Preschool Update

We sort of wandered off the alphabet path... got lost along the way somewhere.  I think we will just pick it up again at the start of the new school year, but time will tell.  I got frustrated with Benedict's incessant coloring on walls and carpet, so I put the crayons out of child-reach.

Dominic and I finished Teach Your Child to Read, and Dominic is devouring books.  Benedict watched a little, but wasn't so interested.  Now that Dominic is reading, though, I think he is a little jealous and is expressing more interest.  TYCTR will be on the list for Benedict next year.

We bought a few workbooks at Sam's Club that the boys love to work on.  Lots of letter coloring pages, dot-to-dot, and a few harder things for Dominic, which he likes.  One of them came with a CD of learning games for the computer, and they would do that all day long if I'd let them!

Homeschool Preschool

We have officially started preschool with the boys! They are super excited to do school work like their uncle Eric, and it's adorable to watch them get excited about everything we're doing!

What are we using for preschool? A whole bunch of stuff. It seems overwhelming at first glance, but it's really not that complicated.

• I'm working through Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons with Dominic. We'll start with Benedict after Dominic finishes.
• Dominic (and sometimes Benedict) watches his Petty School lessons from Classical Liberal Arts Academy. He's been doing this for a while now and really enjoys it.
• Together we're venturing down the Alphabet Path. The boys have LOVED this!

What is the alphabet path? Each week, we explore a new letter of the alphabet! We have some books that we use every week, and then we also pick out some story books that features something with that week's letter. I found lots of alphabet coloring pages online, so I printed a few for each letter. We also cook something each week that features our letter of the week (eg- A is for Apple Pie!)

Books we use every week
Following Elizabeth Foss' Alphabet Path guides, we use the story on the Serendipity page, which incorporates A Flower Fairy Alphabet and An Alphabet of Catholic Saints. We also use
A is for Altar, B is for Bible and Museum ABC (an art book) recommended from her site.

I found some ABC books around the house, so we use those too. We're only reading one page from these books each week, so it only takes a few minutes.

• Dr. Seuss's ABC
• Richard Scarry's Find your ABC's (the A page has letter a's in red, B has b's, etc.)
• Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert (each letter has fruits and vegetables beginning with that letter, and we try to eat something from that list that week)
• The Butterfly Alphabet Book by Brian Cassie (has beautiful pictures of butterflies)
• Book of Saints for Catholic Children by Fr. Daniel Lord (these are in alphabetical order, so we'll read some for each week's letter)
• I had the My First Steps to Reading books from my own childhood, and we read My "a" Book, or My "b" Book, etc. corresponding to the week. In these adorable books, Little A (or B or C...) fills his box with all sorts of things beginning with his letter. The boys like knowing that these were mama's books!