Day 1

Okay, so...homeschooling a toddler - I decided a while back that once Dylan turned 2, we would start our homeschooling journey. I decided I needed to make this commitment more for me than him, because I am not always the best at getting things done on time (whoops). So I began researching curriculum for young children. I came across Letter of the Week (www.letteroftheweek.com). It lays out what you might want to cover in a week, based on a particular letter - even better...it's FREE! So I began to dig in. I spent Saturday evening coming up with lesson plans (again, more for me than for Dylan), & got our books together. I couldn't wait until Monday so we could start!

So Monday morning we started. This week's letter is "A." Honestly, the lessons went better than I thought it would.

We started with some Bible & prayer time. Our Bible topic this week is "Adam & Eve" & our character trait is "attentiveness." We read the Adam & Eve story out of Dylan's First Bible & then had our prayer time. 

For our reading time, since our letter this week is "A," we are doing lots of animal stories. Today we read Over in the Meadow. It is not one of Dylan's favorite books, but I keep trying it because I think it's cute. We also did some extra books - Cuddle & Superdog. I am sure there were others, but I can't remember what right now.

Language arts this week is all about the letter "A." First, I showed Dylan what an "A" looks like, then helped him write one. He then colored all over his whiteboard with the markers, but he jabbers like he is writing letters! :) We also talked about the sound that "A" makes & that apple starts with "A." He seemed to pick up on the apple part quickly, so I am interested to test him this afternoon. I also showed him the sign language "A." Finally, he colored a big A. That was frustrating because he just wanted to play with the crayons instead of actually coloring. I had to take the box away so he would color & stop messing around. 

Math. Math is interesting because you can't really group it into the theme letter of the week very well. This week's options involved either animal crackers or an abacus. We don't own an abacus, but we do have animal crackers, so that is what we used. We counted to 10 & read Nemo's Numbers, but that was really it. Math is hard with a 2 year old, especially since he really only knows 2 & 9.

For art today we read a book called My World of Color. He also colored with crayons & markers. For music we sang Old McDonald (although he wasn't that interested). 

Our final topic of the day is Science. This week we are reading a book about dinosaurs called Apatosaurus. I told Derrick this might have to be his subjects because I don't even know how to pronounce it! I read it to him tonight & even though he wasn't interested in the beginning, he seemed to like it by the time I finished the chapter & even asked for more "dinosaur" later. 

Overall, day one went really well...I see some places I need to tweak & work on, but I think it was a great first day!