Curriculum Choices 2014-2015

Since Little Man is officially in "preschool" now, I figured I'd better figure out what we are doing. Since we are still "unofficially" homeschooling, as there are no regulations on preschool (yet), I figured I'd better assess Little Man FIRST and see what he can do. I found a GREAT kindergarten assessment (link will be at the bottom). We've pretty much gone through it and there are a few things that we haven't touched on in the Language Arts part and he can pretty much do just about ALL of the math. So technically, "preschool" is more like "fill in the kindergarten gaps"! (Gotta love an intellectually gifted child!)

So the plan this year is to do "playschool" about 3 to 4 times a week. We will ALWAYS have at least one day off, if not two or on occasion three. I don't want to overwhelm him, as I have no clue as to what is going to happen when he finally enters school in the fall of 2015. I don't know if the school will keep him in kindergarten or contemplate moving him up. We will just have to wait and see.

So what are we doing this year? Well, I plan to do "Interactive Notebooks" with him instead of a bunch of worksheets for everything. Not to mention, all the "Pre-K/K" packs are too easy for him. We have 4 Notebooks: Math, Spelling, Science, and Writing.

Math: I'm going to be using some of Easy Peasy's Math 1, but otherwise, I'm just going to fill in gaps. We'll do addition and subtraction, skip counting, even and odd, time, money, shapes, graphing. I'm going to be using Pinterest a lot to find pages for us to do.

Spelling: We are using K12 Reader's first grade spelling words. We more than likely won't get through all the lists. The intent isn't so much that Little Man learns to spell them, as they are primarily word family based, but that he works on his handwriting.

Science: We've been doing science for a while now, but I decided since we're not really focusing on a specific "grade" so-to-speak, that we would come back and do some science. So this allows us to finish some things we didn't get to last year and also allows me to do some fun things with him. I'll be looking primarily at kindergarten based "units" of science.

Handwriting: I managed to snag a free handwriting download from The Moffatt Girls. So we are using that for letters. And I am going back to the way the letters are formed and not going in alphabetical order. So essentially, they start easy and get more difficult for him. Little Man also still has reversals with his numbers, so we are using a few different sites for those pages. We'll do one number a week and then come back if he still has problems after 9 weeks.

Writing: We started a journal not too long ago. But we're going to be focusing on some prompt based writing, some interactive (shared pen) writing, and some free writing. I'm trying to get him to write FIRST then draw, but sometimes we may go the other way. We are going to be working on sentences.

Reading: We're not really going to have a reading curriculum, as he can already read at about a 2nd grade level. Instead, we'll read some classic literature. Maybe do some kindergarten literature units. We'll also work on comprehension with K12 Reader's comprehension pages. They tie into the spelling of the week, so that will work well together.We will also be hopefully attending the library's story time every Friday.

Bible: We'll be using Easy Peasy's Old Testament curriculum. We're only going to be doing it maybe twice a week and will be reading the stories out of the NIrV. It starts with New Testament, but we will get to Old Testament once we get through the Gospel of Matthew.

Review: Right now, we are still working through the K-1 Summer Bridge book. We are into "month three." We will do one side of a page each day or two, it just depends. This is just to keep Little Man fresh on things that we may not cover every day.

Socialization: This is our MAIN focus. One of the reasons I haven't put Little Man into an official preschool is because of his intellectual/verbal gifts. I KNOW he would be bored with the curriculum of learning shapes and colors and letter ID and sounds. The biggest thing he needs is socialization. So, instead, I have opted to put him into "Tot Time" through the recreation department in town every couple of months. It is for 3-5 year olds. There's some structure similar to preschool. It's twice a week for 2.5 hours. So essentially the same amount of time a kid would be in preschool. It's about half the cost of a traditional preschool, as well. Little Man will also be trying "Tot-nastics." I figured this might be a good way for him to do all that "climbing/falling" off the couch he's been doing lately in a safe environment. There was a 3 week program, so I signed him up for that one, in case he hates it. He's also got Rainbows on Wednesday nights, plus every other week, he'll be doing Sunday School at church. And when he's not in "Tot Time," I've got a playgroup that he'll be attending. (It just happens to be the same time as "Tot Time," so when Little Man is there, it will just be Princess and I.)

So that is what we are planning to do this year. I was going to post this earlier, but I just now got around to doing it! I'll be posting about our first week in the next day or so.

