School Days

We are in full swing of things now, I tell you.

Home School Rocks!

Patrick is loving it, and I am too, it just seems like the way it should be. No separation anxiety, no worrying all day, not parent teacher conferences, or required time in the classroom, I don't have to worry about him eating something he shouldn't because of his food allergies, or kids being mean to him, or teachers belittling him. The thought of being away from my child all day, freaks me out, and no one can teach him like I can.

I hear from several moms about a certain elementary school in town, "It's the best", all the mom's try to get there kids enrolled in kindergarten there. However.....this particular school only has two kindergarten classes, and each has 28-30 students. 1 teacher, 28-30 students. How could this possibly be conductive to a good start in education? There is no possible way that teacher can meat the needs of the children. I see schools like feed lots now, lol, no really, they cram as many in there as they can for the cost, the health, wellbeing, sanity, emotional stability, or quality of life are of no value.

We joined the local home school co-op and  joined in a pic-nic last night as a kick off for the fall co-op. We are really excited. It was really neat to be among all those people, our own little community of home schoolers. The cool thing is, we all have at least that one thing in common. I can't wait for co-op to begin. It is a Christian group, which does not bother me either way, (we don't go to church) and we will be meeting every Friday afternoon for 6 weeks. Very exciting!

We ran into some acquaintance's of Jerry's last weekend, and the woman present started talking with Patrick. (I was not present for the conversation, but Jerry told me about it after the fact)She started asking him things like , "How old are you?", "What's your name?" and so on. She then starts to quiz him in a sense, and then comments on how bright he is. She asks what school he is going to, and he proudly says, "I go to home school". She seemed to be a bit taken back, and then asked him some more questions, as if to determine whether or not I was doing a good job, lol. She then tells Jerry how impressed she is, and how smart he is, and how much he knows for a five year old, which is awesome, but Jerry is telling me this and I am thinking, "Why does she care?" He smiles at me and tells me that she is a kindergarten teacher in town. So the moral here is, that I rock, lol! Sometimes I doubt myself and my ability to teach him, teach him well, but it was so nice to have the compliment from her. She was impressed, and I should be too. Patrick is smart, and a great, enthusiastic learner, and I love making learning fun for him.

This week we did so much, I am so proud of him.

He memorized in one day a limerick, and here it is.

There was an old man from Peru,

who dreamed he was eating his own shoe,

he woke in a fright,

in the middle of the night,

and found it was perfectly true.

Lol, we thought it was cute and fun to learn.

Things Patrick can do thus far:

Can count to 100

Can count backwards from 10

Knows his ABC's

Knows all of the sounds every letter makes

Knows all of the days of the week

Knows how to Spell and Write his name

He knows all of his shapes and colors, has since he was 2 1/2

Some of the things we have been working on:

Phonics/Learning to read

Five senses 

How to tell time

Adding and Subtracting

Money