David's Schooling

David and I are plugging right along with "pre-school." It has become a fairly natural part of our day and we are slowly but surely covering a lot of ground. The "learn a little bit" every day concept works great. Writing continues to be extremely difficult David... we do very very little writing but I insist we practice for a few minutes each day. I have a pencil gripper that ensures David is holding his pencil correctly... like throwing a dart. If we don't use it, it looks like he is ready to stab someone. If we are practicing a letter or a number, he only has to make 4 of them, but he has to form them as perfectly as he can. And believe it or not... the boy is learning! He regularly remembers how to form his numbers when we do math and forms his letters more and more often from memory without my prompting how to do it. We practice reading every day. David reads from Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad easy readers as well as the Little Bear series. At night he reads from his "A Bible to read all by yourself"... we do one story each night. I started the 2nd grade Phonics program with him a few days ago. It is pretty dry as we are plugging through phonograms and the sounds they make... The book calls for us to do 8 a day... but we do 3 which is a better pace for my 4 year old. The math book is "easy" for him as he knows his numbers and how to count... it is writing the numbers that we are working on while reviewing the stuff he already knows how to do. We stick to a worksheet or 2 a day for math. Then throw in lots of library books and playtime and that is pretty much what we do. Sit down school time is less than a hour and that seems to be working great right now.