Specific Links:
Mrs Ricca's Kindergarten (blog)
Kindergarten Assessment

Everyday Snapshots
Learn to Write Numbers (She's up to 7)

Confessions of a Homeschooler
Kindergarten Printables (We're using the 1-20 Writing Practice vol. 2)

The Moffatt Girls
A-Z Handwriting Pages (You have to like their Facebook Page to get to it)

The Measured Mom
Numbers of All Sizes (They're at the bottom underneath all the letters)
Teaching Journal Writing in Preschool (This is how we started our "Writing" Notebook.)

Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits (blog)
Journal and Folder Labels (I got the cute labels for our journals from this teacher's TPT store for free!)

Developmental Clinic from February!

Well, we had our big follow up at the hospital's developmental clinic back in February! I made our developmental therapist, J, take us. I figured it was important that we all be on the same page with her development and doing the same things.

So at the clinic, things were about the same as her 9m (really her 10m) appointment:

Weight: 16lbs 2.5oz
Length: 25.5in

I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty basic. Met with one of the PTs. They assessed Princess. She did amazing! Of course they were looking at her like a 7m old, not a 10m old. But that's fine.

Met with the doc. She checked her out. Things were fine. I knew they would be. Got the weight and length above. Then, as we were waiting for the social worker, they came in and delivered her PT assessment. She assessed at 7m for gross motor/fine motor and communicative/expressive language. So that's what they expect. But she assessed at 10m for her cognitive abilities! J said that was why they didn't look at adjusted age for the county early intervention. Sometimes this happens and then you have a weird gap. So instead, they look at actual age and work on getting them "caught up."

Social worker suggested we apply for SSI. I don't know if we'll get it, or even if I'll apply. Maybe. Otherwise, we go back in November, so I should be hearing from them soon. So, if my math is correct, they wanted to see her when she was at least 6m adjusted (she was 7m adjusted) and November would be at least 15m adjusted (I think it'll be 16m adjusted or so). So I think they'll be looking for her to be walking. I think I have her adjusted age right. That's why I put the ticker! The ticker will disappear probably either at 2 or 3 years old. I don't adjust her age. I just let her be!

God Takes Care of the Faithful

"For the LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones." -- Psalm 37:28 

So by Wednesday of last week, I was ready to just crawl back into bed. It had started the previous Friday. You can read about it here. But by Thursday, God was blessing our little household.

After the nightmare that was the insurance and the nephrologist's office, I decided I had better call the formula provider just to make sure things were going to be okay. Plus we hadn't gotten our formula yet, so I was a little concerned. Yes, the account was flagged because of the new insurance. But the lady on the phone was SO AWESOME. She said that I would be getting a shipment in the next day or two. It would either be the full shipment or two to three cans to keep us in formula until it cleared. Friday, I had the FULL SHIPMENT of formula! Praise God!

Also on Thursday, my food stamps and cash aid FINALLY came through! I was going to call that day, but opted not to. Instead, I checked the website, and lo and behold there was money on my card! The entire food stamp benefit didn't hit until the next day, but I figured they back-dated everything to the first of November so I got a week's worth of food stamps and then on my actual award day got my full month's award. And the cash aid was back-dated two months! It felt SO GOOD to go to the store and buy Princess diapers without having to rely on my parents! I did have to find an ATM to withdraw money from the card to put into my account, but that wasn't too difficult.

There was one thing on Thursday that I was a little on edge about.

About three weeks ago, a lady came out from our local regional center to assess Princess for services. I heard back from her on Thursday. She had presented Princess's case to the evaluation team and they agreed that Princess would qualify for gross motor and communicative services. It took me by surprise. It took me a couple hours before I posted it to my Facebook. And then I couldn't really grasp why people were saying it was a good thing. I guess it was because my brain went to "Oh God, yet another thing on my plate to schedule around." And then my brain went to "What did I do that caused Princess to need services? Can I really take care of a child this special?" But these feelings didn't last long. I realized that this was a good thing. This was why we had been referred to the regional center in the first place. After having spent two and a half (almost three, if you count the additional admits) months in the hospital AND being born premature, she was at risk for going to have developmental delays. We are already set up with the hospital's high risk clinic in February for that very reason. So this is a good thing. She's going to get the help she needs now and hopefully, down the line, we won't need more help.

