Preschool

We made it through preschool! I started out the year fairly gung-ho, really more to get myself into a routine than anything else. We were fairly consistent with "school" until the time when I figured out I might be pregnant. Then I spent the next two months or so mostly on the couch, trying not to feel like I was on some kind of crazy roller coaster. Jack watched a lot of PBS and didn't seem to scarred by the whole thing.

We picked back up in January and really took off in March when we started using the workbox system. I feel like we have a pretty good routine that will hopefully be fairly easy to start up again when we begin kindergarten.

All in all, I think this year was a pretty successful one. Jack has started reading quite a few words and is eager to learn more. We will probably continue with that as much as possible through the summer. He comes up with new things to learn about all the time, which I like--except when he wants to do a full unit on the new topic right now, or at least after lunch at the very latest.

I think the most important thing, though, is that he has plenty of time to play. A friend posted a link to this article about how academic kindergarten has become, and I think it sometimes applies to homeschoolers as well as public and private schools. It's easy to get caught up in pushing your child to do more and more academically, especially when you feel their education is a direct reflection of you and your efforts and skill. This year, though, I have learned that sometimes your child will come up with the most brilliant observation, and sometimes you have to give them five minutes of explicit directions to make them understand they have chocolate on their fingers. And when they're four, your chances are fifty-fifty.