doctor Maisey and the pediatrician let Abby examine her stuffed puppy at at her 3-year checkup. This week we read a lot of stories about ducks, so on Friday we grabbed a loaf of bread (and some scones that didn't turn out quite right) and took a road trip in search of a duck pond. What we found instead was a field of geese, which seemed to satisfy my little ones just fine.

As part of my ongoing quest to create an avid reader out of my little girl (and my little boys one day), we introduced some sight words this week. We did a daily review of the words at opportune times like mealtime or when we were sitting around playing, and by the week's end Abby was able to identify all four words and can correctly read two of them when we come across them in her books.

I must be doing something right, because on our off days, Abby's gotten in the habit of asking when we can do preschool again, or when we can read some more of her "preschool books." It seems we've found a winner with this home-preschool thing.