Mommy? What's a.....?

My goodness! I did not think that my daughter was capable of asking anymore questions then she already had been doing for about a year. It seems like since she turned 5 years old they have doubled! It's everywhere - in the car, outside playing, in the house, when we are shopping - non-stop. And of course I do not know ALL the answers so I told Brendon that I have to start carrying around a little notebook so that I can jot down her inquiries and we can look them up on the Internet when we are home. Most of her questions are fairly simple and I can answer them right then and there with no problem but some of them need the help of GOOGLE! She can come up with some pretty tough stuff! ha ha! Thank goodness for the Internet! I couldn't imagine homeschooling without it. :)
We have been doing a "word of the week" for quite some time now, which has really helped her vocabulary (kudos to Grandma Dawnie for starting that). Some of the words she has learned (and uses correctly!) are monstrosity, tabernacle, zone, inquisitive, abstract, nocturnal and gaggle. She loves words and we will sometimes sit with a dictionary and she will chose a word randomly and we'll learn it. I also talk to her like an adult and use big words in our daily conversations. She'll interrupt and ask what that word means and I'll tell her. You can imagine how long our chats last sometimes! :)
I really do love it that she has so many questions (ok, it does drive me crazy every once in a while - don't let me fool you!). With her being so inquisitive though it is going to make my job as her teacher THAT much easier.

Some people have been asking me what curriculum I am going to use - there are literally hundreds to choose from. I have researched Kindergarten as well as 1st grade and had really thought about starting with a 1st grade one but my good friend pointed out to me that I do not want to make our first year of homeschooling too difficult or she will start resisting and it will be stressful for both of us. I know she is capable of doing 1st grade curriculum but I don't want to push her too hard. I will probably not get a curriculum this year and do 'unschooling', which is child-led learning. You can read more about here if you are interested - http://www.unschooling.com/library/faq/index.shtml Basically if she asks me a simple question about something then that will be our 'lesson' for that day (or week!) and we will learn everything there is to learn on that subject. The example I used when I talked to Brendon about this was this (he was kinda iffy)--- If Brenna comes to me and asks me about Egypt, for example, then we would get on-line and/or go to the library and check out some books and learn all kinds of things about it - maybe even do an art project and make pyramids. It started with a simple question - but it was a question that SHE asked. I strongly believe that a child learns more and retains the information better if they initiate the learning. Now, would she learn a lot about Egypt and be excited about it if I sat her at the table and opened up a text book and said, "Ok, now let's read this and then we will do some worksheets and answer some questions about what you just read" ? Probably not. She might retain part of the information but she would not get as much out of it as she would in the example above.
Now some people do this for everything and they never even purchase a curriculum - ever. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think when it comes to things like math, reading and writing then a curriculum is necessary. Next year I will worry more about a structured curriculum for the things I just mentioned but for this year we are just going to have FUN. :) It's Kindergarten for goodness sakes! :)