A sense of pride

It's that time again. School is starting back up and most of my friend's kids will be starting preschool. Part of me feels left out of the excitement and emotional wreckage that comes with first days of school.

BUT then I wake up in the morning, drink my coffee and sit on the computer while the kiddos watch a couple of their favorite tv shows. 10:00 am hits the clock and Kadi already knows. . . It's time for school! We go and sit at the kitchen table and start our daily lesson plan, planned out a week to a month ahead of time. She chooses which subject she would like to start with for the day. Reading/Writing, Math, Science, her review workbooks or Art, History, Social Studies, which we don't do everyday. We get thru some of the lessons for the day, sit and have a snack, maybe play a game all the while she is still learning and taking it all in.

She doesn't feel overwhelmed, nor do I. It's fun for us both. . . well for the most part. We both have days we'd just plain rather do something else. . . The joy of that is, that on those days, which don't come very often, we do simply that. . . something else. We go play outside, watch a movie, play up stairs in the bedrooms, and come back to it later. . . sometimes even the next day.

We do a lot of one-to-one time on assignments but her workbooks are for her independence so she can learn to work alone too.

Last week while filling in some last minute stuff on this weeks lesson plan, I decided to change a couple of her math assignments to her Scholastic Brain Play game on the computer. Its a game she has never played so I'm not sure how it will go, but I'm sure she'll enjoy it. It'll change things up. hehe It's fun to have the option to do that. As well as change her science themes month to month. We take her lead on what she is interested in learning. One month we did plants, another we did bugs, next month will be Dinosaurs, with the grand finale being the Dinosaur exhibition at the Bishop Museum.

To be sure she is learning everything she should be learning, I have been doing some research on state standards as for what preschoolers, kindergarteners, 1st graders, etc should know by the end of the school year. We want to make sure that we don't miss something small and her not know it when she needs to. In my research I learned something very cool. We've always known Kadi was a sponge and soaks everything up but it wasn't until I did my research and compared what she has been taught by me with what schools are teaching that we realized JUST how much she is actually learning.

According to the state standards of Virginia, Arizona, California, and Illinois, she is actually almost at a FIRST GRADE level. She is lacking the knowledge of very few things on the kindergarten standards.

I am still doing more research, on more states. I used the states listed above, so far, because they are broken down very nicely. hehe

While I know that SOMEday she will go to school. . . and I know that on that day I will find myself an emotional wreck, I also know that, today, I am glad to be the one to teach her.

So every morning when I hear about everyone else taking their children to preschool, instead of feeling left out, I am sitting back snuggling with my daughter on the couch reading, writing and doing what she does best. . . learning. . . and I know I can be proud of that.