I started out the year strong, with Snicklebritches attending special ed for speech and OT and then coming home to do bible curriculum. We kept at it two days a week with the other days a week reinforcing what I showed her on those two days (such as prompting her to look for the color of that week). Then I took six weeks off from that curriculum to give our full attention to Advent, Jesse Tree, Hanukkah, 12 days of Christmas, and then Epiphany. I had planned to start up again the day after MLKj day, but I'm having trouble getting back into the groove of the curriculum. I still feel strongly about homeschooling. Yet I'm dragging my feet starting it back up for the winter portion and I plan to take another six weeks off to focus on Lent/Easter/Passover. I am excited about that, but I am no longer excited about covering shapes, bible verses, colors, numbers, and such as found in the ABCJLM curriculum. Has anybody ever experienced this? Do you find it easier to force yourself to trudge through the lessons or just back off and wait until we both are excited to dive back in? She is turning 4 next month, by the way, so she's still only "preschool" and won't be behind either way. P.S. I do have an autoimmune disease (RA) and during flare ups, I lose my motivation. That may be why I'm slacking off, but I don't think that is the true reason. I need to dig deeper to find the heart of the issue.
And one more practical question... do I skip ahead to where we should have been in the curriculum had we not slacked off or do we pick up at the same spot where we left off?
You are absolutely right, she is only 4 and you can do great activities even without a curriculum. For days when you have a hard time getting up (I think I remember a previous post where you mentioned days where it hurt too much to even get up and move around) you can still work on colors, shapes, numbers, etc. Just make it a little game. You can sit on the couch and send her on scavenger hunts. Tell her to bring you something that is a certain color or shape or to bring you a certain number of items. If she does not know, keep a color or shape chart handy and then point to the picture of what you want. If she struggles with counting, when she brings you items, count how many together. Then, of course, another element can be that you will count how many seconds it takes her to put the items back. Can she do it faster than __seconds. This will get her to clean up the stuff she pulled out. Anyway, that was just a thought that popped into my head.
The four year old can learn about shapes by playing with things. Everything around the house has a shape. Use pots and pans to teach round shapes, the door and 'fridge to teach rectangular shapes, beans for counting and so on. Curriculum isn't necessary at that age. It is easier to teach through daily activities, or life, than it is to set time aside for them to work from curriculum.
