My Little princess is more enthusiastic than ever when I told her that she’s going to be homeschooling for the first time.  She doesn’t know that she’s not yet officially enrolled in our Homeschool provider, though it doesn’t matter.  All she knew is that she has set of reading books, writing books, coloring books, pencil case and her own pink bag to match.

I knew from experience that teaching a child to read for the very first time was never easy.  I also learned that I shouldn’t expect much from a small child.  I’m done comparing my kids to each other, the MAJOR mistake I ever did.  I decided to take it easy on her.  I planned to spend fifteen to twenty minutes max.  No more no less!

I promised myself to document our progress and my documentation starts now.

Day 1

Date:  June 24, 2014/Tuesday/10:00 AM Philippine Time

Lesson 1:  Reading

Last year, I bought an ebook online that helped Kyan – my third boy in his reading.  We’ve made great progress.  I’m using the same material with Alexa.  I’m not expecting speedy results but I’m very hopeful that it will also help her a lot.

Reading lesson is a reading program developed for young children in 20 easy lessons.  I like their program because it includes sets of instructions for teachers and parents on how to go about every reading session.  Their gradual approach facilitates mastery and consistency.  I applied their suggestion on the age appropriate pace on how fast you should go in each lesson.  Since my little girl is below five, I schedule only one page per day. I’m taking into consideration her interest and short attention span which is very common to children who just turned four.

I started my first week with Lesson 1, small letters c, o, s, a, and t

According to the program, the said five letters are commonly used in English.

To make the program effective, it is important to read the teaching instructions so as not to confuse the child with the letter names and its sounds.

She finds it difficult to recall the letter names but she’s more familiar with the sounds.

It took me ten to thirtenn (10-13) miuntes to discuss one page.

Lesson 2:  Writing small letter b

We started with letter b because small letter “a” was done sometime during the summer vacation.

I showed her how to write letter b by writing it myself first,  then I made her hold the pencil while I guided her hands to write the letter.  While guiding her, I kept saying, “start from the top – down – back – curve.”

After nine minutes of writing letter b all by herself, she says she’s already tired.  To keep her going, I put a check on her well written letter “bs” to entice her to finish.  I encouraged her to go on because she’s almost done with the page.

I kept telling her, “You’re getting better and you make beautiful letter bs.” 

I’m very careful with giving her praises because I remembered the article I read in Healthy Options Magazine.  It says that we should praise kids with their efforts.  I’m very vague with the reason but with what I understood, those who grew up with empty praises from their parents shy away from real challenges because they would not want to disappoint themselves and others and be branded otherwise.

So with the help of prodding and encouragement, despite her constant complaints of tired hands, she was able to finish the full page of her writing book.

Small letter b done in nineteen (19) minutes.

Lesson 3:  Counting

Counting 1 – 10

We just went through the pages of her counting book counting the pictures from one to ten (1-10).  Gave her no pressure in memorizing them.  I just want her to be familiar with counting and I plan to do this as consistently as possible.

Counting lessons done in seven (7)minutes.

Lesson 4:  Singing Time

We sang “10 Little Indian Boys” complete with wacky facial expressions and little fingers.

Time spent:  forty (40) minutes and my plan was just 20 minutes tops.  Nice going!