Child Led Swimming Lessons

Gregory taught himself how to swim. Can you believe it?

Austin can finally go back underwater and the two of them will go down for 19 minutes and actually play with each other underwater now.

Austin had a good day yesterday. He woke up yesterday morning on his own and was screeching, "Mama, Mama!" That would be pretty insignificant for another child, but I've had to wake him up every single morning of his life. I now know that children with hydrocephalus can't wake up and this makes so much sense to me now. So the fact he's waking on his own is a very good sign.

I've been slacking with the homeschooling since all this started with Austin. We've still been doing it, but I haven't been getting stuff ready ahead of time and I've just been winging it. But not anymore. I'm back. I was up at 5:30 this morning making bean bags for an ordinal counting game we'll do today. I even made fingerpaint from liquid starch yesterday.

I am into my FOURTH preschool program and here is my critique of each program.

Berry Best Preschool was the very first one I tried over a year ago. This one sucks. It doesn't come with a curriculum at all. It just comes with one craft and one worksheet per day. It came loose-leaf and even the "extras" are in a big bag you have to dig through to try to match up with the corresponding day. I was not impressed. It's cheap though.

Star Brite Learning was the program we just finished. I don't like it. Although it has tons and tons and tons of crafts, it's really light on the academics and the crafts don't really drive home the academics. I did like their calendar activity the best and I think I'm going to keep that when I go back to the Learning Box. I threw out the last 3 days.

Home Preschool Program is the one that we just recently started. I like the curriculum. The materials suck though. It comes loose-leaf too with a big bag of "extras" which are not impressive at all. But the curriculum makes up for it. They have been around the longest and they really need to update their technology and materials and then would have a much better program. It's expensive for what you get too.

The Learning Box is the best by far. I LOVE this one. The only reason I tried so many others is that the Learning Box didn't have a summer program. This one has the best curriculum and the best materials. Each day comes packaged together with all the extras and it comes with LOTS AND LOTS of extras. I love that the curriculum comes in a nice book for the whole month because I will read it ahead of time.

I went ahead and ordered the Learning Box for September, October, and November. For four kids with shipping that was $172. But that's only $57 per month and I frankly don't even see how they can do it for $57. You get two books and loads and loads and loads of material. They Fed-Ex it too. I don't think they're even making any money on the shipping. I could never duplicate this on my own for $57. NEVER!

Greg should be happy that I just saved him $743 per month, shouldn't he?