Getting Started

As Nathan heads off to school for the start of the fall semester, I decided to start up Hailey School again. Robert naps from 12-3 and Hailey does quiet time for the first hour in her room. She has a timer which has help her a lot. So we have from 1-3 to do Hailey School.

I received some Joy School material from my mother-in-law a while ago, so I was going to try to do that. However, going through the notebooks I got, I was very confused. At the last minute, I decided that it was worth the money to get new material from Values Parenting. It's a two year program that I'm going to do in one year. It is designed to only be twice a week but I want to do it four times a week. Also it is supposed to be do with other children, so Luc will be joining us since I'm watching him during that time.

In addition to Joy School, Hailey will be doing a preschool with Audrey on Mondays and Wednesdays for an hour. We are switching off who house preschool is at and when it's not at my house, I don't have to stay so Robert and I will have alone time.

Hailey is going to be pretty busy this year which is great. Once a week she will also go to tumbling for 2-3 year olds. Hailey is a very social kid and loves being with other kids. I'm glad we are able to give her this opportunity.

Color Review: A Garden of Colors

Approaching the concept of colors is a little different from letters. With letters I focused more on objects that start with the letter and less on the shape of the letter. However with colors, I'm focusing on many items that has a certain color. This might make my lessons seem a little more random but I'm still new and experimenting with it. Hailey knows the names of colors and most of the time can answer correctly when asked what color is a specific color. Sometimes, I think she just pulls a color out of her head instead of really looking at what I'm asking and answering correctly.

It's fun to see her learn and grow. At first, everything was blue and just last week, she's really been picking up on the color brown. Red and pink are hard for her (she likes pink better).

So, to start our color unit we looked at a variety of colors. First we read "Elmo's First Book of Colors" by Sesame Street. Hailey did a good job pointing out different objects of a certain color.

After that we read "My Colors, My World" by Maya Christina Gonzalez. I liked the illustrations and it had short sentences. It shows how colors are all around us. Also it repeats everything in Spanish. Nathan read this book to Hailey for her night-time story in both English and Spanish. Then, we colored flowers in our mini-garden book. She went through this quickly even though there were 8 pages to color. I think she doesn't like being restricted to certain colors.

Alphabet Review

I'm really glad I started Hailey School. We are done with the Alphabet Unit. Here is a video of Hailey saying her ABC's. (Sorry I can't turn the video.)

Before we started Hailey would only repeat a handful of letters and a lot pf them sounded like "e". Now she can clearly repeat her letters after me and even say a-g by herself. I know she looks forward to Hailey School and that time alone with mommy.

Next week we will start our Colors Unit.

Purpose of Hailey School

Hailey is my cute little two year old. She loves books and one-on-one time with mommy. We also do some of the basic signs with Hailey. She is a late talker and still won't speak in sentences. My goal with Hailey School is to give her one-on-one time (since her baby brother was born she gets less then she wants) and go over the basic educational elements. First I'll do the alphabet, then numbers, colors, and shapes.

Most of the activities I will do with Hailey, I got from the internet.

Sites I heavily use are:
http://www.dltk-teach.com/
http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/
http://www.first-school.ws/themes.html

The purpose of this blog isn't to add new ideas but to record what I do and how well Hailey likes them.