Little Girls Learning: Summer Preschool

Norah and I spent a few days working on preschool things this week. I put together a box of materials we can keep handy for quick lessons. When Elyse takes her morning nap, we spend a little while on some of those activities, and/or we just read library books together. I always try to prioritize reading together. But now that she's getting closer to 4, I am getting a little more focused about teaching reading, writing, and some math skills.

Norah reminded me about the reading books we'd been using before. I'd actually put it away. I often will start something, then get nervous that maybe it's not working, and look for something else. Not good. So I'm glad she showed interest. We pulled it out this week and worked through a few of the lessons.

She's doing really well with remembering the sounds the letters make. The book makes a big emphasis on rhyming. For example, you tell the child you're going to rhyme with "-at" and start with the "r" sound or the "s" sound. Then the child tries. The other main emphasis is phonics, which I like. However, the letters are first introduced in different forms, to differentiate the sounds they make. Apparently later in the book this differentiation will be phased out. I feel a little unsure of this because I know letters don't look that way in real reading, but if it gets her started and will help her in the beginning, it might be ok. Until I get the other book (The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading), we'll keep up with this one.

Norah's starting to read some of the basic words - such as "see" or "me." The way the book introduces the words is to have the child sound out each letter slowly, then say the word fast. But she is still pausing between each sound. I'm not sure she understands the flow yet.

I've been a bit hesitant to start handwriting yet. But she really enjoys tracing letters, so we did some of that. I think she's a lot closer now to being able to write. I picked up an old book (The Bausell Home Learning Guide) at the library that has a good order for introducing the letters, so next week I'll work on that with her. Their suggested order for teaching writing the letters is:

Oo, Tt, Ll, Ii, Ff, Ee, Mm, Hh, Nn, Aa, Vv, Ww, Zz, Yy, Kk, Bb, Dd, Jj, Pp, Rr, Cc, Gg, Uu, Qq, Ss, Xx

What I've noticed is that on her own, many of her letters are very big. When I told her to write between the lines, she struggled to do that. She's young so I don't want to press it too much. But the guidelines in this book should help me direct her.

I also haven't tried too many workbooks with her yet. A few months ago I had shown some to her, and she didn't really like it. But I tried again this week and she really enjoyed it. She wanted to do several pages. We mostly worked on math concepts - numbers, counting, grouping, shapes. She has a really good grasp on most of the concepts. The main things she struggled with were writing the numbers (because we hadn't worked on that yet) and confusing a square and a rectangle. A little more practice and she'll get those.