Homeschooling officially begins...

The local powers that be have decreed that my dd, age 4, is supposedly old enough to begin full-day kindergarten in just three weeks, where she will be expected to feed and care for herself for six consecutive hours, be surrounded by peers whose home environments and values are completely out of our control, and be taught over 100 sight words by the end of the school year. To that, I say "Pshaw!"

Seriously, how absurd! So, we're about to start being some of those counter-culture homeschoolers. Our dd will still spend most of her day with me, and she'll learn how to read (for real, not just memorizing 100 words) by Christmas by working with me for just a few minutes a day. She's been in a linguistically-rich home all her life, and she can already sound out simple CVC words. (Did I mention recently how much I love the starfall.com website?) We recently started doing one page a day (we do go back and re-read the little stories from previous days because she likes the pictures and accompanying text) from Reading With Phonics* by Julie Hay and Charles Wingo. I can tell she is ready to steadily and easily progress through the entire book as long as I don't push her too fast and burn out her interest. Hooray for great reading instruction books and more time with dd, who is very dear to me indeed.

*Note: this Lippincott book is old and has some humorously un-P.C. things in it. For example, yesterday's reading ended with the sentence "Toy guns are fun." (Well, they are, aren't they?)