Homeschooling Mommy's

We got printouts and started on those. There are lots of places with free preschool print outs. My kids like to color so we really love those things. We just did 15 minutes and I let my daughter decide which subject we did that day (numbers or letters? or animals or colors?).

Hi S.,
I'm so excited for you! Please don't stress about this. We are so brainwashed by the institutional style of education. It is not the most effective way of learning, although it is probably the easiest way of teaching the masses. My youngest is 4. We have started going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We have only done this because she is very ready. We also let her play on starfall.com, which teaches letter recognition, etc. We are very casual with our littles. They will have enough schooling in the years to come, and we don't stress about it. In K and 1st grade, we focus on getting reading down well, handwriting, and math, and grammar if they are strong readers. These are the foundations that everything else will build upon. In 2nd grade, we introduce History (we work through the years in a sequential manner through history from Creation to the present day--we go through it a couple times, first memorizing dates and facts, then reading original source documents from the various time periods in the later years), Latin (if they are ready) We don't do formal science until 7th grade, but we do fun stuff, like nature walks, etc. Feel free to send me a private message if you want to talk more about it. Every person will have a different story to tell, so you will have to decide what works best for your family. And, don't be afraid to change horses mid-stream if needed. Don't stick with something that you hate. We started with one curriculum, but we all hated it. The next year we switched to something else, and have used it for 12 years now and love it. But, someone else might hate it. That's okay. It's just a tool. Blessings on your grand adventure!

I think the absolute best reading program out there is called 'Spell to Write and Read' (SWR) by Wanda Sanseri. I started by just giving the child some of the cards every day. Start with consonants that only have one sound.

Why do I use SWR as opposed to other reading cards? Other reading cards have an A on the front, maybe with a picture of an apple. On the back it says the sound is "short sound a, long sound A." But A actually has THREE sounds, the third sound is AHH. SWR teached them all the sounds at the same time. It them will teach them all the rules so they know when to apply what sound. It also doesnt confuse them with a picture. Some kids would look at the card and want to say Apple. So , SWR only has the image of the A on it. SWR's program can be researched online, but i think it is the best reading program out there, besides the Barton program, and that program costs 7 times more. My sister is a dyslexia specialist and uses the Barton program. I compared SWR to Barton and they both accomplish the same teaching methods and rules, just with different verbiage.

Keep your school fun and short. One the child gets bored or cries, its time to stop. Attention spans are short at that age. Science is great for young learners. Go outside and hunt for bugs. Look them up online, find out what to feed them and put them in a vented jar. Start a bug journal and have the child draw the bug in it, or take a photo and paste it in. As the child grows they will be able to label them the entries and write in more info. I like to put bug jurnals into folders that more pages can be added. And then have the child design the front cover. Leaf collections, shell collections, these are all great fun. For math, have the child count objects with you as you go about your day. Count your silverware as you place it on the table. I taught my kids how to use tally marks by counting and sorting halloween candy. Then as they got older they made a histogram with that data.

We've been homeschooling for several years. A general rule is when learning is fun then they WANT to learn and they RETAIN the information. At age 4, you'll want to make things into games. Keep it very short, I'd do no more than 10 minutes spread out through the day. In the morning maybe do a fun coloring worksheet. Then after lunch do some other activity. You can make it structured (as to what time of day) but keep it informal and keep it fun! If you can sing songs, that is a great way to learn!

Two fun activities are sandboxes and play doh. Fill a shallow wooden box with enough sand to cover the bottom and give your child a stick. They can draw shapes and letters in the sand. To erase the letter, shake the box. Do lots of things with Play Doh! They can form letters with Play Doh. If you read a story, they can re-create a scene or character with Play Doh. It's a great way to see if the child really understood, can they re-create it? You'll be surprised at what they can do!

Don't forget that learning happens ALL DAY. You can turn everything into a lesson! Learning doesn't have to be formal. Just today I took my 9-year old shopping for homeschool. She had a budget and she found gifts within the budget (math). I had her sounding out the brand names of products (phonics). We looked at jewelry and talked about the different stones and why diamonds are valuable (science & marketing). At the grocery store we talked about where certain food is grown. So you see, learning happens all day, everywhere. You can find inspiration everywhere!

Good luck on your journey! And remember to enjoy the ride!

My girls were home schooled for a year by my mom (who had been a teacher for 25+ years). It was great! She developed a weekly schedule that covered the various subjects she needed to cover with each child. (You can find the subjects your child should be studying/things they should know by grade level on your state's dept of education website, most likely. That's where we got started.) In general, my mom kept the class periods relatively short since my girls were in Pre-K and 2nd grade at the time and their attention spans weren't that long. Every morning she started with a "math meeting board" where they would have some challenging tasks related to math, and this was maybe 5 minutes long, just to get them going first thing in the morning. Then they'd move on to that day's math lesson, then science, reading, etc. She had scheduled break times for them, lunch, etc. The beauty of home schooling is that you can set aside time for things like the library story hour at your county library, or you can have really great field trips whenever you like (my girls went many places, including a bakery, the airport, the San Francisco flower and garden show, the fire station, all kinds of neat places!).