Let me explain the differences between what we are doing now and the hospital clinic. What we are doing through the regional center is free of charge. It's done through the county board of education's early intervention program. (School districts would like it if you took advantage of early intervention so that your kid won't need services, or as intense of services, when they got to school. Granted, not everyone's issues will be resolved with ONLY early intervention, but starting early is the best thing!) What we are going to do with the hospital clinic in February is to find out if she is going to need additional therapy that would be covered by the insurance. So, this means we will be on an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP). It's like an IEP in school, except it's for kids under 3. I already heard from our developmental specialist, J. He's going to come out next week to meet Princess and myself. I also received the observations from our intake coordinator. I can see why J is going to come out. whereas I agree with most of what was said in on the assessment, it was almost a month ago now. Things change SO FAST with babies. They may not be doing one thing one day and the next, like magic, they get it! For example, when I initially spoke with our intake coordinator on the phone to set up the home visit, I had told her that Princess wasn't rolling over at all. Later THAT SAME DAY, Princess decided to roll over from her tummy to her back. So thankfully, J is going to get to see for himself what Princess can and cannot do. The following week, we'll sit down with our service coordinator, M, and write the IFSP. It'll be valid for a maximum of 6 months, so essentially till Princess's first birthday. Of course, anyone on the team has the right to reconvene the IFSP team and revise it at any time.

So, even though the week started off as a nightmare, it ended with lots of blessings. God has said He will take care of us.

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done."  -- Philippians 4:6

 All the Glory goes to God. He is the one that will take care of what we need. I don't need to worry about things. And when things get to hectic, I know that it is just God reminding me that things aren't always going to be easy, but He is always there.

Preschool Assessment and the Start of the School Year

I began homeschooling Little Man back in June. I started almost immediately after I pulled him out of his daycare. Things were fine while Princess was still in the hospital. Once she came home, things got a little crazy. With all her appointments and a couple of hospitalizations, schooling became an infrequent event. I began to feel really bad about it. So I prayed about it. I started looking at other homeschooling blogs. Even the preschool ones start their "school year" around this time. I looked at our schedule. Princess has a trip to Stanford coming up in a week. It's going to throw our schooling off again. So after much thought and prayer, I decided to start our school year tomorrow. I have lots of new things I want to do with Little Man and I have been trying to figure out when to introduce them. Well starting our school year with a specific date will be great!

Now, why tomorrow? Well, the school district we are in starts school tomorrow. So I figured that would be a good way to start. And on top of that, with Princess's trip to Stanford next week, we'll cover one letter over the next 5 school days and then have the long 4 day weekend and be able to start the next letter the following Monday.

The first thing I wanted to introduce comes from 1+1+1=1. This is the link to their first calendar. One of the things they did was Make the Date with Coins! Little Man LOVES change, so I thought this would be a good thing for him. I started by seeing if he could sort change by value. He could, so I knew we could expand on this.

Then I saw this post by Milk N' Honey Learn and Grow. She was doing a Daily Learning Notebook with her kiddo. There are a ton of links on there of the things she's putting in her notebook. I found a few that I decided to try with Little Man.

The first was the basic Notebook. It's found at Confessions of a Homeschooler. It's the updated 2013-2014 Notebook. I'm only using some things from it. We're going to use the daily pages and the calendar pages. After I assessed Little Man, I decided to add in the name writing pages and the coloring to 100 page.

The other thing I found was a preschool assessment from Me and Marie. I LOVED this. I had to find a few things like a cutting assessment (from Kids Learning Station) and numbers (from Worksheet Fun). I copied off a sequencing events sheet from one of our books we had. In giving Little Man the assessment, I learned a few things for next time.

1. I'm not happy with the numbers worksheet I found. It had the numbers 1-15 in order. I'm going to try and find one where the numbers are out of order (or make one) to actually see if Little Man recognizes the numbers. (I'm pretty sure he does.)

2. I'm going to print a sequencing sheet of something he isn't familiar with. I copied the first one out of our book, which dealt with planting a seed. He's done this a lot both physically and in other sequencing sheets.

So what things do we need to work on?

1. Writing/Letter/Number Formation -- This has always been my focus with him. He's just starting to get the fine motor skills down to be able to do this better. So I suspect this will come soon, I hope.
2. Months of the Year -- Though I know he learned them at his last preschool, we need to continue on them. I guess I need to find a poster of them to post in our calendar area.
3. Rhyming -- We have just started on this, so I'm sure the more we work on this the better he will become.

I think for me, the scariest thing is all the things he already knows. I'm going to have to start introducing kindergarten ideas here soon. I know for me, I also need to get some preschool science and math ideas going as well. Looks like I have a long night ahead of me tonight to prepare for tomorrow!