From Homeschool to Public School to Tot School

Okay, so I was homeschooling Little Man. But I kind of stopped, for a couple reasons really.

1. I was being lazy. Yes, I'll admit it. It was getting VERY difficult to keep Princess entertained while Little Man was doing his learning. Therefore, I just kind of stopped.
2. He was getting WAY too far ahead of his cohort. He only JUST turned 5 the end of January, yet the kid can read at around a 2nd grade level and do math at at least a 1st grade level! I didn't want him to get TOO far ahead intellectually when socially he still needs to be with kids his own age.

So we've kind of been doing just family things: playing, park time, etc with our time together. It really has been nice. But with that being said, I knew I needed to enroll him in kindergarten. So I printed off the application for our local public school and just kind of sat on it. I then filled out the lottery applications for the two charter schools in our area.

I prayed and prayed for one of them to pick him. I just kept sitting on the public school application because I wanted to wait. The charter school I REALLY wanted him in had a late lottery. I had left my phone at home that night when I went to Bible Study. When I came home, I noticed there was a missed call on our phone, but no message. It was from the charter school. Then I noticed that there was a message on my cell phone. It was from the principal. Little Man had got in! I really felt this was the best placement for him as he is above grade level in some aspects of schooling, but not in others. So now we are in countdown mode till school starts in August!

We did KinderGo at the library, which was a great thing. I just wish there were more kids there. There were only about 5 kids and Little Man was the only boy. I didn't take any photos because I'm a bad blogger mother. But that's okay. He did great! He wasn't so into the story because it wasn't about something he enjoyed, but he's just going to have to get over that at some point. He's not going to like every book and he's going to have to read things he doesn't like.

So now it's summer. I decided to sign him up for the preschool class "Tot Time" through the rec center and I'm glad I did. There are about 20 kids in the class. It's twice a week and he's done it before. We did it last summer and a couple times at the beginning of the "school year" in the fall. So he's getting the following directions, sharing, socialization that he needs before school starts. I'm also hoping to do story time at the library more this summer as well.

As for his learning this summer, we're going to take the next 5 weeks and be doing some Summer Learning from 3 Dinosaurs and Royal Baloo. I'm hoping this will help him get used to homework. I'm also going to start setting his alarm so he gets used to waking up with an alarm clock. We won't actually set it to the time he needs to get up for school yet, but this way he'll have some practice using it between now and then.

What about Princess? Well, I'm probably going to enroll her in the co-op preschool twice a week. They start at 2 years old, so she can go be with kiddos her own age and just figure out how to be with other kids. I'm also going to be starting "Tot School" with her. I haven't been on Pinterest in forever, but being I have to build the base for Princess that Little Man got in his Playschool, I have been digging around on there. I love the idea of "Tot School." It's not really school so much as it is exploratory play. We'll have different themes every week. I'm thinking shapes, colors, and letters to start and then when we get through the colors move on to numbers. Not really sure yet what I'm going to do but it will be based on "Tot Trays." So this fall, be on the look out for "Tot Time" posts! Yes, I am my children's first teacher and they are going to learn without knowing they are learning!