Not the First Day of School

Haley Jane loves to learn and I love to teach.  We make quite the nerdy team.  When she was 20 months, Colby read her “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and shortly thereafter she memorized the alphabet.  I jumped on board buying Leap Pad learning toys and spent time with her every day “playing school.”  Since birth, the world has been our classroom and everything from cereal boxes to street signs have been our curriculum.  I decided this year to start kindergarten with her even though she turned 5 in October and would have missed the cut-off to start school in VA.  I feel the pressure to teach her to read and write in English since the school system here will only teach her to do that in Icelandic.

In August, school started.  I was doing a mixture of FIAR (a literature based curriculum) and old lesson plans I used when I was a teacher (mostly Four Block).  I found a lot of resources online and did a lot of hands-on stuff, so we got away with a cheap school year!   It was a lot of fun and Haley never ceases to amaze me with her brilliance.  I am seriously intimidated by her sometimes.  In January Haley “graduated” from kindergarten and is now starting a new phase of the school year:  Learning Icelandic!  Stay tuned as Haley starts full-time Icelandic-immersion-Pre-school…