Introducing School

We’ve essentially introduced Sadie to homeschooling, in a gentle way.  I just spent some time with her before and after eating lunch, going through the rest of the alphabet and pointing out how some things sounded and spelled.  We’ve done this basically all week.  We went through different shapes and I pointed out that the letters are just other shapes.  It’s funny hearing her announce “I drew a rectangle!”

I was showing her only uppercase letters, but she remembered from the Dr. Seuss Alphabet Book that there are little letters too.

Haven’t really gotten her to draw any letters yet.  She turns every A into a full triangle by closing the bottom.  However, when faced with a V, she turned it into an upside down A and didn’t close the big end.

Then there’s the drawing.  She draws mainly people and snowmen, or basic shapes.  I’ve shown her cubes, rectangles and cylinders.  Yesterday I drew her pumpkins and she worked on those.  It was then or the day before I drew her a bureau and showed how the other shapes and lines came together to make it look the part.

Today she demanded help drawing a chair.  I drew her a plausible kitchen chair, then another, showing her how the legs were sized and positioned for perspective.  Then she demanded I draw a table, so we ended up with a kitchen table set with plates, two each glasses and mugs, and some indeterminate silverware.  Then I chose to draw a duck from the rubber duck visible nearby.  She had me draw a second one, after which I told her she was on her own.

She’s amused by our explanations of how letters sound and combine, and words you can spell with subsets of the alphabet found on the page, but she’s not biting too hard yet.  I’m sure she’s getting something out of it, however gently.

Eventually I’ll try being a little more formal, easing her into stuff like copying letters to learn to print them herself.  Maybe we won’t be able to run with homeschooling as we’d like, but she’s old enough to start learning.

Posted by on 12/07 at 02:16 PM

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