Pre-Back-to-School Week

Last year, I had a pre-back-to-school week before we started three day a week Preschool. It worked really well and helped Annabeth be very focused when heading into her first "real" year of school. This week I am doing the same.

This school year we will be beginning with Alpha Omega Publication's Pre-K series. It calls for a five day school week and since I would like to hold fairly close to the traditional school calendar (with 2.5 months off for summer) we will be attempting to do this.

This summer, especially with the arrival of Owen, we have had a very lax schedule. Annabeth has enjoyed lots of outdoor time as well as lots of art (she loves paint and playdough) and reading. We have been out of school since May 20 and so we have had lots of time to forget how to "do" school.

This week we went and cleaned up the school room together. We also got out three fun workbooks I had found in Target's $1 section and did some pages. We read books. We did puzzles. We discussed what the "rules" are for school time. We spent about an hour on school each day and I was very surprised to hold her attention so long as last year most school days were only 2ish hours. She has asked quite a few days this summer to begin Pre-K and I was glad to see that she is still so excited.

We even did a little mini-Moon Unit. One of her favorite books is On the Moon (an Usbourne book) by Anna Milbourne and Benji Davis. As a child, I always wanted to go to the moon so I love reading this book too. I decided to show her the video of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and found this one on YouTube that discusses most of the points in the book. She did not really seem very impressed by the footage but I became a little teary eyed as the incredible accomplishment of a man walking on the moon played before me. It may have happened in 1969 but it is still incredible to me today!

We have both really enjoyed getting back into the school room for some formal-ish schooling. It has also been my test run to see how things will go having a newborn in the mix as well. Thankfully, Mr. O is still taking some good naps during the day and for now I plan to do school when he is sleeping.

Happy (almost) Back to School!