Tot School

I feel like my life is made up of small changes. Maybe everyone's is the same way. But I think it is more. I think Thomas and I are are slowing changing some everyday more than the average family ... it will be interesting to see where God takes us.

And the first month of a new year has been no exception.

You may have noticed a small addition to this blog in the last 2 weeks. There is a new logo on the side with an elephant ...

One of my goals for the next year is to have focused learning "school" time for the children. After running across the website - Tot School - I'm a huge fan and I'm incorporating much of that style of teaching children into our daily lives. Tot School is largely about teaching children through play and fun activities. But what is great about this website is that is has a ton of ideas, resources, and links to help you plan out weeks of learning for your child.

I'm also going to pull some from another website - ABC Jesus Love Me - a more defined curriculum that has weekly lesson plans online for free.

In had some pretty reasonable goals set out for Petra. I largely wanted to focus on letter recognition, sound recognition, and number skills. And I've already failed in the sense that I set my expectations for her way too low. I was gradually working on letter sounds with her - just a few letters a week was the plan. However, with the help of Leap Frog's Letter Factory video, and about 8 times sitting in front of it to watch it, she knows every letter sound .... nearly. She was confused about the letter U - but I think I may have been able to teach her this one also. So here she is at 26 months and knows every letter sound...

But not every letter. When I ask her to tell me the name of a letter - she either doesn't know, she knows and tells, or she makes the sound.