Preschool with Amita - What I've Done Until This Point

I am a natural teacher. It is my passion and I love it. I remember the first night in the hospital holding my precious little baby Amita and singing the ABCs to her. I suppose I have been homeschooling for a while now.

I try to incorporate learning opportunities into everything we do. Because Amita was very delayed in her speech, I spoke with her a lot - pointing out everything to her in an effort to get her vocabulary to increase. When I go to the grocery store, we identify foods and count the number of things going in the cart. We go the the library often and pick books that will encourage a love of reading. I talk to her when I make food for her, explaining what I'm doing. I tell her the sequence of our day. I mostly just try to involve her in everything I can.  She enjoys learning and likes understanding what is going on in the world around her.

I am also involved in a Mom's Group that meets every Wednesday. This is a great opportunity for the kids to be able to socialize and for me to get some time to talk with other like-minded adults! There are around 5 moms and 9 kids.  I love it!

We are involved in Parents as Teachers (PAT) - a program through the local public school that provides an educator who is certified in Early Childhood Education to children in the area. Our coordinator is named Patti. She comes about every three weeks and provides educational games and activities for the girls and makes sure they are meeting all of their educational and developmental milestones. There are also many group activities available and classes for parents. Here is the link to the website:

http://pat.grandblanc.city.schoolfusion.us/modules/calendar/showCalendarMonth.phtml?gid=766923&sessionid=b9305

If anyone reading this is interested, it should be available through many school districts in the US for free, it just depends on the district and the amount of funding allocated.


We also participate in a program called Early On Michigan. We originally became involved in this when Amita was not speaking. We were referred by Patti from PAT and our pediatrician. We came in contact with them and an evaluation was done to conclude that Amita qualified for services in the area of speech. Since then, our coordinator, Carrie, helps us set goals and milestones (an early childhood IEP) for Amita in terms of speech. She comes every couple of months and calls once a month to track her process and offer advice and support. She was tremendously helpful when Amita was not speaking. Since the intervention, Amita has met and surpassed all of her speech goals and will be exiting the program in a couple of months.

Here is the early on link: https://www.1800earlyon.org

So this is what I do. I scour the Internet looking for educational activities and I do them. I keep the girls active in PAT, Early On, and Mom's Group. I am looking to get a more organized curriculum, though, and subsequent posts will follow my search for a more complete curriculum for Amita.