“A” Walk “A”long the “A”lphabet Path

Week one of homeschool at the homestead is just ending and I am listening to the gentle sounds of happiness and busy activity as we prepare to fix lunch and spend some quiet time this afternoon reflecting on what we’ve learned this week.  After much cajoling and convincing from my sister, we decided to follow Elizabeth Foss’s Along the Alphabet Path for our homeschool curriculum this year.  I am homeschooling a boy, so I did spend many nights considering the fact that fairies would be a part of our core curriculum, but in the end, the beauty of imagination won out, and because our home lives and breathes fantasy, it became very easy to add some dragons and knights and before we knew it, a beautiful year lay ahead of us.

We’ve made a few changes to the materials to tailor it to Alex’s learning style and what works best for him, and we’ve supplemented books from our own library in place of many of the recommended reading lists, but for everything else we are following along with Serendipity’s plans and already we have found the excitement and wonder of imagination taking hold.  Here are just a few highlights from our first week of school.

Each of us got to choose one figurine for the first day of school.  If we’re going to read about fairies, of course I’m going to choose a fairy (with pointy ears and all).

My hard-working husband took some time away from work to play…and chose a knight to join the ranks.

My little student chose a dragon because well, dragons are a little like dinosaurs.  And they’re just awesome.  Like him.

Just a few of the books we are using this year…there are more.  Many, many more.  (and many, many, many more on the way)

A is for Angel – A beautiful craft idea from Lacy over at Catholic Icing.  In this house, fairies are often mistaken for angels, and angels for fairies (they do share wings in common after all), but this little angel has been lovingly gazed upon and proudly declared the “A” angel many times this week already (no chance of mistaken identity here).

We’re exploring the highly addictive fun of Do-A-Dot art this year and Alex absolutely loves it.  DLTK’s Crafts for Kids has some great templates for Do-A-Dot or Bingo Dauber Art.  There’s nothing better than a marker that is made to be stamped without risk to destroying the lovely pointy tip on the end of the marker (we’ve been through many, many markers that sadly have no point left at all).

Alex’s favorite subject in the whole entire world is Dinosaurs.  We eat, sleep and breathe dinosaurs in this house.  And what could possibly be more fun than making fossils as we learn everything known to man about the dinosaurs?  And as we quickly decided, why stop at dinosaur fossils when you can have airplanes and snakes and turtle shells and even some kangaroo feet too?

We’re enjoying a nice weekend after a busy first week of school, but I find myself smiling each time I hear my little student ask, “are we going to do school now?”  I only hope I can continue to foster such a love of learning as he grows older and we find more exciting things to study.  For now, he seems quite content to search for dinosaurs that start with the letter “A”.