Abby, Zoë and Enzo

No, the girls aren't going to 'real' kindergarten, not only because we're in Brazil but because they don't make the age cut off.  However, the girls have been asking when they'll be old enough to be kindergartners since they were three years old.  Also, they have this desire and ability to learn that astounds me.  Sure they are busy bodies and love to run and play, but tell them you're going to do an activity, or better yet a lesson with them, and they run to the table to sit and see what it is.  We've done 'home schooling' type stuff before, but not really.  I hesitate to say that I'm going to home school them this year for a few reasons.  Mostly because the task seems daunting enough without the addition of a baby brother.  There is a lot of information on the internet and lots of resources at the library back home, and it is really exciting to start on the adventure. 

I've started with a tentative schedule with a couple of half hour  'lesson' times in the morning broken up by play time, yoga time, and activities.  In the afternoon, after nap the girls have a time to do their 'daily journals', which is a time they get a piece of paper and get to pick a topic for the day, and write and draw about that on their paper.  The girls love this and are already beginning to write more in with their drawings.  The afternoon also has play time and activity time before it's time to do dinner and all of those evening routine things.  Today began week two and we're going to start doing stuff with maps.  We've done stuff with patterns, which the girls just zoomed through and got things that even Auntie Reanna thought would be tricky for them.  The girls also liked to pick a sentence in one of the books we brought and have individual time with me to try and sound it out, mind you these aren't 'early reader' books so they are a bit trickier.  Reanna mentioned that their class is beginning stuff with mapping and how they're going about it and it sounded perfect for Abby and Zoë.  Both of the girls have been asking since before we left about different things, "do we have that in our country/state/world/etc." and been really interested in that kind of stuff.  So mapping it is and anything that stems out of their curiosity with this.  We'll also still work on some language learning and some reading stuff and work on that underwater swimming too!