Ta-da!

I guess it's a good sign if Ada's first response upon finishing is, "Let's do it agaaaain!" and Paul's is, "Maybe we could start with numbers?"

There we have it, folks! A-Z in Catholic style. Some weeks were molto bene, others were outstanding, and still others were sort of ... meh. Most of the time that had to do with my level of planning, commitment, or readiness, and sometimes it had to do with kid-cooperation. All in all, I give this whole homeschool pre-school a big, fat A! With 26 letters but 2 combo-letter weeks, technically, this should have taken us 24 weeks. We started in October and finished in May. Some weeks had tons of activities, so we drew it out longer; some weeks, there were holidays; and still other weeks, life otherwise happened, and we just didn't get to it.

No one required this of me. I fully understand that any pressure I felt to do this or that was strictly intrinsic, and I must admit that both the pressure lifted and the schedule loosened once we decided to send Paul to school. It wasn't an immediate shift, but after a couple of weeks, I noticed that we weren't going about it with the same daily strictness - we'd clump a few days' activities into one sitting and go days without anything. I'm sure that was so because I entered into this as a sort of trial, really. I love the idea of homeschooling (the flexibility, the togetherness, the schedule, and free play time), and I wanted to see if I could do it. I think that I could. I also don't think that I should, however. It's in my personality to strive to be minimalist, and I could see my kids suffering the consequences of that because I don't want to get x amount of crafty supplies or tools to learn this or that; I'm much more likely to go completely without that whole activity or concept, even. I like the old chalkboard and crayons; that may serve me well with my learning style, but I think Paul needs a little more. And I doubt that I would want to actively supply him that. So. A school setting with lots of action in one day, moving from a writing lesson and cutting on to reading is what, we think, will serve him best this next year.

All that being said, I think Paul and Ada both learned a lot through this curriculum, as I had a framework of some kind that I otherwise hadn't had in our normal stay-at-home lives, and we breached topics that may or may not have naturally come up. It was lovely to see their curiosity peak when I'd ask something they hadn't thought about, like, "Do you think we can break up a dollar into smaller money?" as part of the lesson on quartering. Plus, we put bigger field-trip-like things on the calendar as part of that letter's learning, which was so wonderful. I loved going to the saint-of-the-week's church, and I loved putting the zoo, aquarium, and insectarium on the agenda for particular purposes - going to specifically watch the penguins longer or find the sloth, which we'd otherwise pass right by. I like structure. Duh. And this book, 26 Letters to Heaven, gave me just enough structure to have attainable activity goals for 5 & 3 year old Paul and Ada.

Now that we're finished for the summer, I will kind of miss having something in particular to do that day, but I think I will also relish these last 2 months of having only small, pre-school-aged children at home before sending Paul off in August. The thrill of hearing the questions in bed in the morning, "What are we doing today, Mama?" or "Where are we going today, Mama?" and then "What do you want to do today?" is something I'll miss dreadfully once we're slaves to the 8am drop-off schedule and one of the things that will always leave me wondering if homeschool might have been right for us.