First Weeks of Homeskooling

We have made the leap into our next phase of child-rearing . . . and here are some of the results of our first days:

Ashley learned how to spell her name:

And, Vinny learned how to do an Elmo puzzle:

In all seriousness . . . we are using a curriculum called "Little Saints Preschool Program" and it is so cute! This Pre-K year for Ashley is our guinea pig year to try to figure out how to make it all work. The program provides lessons for 3 days each week, so we're doing 2 days at home by ourselves and 1 day with 2 other families, with each mom taking a week to teach on a rotating basis. We've also been planning out some complementary field trips over the course of the fall.

Ashley has really enjoyed all the activities, stories and art projects so far. Here we are with Pudding Play, learning to make letters in our 2nd week's theme of Alphabet Fun.

We also worked on lower-case letters on the fridge:

And, LOOK! I think Ashley is about to spell out "Grand____!" [Fill out the spaces with the letters of your choice.]
This fishing game was a big hit. I made fish that have one letter of each of their names, so they catch the fish of their color and then spell out their name. (I included Vinny in this one so there were more fish in the little pond.)

Here are Jacob & Ashley on our first Co-Op Day (John Paul was sick):

Here's the new piece of furniture that Nick made for us to better store some of the toys and books we keep downstairs.
And, finally, don't leave the markers lying around. Otherwise, you might end up with a brown-nosed child.

PS - You may have noticed that Vinny never seems to have pants on in any of our pictures lately . . . we've been potty training for about a month now. He's doing pretty well. Maybe we're about 65% of the way there? :)