Headstart Homeschooling

As a Mom of a very clever very quick-learning little boy I'm convinced with his eagerness for new knowledge my 20 month son is NOT too young to start school.

We work as a family from a truck and we decided long before having kids that we wanted to homeschool to spend more time together. I always thought we'd start working with him on his first year of homeschooling when he was four or five, but I know he's ready now! There are a billion books and blogs to read about what your kids need to learn but at such a young age I'm working hard to introduce things that interest and encourage him in order to naturally induce more of a desire for him to learn even more!

Here's what we are working in this week: colors, shapes, numbers, letters, and rhyming. That may sound like alot, but let me give you examples of how we are practicing learning each one.

Colors are the easiest, they can be learned along with other Simple first words: "Gunner, do you see the green grass." "Is that leaf green?" "Mommy's shirt is green."
My son has recently started saying pink, girl, pretty because the first time he saw pink it was a little girl's sparkly pink shoes.

Shapes, these are harder they will just take more time and repetition. I have one of those magna doodle boards for the truck that's small and easy to pack in his bag. I draw shapes and say their names and he traces then copies them while repeating their names. This one is still a work in progress for us.

Numbers, Gunner loves to count when he gets to three he starts over at one unless I remind him. We count to three then jump, we count fingers and toes, we count food, we count when we read number books, practice, practice, practice and using several different methods is how your little one will get their numbers down.

Letters Gunner loves reading them, drawing them with me, we say the alphabet, we point and say the names of letters he has in a magnetic cilirful alphabet set, and today we played a new game that he really enjoyed.

This game is where the learning to rhyme came into place as well. I would say a letter and he would repeat it, then I'd say the sound the letter made for him to repeat next then he repeated after me words that began with that same letter, most of them matching of course. Then we would start the game again, but this time he got to pick a letter or word forme to repeat! This game in addition to being a great learning tool also kept our boy entertained in the truck for a whole hour when he really wasn't enjoying being cooped up, woohoo!