Am I a Closet Homeschooler?

Dos is in preschool two days a week. While I am thrilled that he is getting a great social and educational environment there, I have a huge desire to provide learning settings for him with me. In our everyday life, I want to be the one who opens new doors of learning for him. As I have mentioned before, I absolutely love http://www.mamahomeschool.blogspot.com/ She does a fantastic job of offering a variety of learning prompts for her kids. I have used several of her ideas with my kids.

Last year, I took the list of Before Five in a Row's recommended books and made various lesson plans for Dos and Tres (as she could participate). Did I do all the books? No, because throughout the year I would take the BFIAR list and see if the local library had these books. We were not able to cover every book but the ones we did, we loved! I think Blueberries for Sal, Yellow Ball, and The Big Green Pocketbook were my favorites. Oh, also The Carrot Seed. Dos was so intrigued and ask leading questions and it seemed like he was truly a sponge taking it all in.

Following this experience, this year since he is in school part time, I still am desirous of leading him in learning. His preschool teacher has done a wonderful job of already listing out themes for the whole year and I simply look at her theme and try to supplement some activities on the days Dos is not in school. This week is Pets and it just so happens that my favorite blog, mamahomeschool has done the book Angus Lost and shared her activities. Unfortunately, our local library does not have this book. What I did was take several books I had in my private library that related to dogs (which our are only type of pets) and read them to the kids.

We also listed out ways to care for our pets (the pic to the left) and then played a matching game of dog pics. The great thing about the matching game is that I laminated the paper and allowed the kids to mark on it with an Expo marker so that once we were finished matching they could erase and start all over again. I tried to do the Dog Lotto game; however, my game board was too flimsy and did not withstand my kids' tugging:)

Bible time today focused on Noah and the Ark which was great because we got to talk about animals some more! We also used this time to incorporate math by counting the animals. I have A Beka 3 year old curriculum for math, art, and letters. Although I am just starting to use it and may change my mind - I'm not real impressed with the math lessons. They seem to lack creativity. Back to the Bible lesson....we made an Ark, colored it, and loaded it with all of our stuffed animals. I also had a picture book which told the story of Noah and we read it together. I am amazed at how much Tres is picking up just by sitting with her big brother.

I have no clue what the future holds for my kids. I would never have considered home schooling but now I wonder what will be. If all I do as far as homeschooling is this, then I'm fine with that. I like only having to be responsible for "lessons" a couple of times a week. But in my mind, I would love to have more children and enjoy the thrill of leading them in school lessons. And if they go to school for their education, that will be fine as well since I am already completely busy with Dos' preschool.