We're now a couple months into Finn's first year of doing school at home with me. He turned 5 in February and we decided to homeschool him for Kindergarten instead of re-enrolling him at his preschool this year (the Peruvian school year starts in March). I went back and forth about this decision ever since arriving back in Peru last May. He struggled greatly for his first couple of months back at Peruvian preschool, but then things seemed to get better, and it was SUCH a freeing thing for me to be able to focus on ministry things while Skye was napping in the morning. It seemed like his Spanish was improving too. Ultimately, though, we decided in late fall that his character was not being helped any by the lack of structure and discipline at his preschool, and we felt like the frequency of discipline at home was lessened over school breaks when he was just at home.
I am confident now that we made the right decision. It has certainly required more of me in the mornings to homeschool him, but I think it has been a very positive thing. Finn's behavior and responsiveness to correction has improved dramatically. His Spanish learning has probably slowed down some, though we do have a Peruvian teacher friend work with him 3 mornings a week on Spanish. Finn is learning so much in the hour and a half that we spend doing school (during Skye's morning nap). He has really taken to math magnificently doing addition and subtraction in is head fairly fluidly already. This week I introduced money and he LOVES it. I've only introduced pennies, nickels, and dimes so far, but he is able to exchange them and give me the correct amount to pay for imaginary items. He's beginning to be able to play the role of the cashier and give me correct change when I pay too much for something as well.
He now knows the days of the week in English (starting to learn them in Spanish), has a basic understanding of the calendar and the clock, and is also learning how numbers past 10 work due to our calendar work. We're working on reading very slowly as well. It's not something that has come very naturally to Finn like math has, but he's slowly improving. He always groans a bit when I get our reading curriculum out, but I keep the lessons very short, and have learned to keep it light and simple for him. I figure a little practice every day will eventually result in reading success. As much as I long for him to be able to read and enjoy reading, I'm also aware that it make take him a while, and the greatest risk at this point is for me to push him too much and cause him to have negative associations with reading. This requires a lot of patience of me!
We've also been doing the Five In a Row curriculum where we read a picture book for 5 days (actually we're just doing 4 days) in a row and discuss the geography, math, science, music, etc. that can be learned from the book. Finn has really enjoyed this and is learned SO SO much from these books. This week we're reading "The Glorious Flight," by Alice and Martin Provensen, and Finn has enjoyed learning about the invention of the airplane. We've talked about what inventors do and how they must have much perseverance. We also watched some Youtube videos today about how airplanes work, and Finn was quite fascinated. We enjoyed trying out our own paper airplane afterward.
So... I've really enjoyed planning and doing Kindergarten with Finn. It's been a fun way for me to connect with him besides just playing legos and Uno. I've been encouraged that he has gone along with school pretty well for the most part, and even seems to enjoy it most of the time.
- Laura
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