I may have mentioned before that I am using Little Saints: A Catholic Preschool Program with Classical Disciplines for working with my three and a half year old Clare. ( Wow! I just realized that it was her half birthday yesterday.) The book is divided up into lessons for each week of the months beginning in September and going through May. Each lesson is meant to be spread out during three days in one week. As I think that would be a bit much for us I decided to follow someones advice on the Catholic Answers Forum and do only every other lesson spreading the program out over two years and allowing two weeks time to complete a lesson . I think I may try doing two lessons per week (enough to finish the two lessons for that month in three weeks) and take the last week of each month off. It's not that the lessons are very long or hard but it has been said by others that it is a lot of prep work, especially if you have a lot of other kids to take care of. This isn't the case for me right now but I like to have the flexibility of not having to stick to the three days a week and also be able to do other things outside of the program as well. This also allows for plenty of time in case of sickness and other unexpected events and then I won't feel guilty for getting behind.
The program has themes for each lesson with book lists, music for listening too, poems, nursery rhymes, finger plays, as well as art projects and learning games. I'm not really a hands on person but I am finding that the art projects and "learning games" to be very enjoyable (once the supplies are acquired for carrying them out). Sometimes I think, "What is the point of this?" or "Is this really going to work out?" only to find out how much my daughter enjoys a particular activity and it turns out to be really cool. For example, there was one activity where we used an old bread crumb contatiner with the bottom cut out and taped a small piece of poster board with small wholes punched in it that would indicate where the stars of a constellation would be. We then took my son's book light and to put into the open end of the bread crumb container, went into a dark room and Voila! there were stars in the shape of the big dipper on our celing! Clare loved it and it was really very simple. I don't do all the art projects and learning games just the ones I think can be done with relatively little effort.
I am looking forward to see how working with this program comes together for us as we are still just starting out. I will keep you posted and maybe talk more about it in another post.
No comments:
Post a Comment