Five Year Olds

L to R: Leah (Samuel), Krista (Lydia), Christina (Will), Margaret (Meredith)

I'm not sure if we've ever told our readers - but most of us POH authors met during our time teaching together!  In fact, four of us were pregnant together and all due in August 2006. (Actually, I think Leah was due in September, but Samuel was born in August!)

Here is a picture from a baby shower our co-workers gave us (including another friend, Jennifer). It is SO hard for me to believe that this picture was taken FIVE years ago. You can actually see how icky swollen (with preeclampsia) I was in this picture. It was taken less than two weeks before Will was born! He was the first of our oldest bunch of kiddos to be born.

Subsequently, he'll be the first of our babies to turn FIVE in just a few weeks! There is something about five that seems so old. I'm sure it has something to do with...

SCHOOL! 

So here we all are with soon-to-be five year olds that are ready to begin their school days! We're all in the thick of the decision making process for our oldest children. I plan to write a more detailed post on what my husband and I have learned along the way and decided for Will, our oldest. In the meantime, I asked the other POH authors where they were in the process as well. Here is what they shared: 

Margaret:

Meredith is turning five in August and would be eligible for Kindergarten.  She is a highly motivated child and can read and write, and thoroughly enjoys doing so.  I'm looking into homeschool curriculums and have yet to decide on a particular one.  For now, we have completed Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, she practices reading, writing and math on a daily basis (informally), and we are working our way through the Core Knowledge Series for Kindergarten (not exhaustive), as well as a few workbooks when she asks to do them (from Kumon and some from Target).  Krista: Lydia is turning five in August and would be eligible to begin kindergarten in the states.  While we would not choose to put her in public school if we were there until she could be an “older” in her class, we will begin homeschooling her with a K curriculum this fall.  I’m still doing research and pulling it all together, and plan to blog about it in a few weeks when it’s my week. Leah P: Samuel will turn 5 in late August. The cutoff for school in the Chicago area is Sept 1, so I could enroll him in kindergarten if I wanted. We have decided to keep Samuel at home for two reasons: 1) We feel he isn't ready to enter the school setting because of his age, and 2) we are pretty sure we'd like to homeschool him and we thought this would be a good year to give it a try. We plan on attending a homeschool co-op in the area on Mondays, Bible Study Fellowship on Thursdays and a couple hours of "school" at home the other days. I plan on doing things with both Joel (3.5) and Samuel(5). Leah F: Georgia will be five in October, and as such is not eligible for (public school) Kindergarten until the fall of 2012. We plan to homeschool our children for at least their first few years of school, and intend start with Georgia this fall. Though I have not finalized my plans, I think I will use Sonlight for Pre-K/K. When Georgia is a little older, we intend to use a classically based homeschool curriculum, either Tapestry of Grace or following the suggestions of The Well-Trained Mind. Hollie: Laney turns five in December, so we are going to try a year of homeschooling starting this Fall.  Up to this point, Laney has not gone to preschool, although she would have LOVED it. We have worked on reading/phonic on chalk/dry erase boards, as well as through starfall.com. I have yet to decide which curriculum we will use, but Sonlight or Abeka are two options we're considering. Meg: Karis is turning 4 in May and we are not planning to send her to preschool this coming year and probably not kindergarten the following year.  I taught preschool before I had children and I'm so excited to teach Karis!  There are so many fun things I want to do with her! As far as curriculum, I have recently started going through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teach Reading by Wise with Karis.  She has enjoyed learning the letter rhymes and I think it is going to easily teach her to read.  Last year we read through most of the books in the Sonlight P3/4 curriculum (mainly by checking them out at the library and buying a few of them on Amazon) and this year I plan to read the rest of them and most of the Sonlight 4/5 curriculum.