Learning Curves

Since Ana Luisa started walking just a couple week ago, we thought Juan Pablo should also reach a major milestone, just so he doesn't feel left out. Actually, we found ourselves in need of something to add a bit more routine to our mornings, now that we are all fully settled into our new status as a family of four and are actually capable of a routine. So we thought, why not start school? We had decided a while ago that we would like to try to teach our children at home. I hadn't really thought I would do anything for preschool, mostly because being fully responsible for my children's education, in addition to their physical health, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth is a terrifying idea and I wasn't quite sure how to approach it. But I've been following my friend Jen's blog for a while, and now it doesn't seem quite so scary. Plus if she can do it with six children, I should be able to do it with one, right? And I can't mess up preschool, so it seems like a good place to start.

So we started. When we finished our basement this summer we made a room that would one day be our school room, so we set it up as best we can to use now. Last Monday was our official first day. Juan Pablo is clearly the class clown already.

The topic for our first week? The letter "A".

On Monday, we learned what a lowercase "a" looks like (he already can identify most uppercase letters), and practiced drawing both uppercase and lowercase A's. We're doing only Spanish for now, because we want to make sure that our children learn the language well. It's also easier to learn to read and write in Spanish because it's a phonetic language, so we want to do that first before we tackle the complexities of English and it's varying sounds for each letter and exceptions to every rule. I found Spanish alphabet animal coloring pages online, and one of the options for an "a" animal was araña (spider), so we also learned a little bit about spiders and sang "La araña pequeñita" ("The itsy-bitsy spider"). Ana Luisa used colored pencils to color not only her copy of the spider coloring page, but also the wall next to her.

On Tuesday, we learned about Saint Augustine. The kids colored Saint Augustine coloring pages. We talked about how Saint Augustine said that our hearts are made for God ("You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."). Then Juan Pablo got to use scissors to cut out a heart, and glue and glitter to decorate it. Ana Luisa attempted to eat a glue stick, and enjoyed spilling glitter everywhere.

On Wednesday, our hand puppets took a trip on their airplane to Africa. We practiced finding the two places in Africa that Juan Pablo already knows, Ethiopia and Benin, and then also found northern Algeria, where St. Augustine was born. We listened and danced to African music. Later that afternoon, we made a special snack: araña cookies, using Oreos, pretzels sticks, peanut butter and white chocolate chips. Ana Luisa ate approximately 256 white chocolate chips.

On Thursday we read the story of Noah's Ark. I drew an ark on a piece of paper, and Juan Pablo drew all sorts of animals walking up to the ark. We also used his blocks to make an ark and line up his animals (and dinosaurs!). Much to Noah's chagrin, Mrs. Noah destroyed the ark and knocked down the animals multiple times.

Friday morning we looked through a few art books and talked about which paintings/sculptures we liked. Then we went to the UM Museum of Art for a field trip. We found a painting by Claude Monet, and sculptures by Auguste Rodin, the two artists from the art books who had interested Juan Pablo the most (Monet because Juan Pablo thinks his name sounds like "Klondike Kid" and Rodin because we have a big picture of "The Hand of God" hanging in our bedroom and when Juan Pablo was about 18 months old he used to tell people that his name was Auguste Rodin). Ana Luisa oh so helpfully insisted on pushing the stroller throughout the museum, ramming into several cases displaying works of art from Asia and Africa.

Here are some of Juan Pablo's projects from "A" week, now proudly on display in the school room:

It was a fun first week for all of us. Juan Pablo is very excited by the idea of school, and soaks everything up like a little sponge. Ana Luisa is also very excited about school because it means that she gets to play with and try to eat things like glue and glitter and markers that Juan Pablo never got to use when he was her age. After our morning prayers, when it's time for school, she walks right into the schoolroom and sits at the little table, excited to see what great art supplies we may have for breakfast that day. And although I felt like I was scrambling to get something together for each day and was a little frustrated at first that our "A" topics didn't tie together more cohesively, Jeff reminded me that Juan Pablo's interests are all over the place so it really doesn't matter to him that everything come in a nice, neat package. Right now, it's really just about creating a routine and getting used to the idea of learning at home. We'll all ease into it, and I'm sure that before we know it, we'll be working on college admissions essays...

...but next up, the letter "B".