Letter Lessons

This may interest next to none of you, but I’m posting it for my own accountability!

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I didn’t think I”d have to make the homeschool-or-not decision until much farther down the road, but it seems that nowadays the second a kid turns three they head to preschool.  I certainly won’t make any decisions about what’s right for other kids, but at this point we’re  not sending Dutch to preschool, mostly because I need all the time I can to shape that crazy wicked heart of his.

So I recently red this Revolutionary Parenting book, and Jeff and I spent time in Texas talking through our plan for this next year, for Dutch.  If he’s not in preschool I figured I better figure out what he’s supposed to be learning!  And it seems fairly unanimous, among Christian educators (and my mom who owns the subject), that the way to go is teaching character primarily, with other skills as secondary.  Basically, use character lessons in order to teach math, reading, science, etc.  That makes sense to me, since it doesn’t matter if Dutch can do algebra by age 5, if he’s lazy, dishonest, and rude he’ll still be sunk.

So, bear with me, this is kinda scary and vulnerable to share my idea.  I’m one of those people who does best (perhaps it’s pride), teaching something that I developed myself. I have to own it to teach it.  So I decided that to teach Dutch the alphabet, we would learn one letter each week, through a focus on a character trait.  Jeff’s goal is to do a little mini Dinner Devotional–basically a 5 minute Bible story that relates to the character trait we’re learning.  Then we’d reinforce manifestations of that character trait, reinforce the letters through things he’s interested in (they have Thomas the train engines for almost every letter of the alphabet), read verses about that trait, you get the idea.

So, our 26 character traits, specifically picked out because of Dutch’s unique–ahem–needs.

Attentive

Brave

Compassion

Discipline

Enthusiasm (not sure that he needs this one)

Forgiveness

Gentleness

Honesty

Integrity

Joyfulness

Kindness

Love

Meekness

Neatness

Obedience

Patience

Quick to respond

Respect

Servanthood

Thankfulness

Understanding

Valuing others

Wisdom

eXercise

Yielding

Zealous

So this week we’ve been doing Attentive, and it’s been kind of fun. He can now recognize the letter a, so that’s cool, and we’ve looked up online and found Thomas engines named Arrie, Alfie, Annie & Arthur.  He knows that Attentive means, “See, listen, and respond.”  Now, if we can only get him to do it!  Jeff taught him the story of the little boy Samuel, who heard God’s voice and responded, “Speak for your servant listens.”  He still dumped the bin of Legos on Heidi’s head this morning, however, so we have a ways to go. 🙂

I’d love to hear others/your ideas on teaching preschoolers character traits, as well as reading and math/counting skills.  This is so new to me it feels like writing with my left hand,  but I figure we have to start somewhere!  And I figured if I posted this I’d be less likely to quit.  So I’m off to be Attentive!