Student Spotlight: Faith (preschool)

   Faith is 4.5 years old now. She's a delicious little package of determination and chutzpah. She'll conquer the world some day; I'm certain of it.







   Academically I require nothing of her, yet not a day goes by that she doesn't take the initiative to pull her school books out. She always has the option to just close the book mid-lesson and declare school over for the day. So far she's only done that once since we began this school year. Usually her dilemma is that I don't give her enough school.

   Faith's goal for the year is to get more school books. Her favorite color waffles between purple and blue, she likes music, Dora the Explorer, riding her bike, reading, camping, and playing with dolls. When we asked her to find her favorite book for her school picture she couldn't decide on one. "Well, I don't really like picture books anymore, but I don't have a favorite chapter book yet." As we were heading for the van she grabbed the "prettiest" one off the book pile on her way out.

   Faith can read short vowel words and consonant blends with ease, and is starting to branch out into long vowels. In math she counts to 100 with ease, has a very solid grasp of addition, and I think she was born with number sense. Her current new concept is working on teen numbers, and seeing how they're built with a ten and some extra ones.

   Here's her curricula list for the '12-'13 school year.

• Phonics instruction: Phonics Pathways

• Readers: CLP's kindergarten phonics readers, and yet one more set of BOB Books (she found them at Costco and couldn't be parted)

• Math: Rod and Staff math 1, the first edition with the ducks (This starts with K level math, and oh so gently rolls up to first grade material.)

   If this line-up continues to not get her little cup full I'll add a penmanship book.


End of the school year curricula comments, added June 2013

    Phonics Pathways didn't make it to the end. She thought the act of reading out of the big book with mom was babyish, and craved lessons that looked like her sibling's spelling lessons. I switched her to Writing Road to Reading, which has worked fabulously for her thus far. We plan to continue it into next year.

   She finished those basal readers eons ago, and read through Veritas Press Kindergarten Favorites too. 

   Writing Road to Reading includes penmanship.