Hooked on Phonics

Yes, I tried this one too already. Melissa's been begging me to teach her to read so I checked it out from the library 4 weeks ago. Well after 4 weeks she's not gotten anything, she hates it as much as I do. Sooooo back it will go on Saturday. I'm going to just keep reading to her for a couple hours a day and see if she picks it up on her own like I did at her age. If not then I have a backup plan already.

Letter of the Week

I tried Letter of the Week a few different times with Melissa, its a great program in theory. Its a free program which was the biggest appeal to me, but once I committed to it I had some real trouble just ging with it. All the prep for materials and books to do, getting things ready for activities, it just took too much of the little free time I actually have available. And it wasn't a good fit with Melissa either, she loves books and being read to but it really wasn't clicking well with her, I had a really hard time getting enough books from the library on the weekly theme to read to her and a lot of the activities just plain didn't interest her at all. So I decided that Letter of the Week isn't a good choice for us to do with her right now, but maybe later when she's grown a bit more she'll show an interest in it. I guess I'll give it a 5th try this summer when we can do some outdoor activities with her instead. And I was really excited about the program too, having it all laid out for me to do (the book lists made out, the themes chosen, activies planned, it really is well thought out) I guess maybe its just not time for her yet with that one.

chucked all my old plans, here's what's now happening

I decided that I really want to try and hold off Melissa a little longer on homeschool to try and combine Lydia in with her as they get older, and that means putting her off one year probably since they are almost exactly one year apart in age. So today I put in a request for a free shipment from a company that does monthly activities and learning themes for kids ages 1-6 and I'm going to try that out with Melissa and see how she likes it and how well we like it. If we like the free monthly theme then we'll think about doing it every month for a while, combining Lydia in when she's ready for the activities. I'm still planning on going with Sonlight curriculum for when we start homeschooling school age (we'll start when Melissa's 5 and Lydia's 4, the cores that Sonlight has are very good for combining multiple kids close in age and if I wiggled it enough I could add Kimmy in the same core with her big sisters but I'm not going to, I already have a plan laid out for Sonlight and hope to stick with it as best I can, depending on where life takes us with teaching our girls) I'm really looking forward to getting our free month package, and I'm not even out shipping costs, which is cool by me. LOL The site I went to for this monthly theme is Brighter Vision and it looks like Melissa may really enjoy it, last month I got a packet in the mail offering the free month and I decided today to just give it a shot and see what happens.