Tot School

My son Booger is advanced. I hate sounding all braggy, but it's true. By birth, he should be finishing second grade, but according to the assessments we completed today, his vocabulary and reading comprehension are at a solid eighth grade level, his math is somewhere between third and fourth grade. There aren't any history or science assessments that I could find, but since our local school system doesn't start history until fourth grade and science until fifth or sixth, I imagine he's ahead in those as well.

I didn't do this on purpose. When he was born I didn't actively set out for him to be Malcolm in the Middle (maybe that's stretching it, he's not *quite* that smart). I didn't start with flash cards and math drills while he was still in a high chair. I didn't intentionally teach him at all. I read to him a lot, and as soon as he went into a big boy bed (16 months) he would sneak out at night and bring half the bookshelf over to the nightlight. Other than reading, I didn't do anything special.

I did, however, have a home day care. I originally started "just watching other peoples' kids" to earn some money. I soon learned that bored kids are bad kids, and also discovered that God blessed me with the ability to teach. So I designed my own preschool curriculum and started advertising home base preschool program. From the time Boog was 8 months old, he sat at Circle Time with the preschoolers, or went to story time at the local library. He participated in all of the arts and crafts, obviously in an age appropriate manner, and all of the field trips. Booger got smart by osmosis.

I don't do home day care anymore, nor do I teach preschool. While homeschooling Booger (as lax as it was this past year) I realized that Weenie is getting old enough that she doesn't take a morning nap and will need something to keep her occupied. While going through the curriculum choices for Booger (and FINALLY have made some choices, more to come on that), I wondered what on Earth am I going to do with Weenie to keep her busy? I've become very familiar with other homeschooling moms who blog about having various ages of children to teach (please check out the buttons listed to the left, they are some fantastic ladies and they offer a plethora of knowledge on all sorts of stuff). So between perusing other homeschooling moms' blogs, I've decided that Weenie isn't too young for an actual curriculum. I've designed curriculum for the preschool age, and thought it would be easy to come up with a toddler curriculum. However, with all of the different roles I play (wife, mom, home school teacher, Sunday school teacher, youth group teacher, college student, housewife, etc.) the thought of doing one more thing nearly made me sick to my stomach. So I did some more research. There are free, online, pre-made toddler curricula out there on the world wide web! Who knew?!

My goal with Weenie is to provide three intentional activities a day (I cannot for the life of me remember who else said the same thing, but I thought it was a great idea and if you're reading this and have said the same thing in your own blog, please comment so I can give credit where credit is due!). I will be combining two different pre-made curriculum programs, (Slow and Steady Get Me Ready, by June R. Oberlander; and an online program I found at http://www.pammshouse.com/toddlers) and working in activities I get emailed to me by a fabulous fellow Tweeter who has an awesome webpage (http://www.play-activities.com/)

How about you guys? Do you have a toddler that you're using a curriculum with? What has worked with you for scheduling time with little guys versus the big guys? What does this look like at your house? I'd love to hear from y'all!!

And I promise, next post (okay, maybe post after next) will be about Booger's curriculum, and how our family does scheduling and such. Until then, later gators!