TLC Academy is Proud to Present: Infant Education!!

In the wee hours of the morning, odd commercials pop up. They go on and on for upto 60 minutes at a time, alwyas trying to get you to buy their new latest and greatest item. This is nothing new, I had become mostly immune to them years before. One infomercial (and now 2) has stood out over the last few years, promising amazing results and showing such adoreable and tiny babies READING words and books like nobodies business.

Yes, I am talking about Your Baby Can Read! This program stuck in our minds because it boasts that for only 15 dollars, we could try their program and get our little ones on the road to become good readers too. We made the call. It's actually 228 dollars after taxes and shipping. For a complete cirriculum, that's a decent price. We paid a little extra to get it in 3 days.

So we have it here, and the children have been following it now for a week, loosely. Last night, I was sitting at the computer talking to a friend via Yahoo... my newly 3 year old climbed up in my lap, and wanted to talk too. I typed out a word and asked her to tell me what it was. She was wrong, and I wrote out the one she guessed, so she can see the differance. Then I typed out the next word.

nose

"Nose!" and she points to her nose.


eyes

"Eyes" and points to her closed eyes.

I start doing the excited "Good Job" dance. She got 3 words right last night. Then we introduced another, because she wanted to see what that one looked like too. I bet I need to write Level 1's 22 words out somewhere, so I remember to work all 22 and not just the 10 on the slide cards.

My 13 month old is also watching and doing the program. He is following directions, and focused on the DVD, and engaged in the activities, so I know that he's learning too.

DH says it's already the best 200 dollars he's ever spent~ Just on the way the first day had gone (which was AWESOME).

Spring Break has begun...

Spring break began for TLC Academy yesterday. The girls spent the day trying to find something to do, and quickly ran out of thrilling ideas. They bounced, they colored, they played in the puddle, watered the garden, checked on the sprouts, watched mind numbing TV, and asked a billion "Can I..?" questions. For the most part, they were even well behaved and realitively well behaved.

Early this morning, I was asked "Mommy, when will Easter be over?" Huh? Why on earth would you want Easter to be OVER??? "Easter is next Sunday. Why do you ask?" I inquire, thinking about this child's personality and what might be motivating her.

"Well, after Easter we can do studies again, right?" Ohhhhh!! :-) I LOVE this child! "Sweety, we can do studies anytime. I have them all ready :)

So I spent some time getting things printed out for activities One Room School House style :-) They started out with coloring both sides of a gigantic quarter, then cut it out, and glued it together. Then I passed out a worksheet with coloring directions. All 3 girls completed the worksheet on their own, and all 3 girls got 100% accuracy!!! My Preschooler may be a little ahead!! Then I passed out a Reading and Wordbuilding activity, and they built compound words from a group of fun words and pictures. Finish it off with some Home Economics (chores and supper) Health (nutrition and hygeine) and Science (seedling observation and counting), and I would call today a very productive day.

President's Week

Here in California, the public school systems think the children need an entire week off of school in order to celebrate the President's Birthdays. Honestly, I feel this is silly.

Across the country, my friends are buried under a freezing blanket of snow. Their schools have been out all last week. Those children will have to make up their wonder-filled snowy days sitting in the dreary classroom in mid June :-(

TLC Academy schools year round. We take days off here and there, sometimes even a whole season, if we get wrapped up in other things. I've noticed that instead of forgetting what was learned, my children not only retained it, but they thought about it, and understand it better then they had before!! We might LOOK like we are out of school for a day, or even a week; we are actually working on other things.

Not a scrap of paper was written on today. Instead, the students learned many things about Earth Science and Biology by working in the new garden. They jumped on the trampoline for PE. Tonight, to even things out a bit, I'll have the girls each read a bedtime story to the littles. Math was used in discussing the dimensions of the area we had cleared so far, how many worms we would have if we divided each one into 2 parts, and in the planning of the crops. I suppose we also touched on Nutrition, when we discussed how benificial it is to grow our own veggies, and all the while we sat soaking up fresh air and Vitamin D in it's simplest form- sunshine!

Welcome

Welcome to the TLC Academy. We are a private homeschool located in beautiful northern California. We have 2 students in the elementary grades, 1 student in preschool, and one infant exploring everything.

I've been homeschooling my children for 6 years now (WOW!~ time flies!) and I am loving every minute of it. In fact, I can't think of it being any other way!

I have a lot to write, and little time... So I will call it good to get the website created and shared with you all, and write more later. The class needs to go plot out a garden.