From Elk to Envelope

Many of you know of my internal battle over preschool. Daphne qualifies for 3 years before kindergarten (that fact alone still boggles my mind, and that fact makes me feel very old-fashioned). We already passed on this current year, and we're passing on the next. I'm still undecided on that last year before kindergarten. Although I think Daphne would enjoy it and I could certainly use the "break" (i.e. one-on-one time with James), something deep down inside my gut just keeps telling me it's unnecessary and that I should be using our money on other things, since I have the privilege of being home with her all day. She gets plenty of socialization through classes, playgroups, and other activities. And I'm not worried that she'd be academically behind. Maybe I'm just not ready to "let go" yet, but those of you who know me well know that's probably not the core issue. I am, however, hoping to do a mini home-school co-op with a couple moms once per week starting in the fall, just for fun (and free!).

In the spirit of finding out what I could teach her on my own, I started looking at some online preschool resources. We've been doing "letter of the week" for a month or so, and one activity Daphne enjoys is making little books about each letter (templates found here)

Here's a sample of what they're like.


(I can't get this picture to stay flipped for some reason...new camera...)

However, once we staple together the 4-5 picture pages provided in the template, in the order she insists on specifying, she also then insists upon me making up an actual story out of the words. This task proves difficult. For example, for the letter P, I had the following to work with: pilot, penguin, pumpkin, police officer, and panda. In that order. I find myself cringing as Daphne chooses the order of the words, and then looks at me expectantly after turning each page of the assembled book. And then sometimes she wants to read it again with a different storyline. But lately she's been getting in on the stories more, so it's becoming more fun to see what we come up with together.

So for E this week, we had: elk, egg, Earth, envelope, elephant. Your suggestions are appreciated.