My approach...

I was initially really excited about homeschool and all the ideas came flooding in of projects we'd do, activities to follow, etc.
Then reality set in...I'm a single parent 5 days out of the week, sometimes 7 depending on my husbands schedule, I have a new baby and a 3 year old exploring her limits with quite a strong personality...my abilities and her attention span thrown in well lets just say that excitment has died down.

I have now set goals to reach by the end of the "year" and by year I mean my own school year determined as ending on June 10th.

Kaitlyn will be able to...
* Identify and write each letter
* Write her own name
* Identify and write numbers 0-20
* Know her address and her parents phone numbers

I hope I am not setting myself up for failure! At the moment we are working on the letter 'K'...we'll do that for this week then chose another letter. At the end of 3 weeks we will do a synopsis of the past 3 weeks of letters. We will be working on recognizing numbers every week, once she can recognize the numbers easily we will move onto writing the numbers.

We also do non-structured learning, driving in the car Kaitlyn will point out a truck so we will then talk about what letter truck starts with and then see if we can find other things that start with that same letter.

On Wednesday's we go to the library for an hour for the preschool program, which includes story time and an activity. Wednesday nights are Awana, where Kaitlyn will learn about Christ in a structured environment.

She also has dance two nights a week for an hour each time as well as MOPS every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, intermixed with playdates and time outside. We are busy, but like it that way! We learn were we can and don't stress about missing days sitting down and 'hitting the books'. She is after all only 3 :)

My approach is laid back, I have a household to run, a newborn to care for, a master degree in the works and my own sanity at risk!

Materials

We wondered into Target today for something totally unrelated and came out with a ton of new materials!
The dollar bin was having a 75% off special on brown dot items, we scored flash cards, mini white boards with letters, shapes, colours, days of the week and numbers, colouring/activity books and some letter books for 25cents each!

I also bought a new printer today to print out our templates.

In addition to two preschool homeschool books we have a lot of things to work with!

Plus; markers, crayons, chalk, scissors, glue, glitter, stickers, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, googly eyes, construction paper, playdough, paints and magnet letters.

We will also be using materials from my new favorite blogsite, thanks to my friend Steph for sharing!
Confessions of a Homeschooler
I have downloaded and began to print out her templates...this weekend I WILL be organized and set up our lesson plans! (Check back Monday for those!)

This is our calendar, we go over days of the week, what month it is and everyday change over our "day".

This is another one of our daily activities, we go through the whole alphabet and numbers to fill our board each day! I have noticed each day she is recognizing more and more letters on her own!

Our current corner of supplies, from art stuff too books, computer programs, and playdough! In the next week I will be adding a desk to this area to give us more space for our supplies and an area for Mummy to be organized!