My mom felt it best to have a set routine, as in her experience kids do better when they know what is coming next during the day - but obviously if you need to, you can deviate from the routine if your child seems to want to spend more time exploring a certain concept on any given day.

For what it's worth, if my parents hadn't moved out of state, we would still be home schooling to this day. It was a wonderful experience for us! Best of luck to you!

When my kids were this age I used a free curriculum called Letters of the Week. You can find it at lettersoftheweek.com and it's wonderful. It gave me the structure I needed, gave us variety & they really loved it.

Make it about lots of fun and games. That's the best for this age. If you let him play on the computer, take him to starfall.com. It's a lot of fun, is free, and helps with letter recognition. It goes all the way up into early reading skills too. My kids go there several times a week and they love. It's been a regular for them for several years now.

Oh, and look into Five in a Row. http://fiarhq.com You could also do Before Five in a Row but that one is for ages 2-4. It incorporates classic children's books and everyday readiness. So basically, you have lots of lessons based on one book a week. You read that book every day and you do a different activity and as you proceed in the week it really helps them connect things together. This is a really fun way for learning geography, math, art, etc. and my kids really enjoyed it. And look into lap books! They are so much fun to make! Another site you should check out is currclick.com. It has tons of digital content at very reasonable prices (most of the time) as well as lots of freebies. Don't forget that thrift stores are great places to find curriculum and check out Ebay as well.

Just remember. At this age don't overschedule and have fun! Oh, and look into joining a homeschool group in your area. Not only will it give you the support that you need (trust me, you'll need it) and veteran momma's to learn from but it will give you a base of children of all ages for your son to learn and grow with. They'll also be able to point you in the direction of the programs you might like to do with your son. For instance, my homeschool group does a dance class, a gymnastics group, field trips to science centers & museums, etc. It can be fun on your own, but sometimes if you're with a group, it helps reduce the cost. For instance, there's a bear enclosure near hear. It was free to go and watch the bears but if we wanted to tour the enclosure, ask questions, etc., it cost $125. But we got enough families together that were interested in going so it was less than $5 a person. Spending an afternoon in a bear enclosure and being only feet away from those beautiful creatures and even meeting the cubs for only $20 (for my family)? Heck Yeah!

Big hugs and congratulations on your big decision. It will be hard at times but it is so worth it.

I don't have a routine, but some moms "need" it and some kids thrive on it.

What I found works well for us (my kids are 6 & 4), is to turn everyday activities into learning activities; to make it fun, engaging, and interesting; and to teach them what they're interested in. To teach them their letters, I would read them all sorts of "alphabet" books, like "Dr. Seuss's ABC's", and play with the refrigerator magnets, and stuff like that. For numbers and math, we might count the towels as we fold them, or make a recipe of something and count the cups of flour or teaspoons of sugar as we add them to the mixture.

I do have some workbooks, and the kids enjoy doing them; but we still don't "do school" every day, unless the kids want to. I got a kindergarten workbook last year (my kids were 5 and almost-4), and they completed it in one week. They were so taken with this workbook that they did a third of it (something like 100 pages) the first day, until finally *I* demanded a break because my brain was tired. ;-)

Different kids learn different things at different times. My 4-y/o is better that my 6-y/o in a lot of things, just because he seems to have the penchant for that thing, or has a brain that allows him to process this thing better; but of course my 6-y/o is better than my 4-y/o in a lot of other things. My sister's kids are 2 years apart in age, and her younger child (about the age of 4-5) was reading, and reading well, even though her older child (about 6-7) was struggling with reading. Then, almost like a light-switch flipped on, in a very short time, the older child just "got it," and went from barely reading, and disliking to read, to being a voracious reader when she was 8 or nearly 8.

Well, I have a 'bell'.
I ring it.
That is 'school' and work time.
For a 4 year old, per them being a boy and attention span... don't expect hours of concentrated 'learning' time.
Learning... is also what you do the rest of the day. No it just being sit down things.

I have workbooks.
Games, puzzles etc.
Also while I cook, I teach my son concepts. For example.
Practice writing.
Knowing his address, phone number etc.
How to do basic hygiene... ie: toileting and pulling up or down his clothes, if he cannot yet do that on his own.
Work on fine-motor skills.... ie: tracing, writing, coloring
Alphabets and the 'sounds' of the letters
Numbers
Number sequencing.... I like to use "dot-to-dot" type of books for number learning.
Addition/subtraction with fingers, initially.
"Reading"... via sight words and phonics.

This website, has great homeschooling materials:
http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/default.aspx

This is also a good website:
http://www.k12.com/

Also, www.starfall.com

I do various "subjects" per sit down.

Go according to your child... make it fun. Or they will hate it.
Your son is 4... just like mine.

all the best,
Susan