Saturday, June 26, 2010

All Gathered In

Our books and lesson plans have arrived!  We have one more item that I just ordered today, Count with Peter Rabbit.  It should be here Tuesday.  For some reason, it wasn't listed in the Angelicum Academy bookstore.  It's referenced throughout the lesson plans, though, so I figured we'd go ahead and get it.

We had so many deliveries coming this week that Henry now shouts "schoolbooks!" whenever the doorbell rings.  We've both enjoyed flipping through the materials, although I'm probably a wee bit more excited than he is.

We also had to expand our bookshelves to accommodate all of our new books.  One trip to Target got us 2 big bookshelves that look very nice in the hallway.  I was able to fit all of our nicer books on those shelves, including the Great Books set that I picked up a year ago from a library sale for the awesome price of $1 per book.  Our smaller bookshelf is now in the boys' room and holds my husband's "antique" collection of Disney books that his mother saved for him from his childhood.

So, now we wait!  Although I'm really tempted to get started now, I know it will be better to wait until the fall when we're all settled in.  Until then, we'll continue to practice letters, numbers, colors, and shapes and spend more time reading and just having fun!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Prerequisites

Our homeschooling journey actually began in the summer of 2009, shortly before Henry's second birthday.  We knew we wanted to homeschool (actually, I knew and my husband was willing to go along with it, at least through kindergarten), but we weren't sure how we wanted to do it.

After weeks of searching and poring over different curricula, we decided that Angelicum Academy was the program for us.  It was rigorous, challenging, Catholic, and provided a strong foundation for life-long learning.  However, the program's first level was nursery school for three-year-old children and Henry was not quite two.

As Henry was showing an increased interest in learning new skills, we didn't want to wait an entire year before introducing some structure in to his day.  Some further research yielded a two-year-old curriculum from Hands on Homeschooling.

Hands on Homeschooling was a wonderful starter program and we'll continue to use the lesson plans as our wait listees reach two.  From September until May, Henry learned shapes, colors, and letters, did crafts, learned songs, and generally had a lot of fun with "school" each day.  It was also a good introduction to homeschooling for me, giving me an idea of how our days would be structured and how little siblings would need to fit in to our schedule.