Planning for Fall

We're taking a break from structured learning this week in favor of play centers- specifically "post office". Mail is a big deal around here, so we're playing post office and delivering letters to different places in the house. This week I'm working on getting curriculum together for fall, so I didn't want to have to worry about school papers while I'm busy printing, copying and filing for fall.

I've looked at several resources for us to use this year and I wasn't happy with any of them. I'm so used to designing my own lesson plans (I used to teach in a private school) so the pre-planned things weren't quite right. Ender is young to be starting school (3 in October) but intensely curious and after experimenting with doing papers and montessori type activities the last few months I know he's really serious about this learning thing. He loves to do papers, so I'm adding more of those than I'd originally planned. The prepackaged preschool materials are too simple, but the Kindergarten things go into phonics and addition and I don't think we'll be ready for that until next spring or summer at the earliest.

He knows his uppercase letters by sight and out of order, he knows a handful of lowercase letters and a few sounds. He knows his numbers by rote and by sight through 15 consistently, and sometimes through 20. We do a lot of "life math"- how many forks do we need for dinner? type things. He cooks and bakes with me almost daily, and measures quite well. He is such a studious quiet child; I can already tell that his little brother is going to be far too busy for this early learning stuff!