Go Tell It On the Mountain

I did it. Or rather, we did it. We completed our first trimester of home preschool. With ten weeks down, and twenty to go according to my lesson plans, I'm declaring Preschool Lite a successful and worthwhile endeavor. We've come a long way since our start two and a half months ago.

Abby has learned to write her first and last name, along with the letters l, t, i, j, f, v, w and r (and some random others I've not kept up with). She's memorized a good deal of scripture at CBS and from our ABC Bible Verse book. She's grasping the concept that letters can be put together to make words, and can successfully read a number of those words herself. She can count to 50, follow a series of directions to complete tasks, and is developing into exactly the precocious three-year-old we thought she would. And she's done it all right before my eyes, which has been a really awesome experience.

Caleb has reaped the benefits of being our tag-along student in some wonderful ways. He's not even two, and I'd never think of putting him in a traditional preschool at his age, so while he participates in most of what we do at the School of Mommy, I'm not really pushing any sort of formal learning on him. But while he colors alongside Abby and does letter crafts with us, he's learned to recognize quite a few letters of the alphabet. While he plays matching games and blocks with us, he's learned to recognize and name a bunch of different colors. While he's stood at the counter and helped with our myriad baking projects, he's learned to wait his turn and follow instructions. And because he has to do everything his sister does, he's picked up plenty of other skills along the way, from identifying shapes and animals to completing puzzles, counting to ten and singing simple songs. I wouldn't have thought to teach him any of this stuff at his age on my own, but through our preschool time each week I'm realizing he's capable of learning and doing far more than I would have imagined at the age of 22 months.

Abby's continuing to grow more and more confident with her letter writing, and is even showing signs of having some patience with herself when she doesn't quite get things right the first time. I've learned that when she can figure out what she's supposed to do and then figure out how to do it, she succeeds far better than when I tell her what to do and try to help her. It takes a little longer to do things her way, but I'm starting to understand how to deal with my little self-motivator and how to give her the right balance of freedom and instruction that she needs. The Kumon method is working out great for her, since the worksheets are pretty self-explanatory in what they want you to accomplish and how to write each letter. She's done enough of them that now I can simply hand her a worksheet and let her do it all by herself. The big girl in her loves bringing me the completed page and asking for the next one when she's ready.
Together, Abby and Caleb are learning to navigate a world where you can't always get what you want when you want it. Being 17 months apart is a great catalyst for this little life lesson. This week I was very proud of the way they handled working on a craft together as we created our Advent calendar. They took turns with the glue, and Abby even helped Caleb by offering some suggestions when he wasn't sure where to put his tree, instead of just taking it from him.
And because it's not really Christmas with a toddler unless there's a weird angel made out of body parts hanging on the tree, we made these little hand and foot heralds after talking about the angels that visited Mary, Joseph and the shepherds to bring news of Jesus' birth.
But the highlight of the week was this shape-making game, which the kids worked with for over an hour. The cards are organized in a series that gets progressively more difficult, and Abby flew through them with ease, finding the pieces she needed to make obscure shapes and putting them together so quickly that I could barely keep up. And Caleb truly wowed me with his spacial recognition and ability to take the pieces I offered and make the correct shape out of them. Starting with a simple circle, he worked his way up to building a truck out of these little blocks. I'm ignoring that ages 3 and up recommendation on the box. My 1-year-old loves these things!
I'd hoped to take a break for the Christmas holidays, but these kids won't let me. Abby's continuing to ask daily when we can do preschool again, and has enlisted Caleb's help by teaching him to ask "School, Mommy?" Looks like the School of Mommy is still in session.