Homeschool Beginnings

"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."  -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

So we are lucky enough to be able to start homeschooling our younger two kids at the beginning of their learning "career".  I can't express to you just how excited I am to have the chance to help my daughters become life-long learners, rather than just a memorizer of information, to pass a standardized test.

Right now, we are learning our letters and numbers.  At 2.5, she "knows" them all, but only by rote.  So in an effort to get her ready for phonics, we will be doing a kind-of relaxed "Alpha-Boot Camp" to get her familiar with each letter and learn to recognize them, and to grasp the concept that the numbers stand for something.

I've mostly just cut out pictures from magazines and pasted them to note cards, an easy way of being able to change them up regularly.  Some of the pictures (like the number hand and the blank clock) were found by Google Image search.  The card holders are cut up plastic sheet protectors, since we had a ton of them lying around the house, taking up space.  I glued them down with a glue stick.  Don't know how that's going to work in the long term, but it works for now!

The whole shebang is hung on the wall with a skirt hanger and a Command Hook. Throughout the day, I stop her near the poster and we review what's there.  It's in the living room where we spend most of our time.  I'll change the contents every other day or so.

When we finally learn all our numbers and letters, we will be starting with the book "Alpha-Phonics".  It's a very basic primer for beginning readers.  It comes with a teacher's manual included, and looks very easy to do and to learn from.  It has no pictures to distract your little learner, just words.  I actually found this copy for $17 used at our local Homeschool Bookstore, and it's in perfect condition!



I'm really excited to start schooling my daughter at home!  My house is covered in little scraps from magazines and bits of construction paper, and I have a feeling that it's only going to get messier from here on out!

-The Messy Mommy