Pre-K 3 in Review

We finished up the our Prek-K 3 material at the end of May.  Overall I would say we had a very successful year, especially factoring in our move to MA.

Curriculum:


1. Letter of the Week: We loved the "Letter of the Week" from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I appreciate all the time and effort she put in to creating all the documents we used.  The curriculum provided many opportunities for review of the skills being learned.  It also provided a wide range of skills taught, from Letter formation, phonics (basic), counting skills, sequencing, and fine motor skills (cutting, lacing).

2. Pre-Writing:  We continued to use the Kumon workbooks.  We completed "Let's Sticker and Paste", "My First Book of Tracing", and "First Book of Uppercase Letters".  We started " First book of Easy Mazes", "My Book of Numbers 1-30", "First Book of Lowercase Letters", "My Book of Coloring", and "My Book of Cutting."

3. Unit Study:  My mother served as the curriculum creator for this part of our homeschooling.  The units we studied were: "It's Falling", "Harvest Time", "Geography", "Mapping", and "Transportation."  The material she created was wonderful and we enjoyed using it.  However, I failed to follow through and provide her with material/themes to develop additional workbooks.  her additional I failed to follow through well with this idea.

4. Arts/Crafts:  This kind of fizzled once we moved.  We didn't do much of it in the hotel and we didn't restart it in January.  Big E wasn't too interested in crafting and I didn't want to push him too hard.

5. Reading: We read most of the books recommended by Sonlight PreK 3/4 but we didn't do many of suggested activities.  I also continued to read some books from "Honey for a Child's Heart" by Gladys Hunt

6. Pre-Reading: We made it through the first 18-20 lessons of "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".  Though I know nothing about phonics or how to reach a child to read, I thought the material was set up well.   He was capable but unfortunately Big E didn't seem interested so I decided not to push the issue with him.

7.  Manners/Personal Care: We did not follow through his one at all!  Oops!

8. Bible Time: We read through several children's Bibles this year, including "The Big Picture Bible" and "The Jesus Story Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name".  Big E memorized at least 10 more Bible verses and continued to review the 10 we had previously learned.  He also learned the 34 add catechism answers from "My 1st Book of Questions and Answers" by Carine MacKenzie (bringing his total up to 57).

So, that was our year in review.  Big E seemed to enjoy himself and learn a lot.  He is now much more confident with his counting and letter formation.  He knows all his letters and the sounds they all make.  Maybe more importantly he learned to submit to the "structure" and format.