This Fall pretty much sucked. I accepted an additional teaching position for two sections of a class, then when my schedule was as full as possible, my mom died.
Thus, this blog got no attention for months.
Rachel learned a lot about death this fall. Our cat died a few weeks after we returned from my mom's. What amazed me is that when we went to bury the cat, she took a flower and tossed it in on top of him in the grave. She had never seen that done.
We read a book about death and we talked a lot about it. Plus, she has seen me crying a lot and I've explained that I really miss my Mommy. She has only asked once about when I was going to die and that she hoped it wasn't for a long, long time.
We continue to read every morning, cuddled on the couch with hot chocolate and coffee. Recently, she was introduced to the concept of an index page. She loves to look up a word in the index and then find it in the book. She also is starting to grasp the concept of a book title and an author.
I've started planning for January. We're going to start FIAR in a formal manner. David and I have decided that Rachel will be mostly homeschooled for JK. She will attend a local private kindergarten for 2-3 half-days a week so she can play with other kids. We don't have any other kids her age on the street, so I have to be very intentional about arranging social time with kids her age.
We're going to start with "The Rag Coat". I want to take between a week to ten days with each book.
