How teaching princess at home started.

We rented a video from the library called the Letter Factory. After watching several reruns of it, we found episodes on You Tube. Princess started randomly saying her letters.
 

For Easter we bought her Scout and his dog house, well that progressed things faster. We looked online for ideas, after all Princess  was only 2 1/2yrs old.  We started with the letter A, and daddy and her made an ant hill out of paper mache. Less than 2 weeks in we realized while playing with the Scout Doghouse that she knew over half of her letters. I played a game with her and eventually the only few letters she did not know were,  M-N-V-W-Z. So we focused on those letters. What has turned into 2 1/2 months of fun learning. In june, she knew all her letters even mixed up, her colors, except from white, brown and black,  her numbers ( it helps we live in a 12th floor building with elevators)and most of her shapes. She started  recognizing X's at railway crossing and the octagon stop signs, and often yelled it out in the car.

I was concerned that she lost much of it with a 2 month break this summer. She played and read with DH and has retainned it all, plus has learned to recognize some lower case letters, and numbers and letters in french. I like when she reads to us now, and follows the words with her fingers.  Once book daddy and her started sounding out the letters and she will repeat and say the word. Altought I am sure she sees the picture, its fun to watch.

This fall we will start a day after her birthday and focus on more french. We got an amazing blessing of french workbooks for her. Plus I have printed oodles of printables for her. She has started following the dotted lines. DH and I have settled on a mix of curriculums through Hubbard's Cupboard and ABC Jesus Loves Me, and many free workpages, as well as Dollarama books.

I have read a few site and people are nay-saying about teaching so young and that toddlers and preschoolers should play. Well in playing we discovered Princess learned so we went with the flow. I think you have to take many factors in consideration. Princess loves videos , games and crafts. We made it fun and when she wanted to quit we did. By far we are regimented with her, she is far too young.  We do not regret our choice, and have been encouraged by a handful to continue.

We are excited to start our adventure, as we watch our baby mature, and I remember to learn patience.