Jack's Cool Classroom

I have been considering home schooling Jack for about a year, and I think I needed that much time to convince myself I was actually capable of doing it.  I jumped into this homeschooling journey like I jump into everything I do, and that's head first and with no mercy.  If there is one thing I can say about me it's that I never do anything halfway.  It's 200% or nothing.  This was no exception.  Yes, yes I know... It's just Pre-K, not Yale.  I get that, but somewhere  in my brain I can't differentiate between the two.  Someone asked me to bake a batch of cookies this week because they thought that would be fairly easy for me to do, and I baked a double batch of gourmet brownies instead.  It's my personality and it's what I do, just deal with it folks.

I became concerned about Jack last year, it seemed to me like he was far behind our other kids when they were his age.  He was having difficulty counting, couldn't tell you how old he was, and just wasn't getting it.  Then it hit me one day, DUH!  It's because he isn't in daycare like all the other kids were.  Of course he isn't learning as fast as they did, he isn't getting any sort of preschool education.  Then it hit me again (stay with me people, I know I'm a slow study at this stuff) that it was solely MY responsibility to teach him these things before he went off to Kindergarden.  Gulp.  Me?  Ugh.  I had flashbacks to when Justice went to take his "Kindergarden entrance exam" and how well he did, and how proud I was of him.  Another revelation... I had nothing to do with that.  It was all his preschool and Pre-K teachers.  I hadn't really taught him anything, he learned it all from school.  I worked 60+ hours per week and honestly had nothing to do with the academic intelligence floating around up in his head.  And that brings us back to Jack.  I began to have horrible visions in my head about him failing his Kindergarden entrance exam and him getting a bad start in school because of a lack of education at home.  I know Jack's personality very well, and if he gets frustrated at something he gets stubborn and bad things happen.  I knew that if he went in to Kindergarden clueless then he wouldn't like it and he wouldn't succeed without a struggle.  And although the public school system offers Pre-K, we do not qualify because it is a Head Start program and is income restricted.  While I think he is behind, he is not so far behind that he qualifies to enter Pre-K in the public schools.  So I did a ton of internet research, pieced together three or four different curriculums that I liked, and turned half of my craft room into a classroom for Jack.  

I gave him a desk on one end of the craft table and laminated a name strip to the top.  Yes, I printed his name.  Don't laugh until you buy a jumbo word strip and do it yourself, printing all the letters correctly.  Third time was the charm, and even then it's pretty tragic looking.  

On his desk area I also have a small pocket chart with the date.

And here is where things may have gotten out of hand.  I started out with a simple bulletin board to display the "Letter of the Week", and one thing just let to another and before I knew it half the room was covered with educational things.  

Numbers, shapes and colors

I bought this calendar many years ago, and it's somehow or another made it all these years with all the numbers except lucky 13.  I suppose I ought to stitch up a new one.

Feelings are really something we need to work on with Jack.  He has a lot of feelings, and most of them are tragic.  He gets mad quickly and often, and is stubborn as a mule.  He has a difficult time differentiating between his emotions, and we are working with these cute little monsters so he can tell the difference between angry and sad.  Or in other words, in the spirit of http://mackfamilymom.blogspot.com/2012/08/jacks-foul-language.html, rather than have him say 

"I'm p***** off!!"

I'd much prefer him to say 

"I'm frustrated" or scared, or disappointed.  You know, ANYTHING other than p*****.

Here is a shot of all of it put together.

Pocket chart for learning sight words and phonics

And finally, a body part poster.  Here's to hoping when he skins his knee he will stop running into the house screaming 

"My shoulder, my shoulder is bleeding!"

I cleared out a couple bookshelves in the classroom for his educational items.  He's got plenty of flashcards, lots of educational games and toys, musical instruments and even some play dough.  Purchasing play dough was a big deal for me.  I hate play dough.  Shandi had it once about 16 years ago, it lasted ten minutes and it was gone.  Justice never had it, and Jack hasn't either until now.  I will keep it for educational purposes only.  I'm a big meanie, I know.  I also have a little treasure chest (on the right) and if he is an awesome scholar all week long then on Friday after class he gets to pick something out of it.  

I truly hope this will be a good experience for him and that I can teach him the things he needs to enter Kindergarden with a great attitude towards learning.  One thing is for certain, I've got the classroom part down!