Good grief! It is the middle of July already. Where has the time gone? I will begin an accounting of my summer so far. Since our daughter quit going to daycare at the end June a large amount of time has been dedicated to establishing a new at-home routine for the entire family. As much as possible we are attempting to have a learning environment during the week. Reading, crafts, plenty of field trips to museums, cooking time and some pre-literacy work. She has letter recognition down, we are working on sounds and how those sounds form words. Counting is going well but she doesn’t know her numbers by sight. So, we have been working on the basics.

We have also watched her favorite video, Totoro, about twenty times (we’ve had it checked out from the local library for most of the summer). This animated film is by Hayao Miyazaki and produced through his Studio Ghibli (which now has its own iGoogle theme -see above).

Home school is going well so far. Today we learned about the parts of a car – tire, trunk, hood, steering wheel, etc. As an educator this has been good for me – if she’s not truly interested the whole endeavor falls apart. Without the power of GRADES looming over her our lesson must be authentic all the time.

I am sorting out the stacks of materials from ALA in Anaheim and will post about that adventure soon.