Courtney and School

1. We got a letter from Aldrich Elementary yesterday inviting Courtney to kindergarten roundup.She even got assigned a teacher for roundup and it is Megan's old teacher!  I have never registered her for kindergarten because we plan on homeschooling. Are they expecting her for kindergarten?
Anyway, do we let her attend kindergarten roundup because it is sort of a rite of passage for kindergarteners (plus it is fun)? Or do we completely skip it because she won't be going to school there anyway? I really think she would enjoy going to school next year, but Matt and I think homeschooling is the best choice for our children right now.

I talked to her about it yesterday because I want her opinion when it comes to kindergarten roundup. She knows she is homeschooling, but she did have one concern- friends! I told her that we would definitely take some classes and get involved in more groups next year. That seemed to help.

2.  Courtney's language arts program came in the mail the other day, I ordered it off of ebay. And of course, I got, "Can we start tomorrow??"

3. Last night, dinner turned into math 101. Along with working on reading with Courtney, we have also been working on simple addition and subtraction.  Megan thinks it is great that she can help Courtney with school.  It became "Who can come up with a story problem?" and then solve it too. Courtney would come up with one, then Megan, and then myself. We had great fun thinking of things and then solving them! 

I told her that if she was going to public school, then I certainly wouldn't be encouraging math so much.  Megan did just a little bit in kindergarten, but really hit math hard in 1st grade.  The math curriculum I am going to order for the two girls next year is Horizons Math. They seem to bump things up a bit (even though Megan was going into 2nd grade math, she didn't know some of the things Horizons expected her to know at the beginning of the year), so I think by doing this now, it will only help her for next year, not the following year.

4.  Her reading is coming along. I am going to start her with a new set of words on Monday! It is amazing how she is just exposed to a word once and she has it memorized.  She came home from preschool the other day and said, "Mom, I know how to spell zoo" and she spelled it z-o-o. I asked her who taught her that and she said her friend Zoey. Great! So then we talked about "boo" and "moo" and now she knows all three!

She is still struggling with some words (N-O-T) even though we have been over and over them.  My goal is to expose her to words and start to recognize them. She will also sometimes see a word that we have been over and say, "I don't know what it says!" I always respond with, "Yes you do, sound it out!" and then she sounds it out and she remembers that she knows it. She needs a little confidence that she really does know these words!