Preparing for Pre K

I have done so much thinking, and praying, and reading about homeschooling over the years, and especially lately as Norah is almost 4. She loves books and I know she's ready to learn so much more. However, I'm so glad we've had a slow pace by her just being at home with me. She's learned so much just from our reading aloud together and being part of the family. We do nature walks a few times a week and she's totally into collecting flowers and trying to find out what they're called. Through talking, singing, reading, and repetition she has learned almost all her letter sounds and can identify almost all of them. She needs a bit more reinforcement on the lowercase letters, but she's pretty solid on most of them. I have started and stopped trying to officially teach reading a few times, but as I've been reading and observing in her, I have restrained the desire to rush her. I know that these little years are precious. I know that she's learning every day. I know that a literature-rich environment, the quiet of home, hours of one-on-one attention with me and her daddy, and social interaction from our regular family life in a community, lots of free play, and a little sister have taught her so much. And as I've watched her sister grow over the past year, I see how much even she has learned purely from osmosis and natural innate development. Many things I didn't work on proactively, she's learned naturally.

I do plan to start working officially on teaching Norah reading. I think I'm going to use this book that I found recently at the bookstore.

But there's this part of me, however naive it might be, that almost doesn't want to make her learn yet, because I love the freedom her imagination has right now to make the stories be whatever she wants them to be. She will spend hours "reading" her books. She'll listen to us read them, and she'll listen well. Then she retells them to herself, to us, to her dolls, to Elyse. She'll make up new stories. Her mind is free to just say whatever she wants to as she carefully turns each page and soaks in the pictures. I have this fear that when she can read the words, she won't tune the words out and just imagine. Yet I know the adventures and key to education reading will give her, and I think of the hours she'll spend lost in really good stories, and I am so excited to see her get this gift of reading. But she's little and I'm glad I'm learning to let her be, and not rush her.

I've been researching a lot about different  teaching styles, and I love the Charlotte Mason principles. I think we will need to be a bit more structured and I'll pull from different places too. Andy wants Norah to begin something structured this fall, and I do too. So we'll do the reading lessons, and we'll use a basic guide for nature walks and keep nature journals and do simple corresponding actvities to call "science" and we'll try different crafts and arts. We'll read stories from the Bible, memorize verses, and read stories to teach character development. We'll work on math concepts. But we'll do it in gentle, real-life ways. We'll learn about history and cultures - through good stories. We'll make a list of good classic picture books and chapter books to read through together. We'll listen to music, and she'll take ballet. We'll find art masterpieces to enjoy together. We'll cook together. We'll keep doing chores and concentrate on forming godly habits. And we'll read, read, read. And Elyse will come along with us, explore with us on our nature walks, cuddle up during story time, play with playdough and coloring and play while we learn.

I'll probably get a list up here of the tools I plan to use. I'm hoping to be a little more consistent sharing what we're doing, if for nothing else so I can have a record to keep and lots of pictures and memories to store up.