The beginning

So, my mother-in-law told me I should start a blog about my adventure home-schooling and currently "after-schooling" my almost 4 year old daughter, Molly.











I never planned for us to be a home schooling family. I mean NEVER. I've never had any particularly negative feelings about it, but I just never thought it was something I'd do. Then our daughter was born and from the get go she proved to be a precocious kid. She's never been what I call in my own words "freaky smart." She wasn't talking as soon as she came out of my womb or doing algebra at 2, but she is very bright, maybe gifted, I don't really know. She started talking a little early and by a year old knew 25 or 30 words and a whole bunch of animal sounds. Before she was a year old she would sit quietly in our laps for upwards of 20 or 30 minutes while we read to her, which looking back, is kind of abnormal, haha.

She is also very social and around a year old we'd go to the grocery store and she'd always be on the lookout for someone to pay attention to her (other than me). She scout out someone she thought looked interesting and fix her eyes on them and then belt out her most adorable laugh...completely unprovoked. She knew no one can resist a baby's laughter. Generally the person would turn around and start doting on her and she'd be happy as a clam.

As time went by it became more and more apparent that she wasn't exactly a "normal" child, at least not in an academic, brainy sense. She knew all her letters by 18 months old, and by 2 she could count objects to ten, knew all her shapes, colors etc etc. She was also VERY talkative and would chatter all the time. The comments never ended about how much and how well she talked from all sorts of strangers, everywhere we went.

Fast forward to last fall, 2009 when she started preschool at a local Christian School (at age 3 years 3 months). She loves other kids and I knew she'd have a great time. By this point she knew all the letter sounds and could write most of her letters and she loved to write her name on everything. By 3.5 she was sounding out short CVC words. Up until this point we'd made no real effort to teach her. Her grandma had a hand in teaching her since most of her life up until this point I'd been in grad school and Molly had stayed with her Grandma while I was at school, but she never sat down with her and did flash cards or anything. Most of Molly's knowledge came from osmosis I guess, just that way little kids learn things.

At that point I decided to guide her education a bit from home and that is where this blog came from. Next post a little later, why I decided to home school.