Today was our first session at Eden Co-Op! It went so well! Right when Jack came into the school, he just stared in awe at all the shelves of materials. I let him spend the first 10 minutes exploring the classroom before having him sit on the rug where I had prepared a workspace. I had him trace a few sand letters, telling me the names of each letter, what sound they made, and then I had him use the big sound board to help him name something that started with each letter. Ah, to have an unlimited amount of resources ready and waiting to be used... it was wonderful. After quickly going through Lesson 18 in the Teach Your Child to Read book, we worked on sounds and sorted miniature items according to whether they had the sounds "oo" "ee" "ie" "ai" and "oa." We then did some rhyming exercises, and right after this Jack decided he wanted to go back to exploring the room. I had him do one more activity (spelling words with Melissa & Doug See & Spell...he is too advanced for this normally, but it was a good confidence booster, which he needs sometimes), and then he read two pages out of Go, Dog! Go. He had some difficulty sounding out the words, which was frustrating for the both of us because I know he knows those words, and he just seemed as though he was itching to get up and explore. I then read him a chapter out of Captain Underpants and then let him loose. He worked diligently on some math materials until his mom came to pick him up... He didn't want to leave though, which made me smile.
Oh, another thing I wanted to note: after showing Jack's mom the classroom and describing the materials and the Montessori Method, she indicated that this was a school that would have been a good preschool for Jack, and he should have gone somewhere like this. Another smile. :)
