Remembrance Day - In Flanders Fields

Katerina's homeschooling is keeping me busy. She's progressing very well, and is already about halfway through the Grade 1 curriculum. She loves the math and science, but isn't too fond of English.

Here's a video of Katerina reading the Remembrance Day poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae:

School Registration Complete

In BC, homeschooled children need to be registered with an accredited school, and this must be completed by September 30. We heard back from her local public school this morning, and got everything finished by about 1:00. The school secretary has been working there for 10 years, yet Katerina is the very first homeschooled child she has ever registered for kindergarten.

Katerina started her "official" homeschooling on September 3. I prepare the lesson plans a day ahead, giving her a variety of subjects to cover each day. Morning is our P.E. time (physical education), then on to the reading and writing practice. Afternoons are arithmetic and science. She covers about 1 hour of academic work each day, then arts & crafts and other play pretty much fills up the rest of her time. So far Katerina says about school: "I don't like the writing part, but I LOVE the science experiments."

6 Months to Go

Katerina is 4 1/2 years old now, so the official start of her homeschooling is less than 9 months away.

Academically, we're very glad of our decision to home school. Katerina can already count to 100, count by 2's and by 3's, and do basic addition and subtraction up to the number 12. We found out how well her reading was coming along when I was looking through the television on-screen schedule one day, and she suddenly said "Let's watch 'Word World'!" - Sure enough, she had correctly read the TV listing at that time, and then she suddenly seemed to be able to read the title of every other show as well. I wonder how long she was able to read those titles before she let on that she could... Now Katerina uses the TV by herself and programs her own shows to watch. Books are another thing she loves - She's as much of a bookworm as I ever was.

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry

Today I was searching for some good articulation and enunciation exercises for myself and Katerina to work on, and found a few of my old favorites. (Most of the best ones seem to be just common tongue-twisters.) We had lots of laughs stumbling over the words and rhymes together.

Since she first learned her colors, Katerina has always said "lellow" (with an "L") instead of "yellow". It sounded so cute that we were in no hurry to correct her.

Katerina tried the one: "Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry." She did it twice - That's it. Now she calls the color "yellow" every time.