Adventures in Preschool: Getting started

Starting this September, we have really jumped into preschool at home. Most days I have my two boys and somewhere between one and four extra toddlers. What I have found that works best for us right now is 15 minutes of learning- 15 minutes of play to total around one hour of preschool each day. I just feel like we are going to be doing this for a long time, so I don't want to overwhelm him right now with more than an hour or so. The schedule I (attempt!) to follow looks like this:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00	Shower & Clothes	Shower & Clothes	Shower & Clothes	Shower & Clothes	Shower & Clothes
9:30	Play	Play	Play	Play	Play
10:00	Play/Letter DVD	Play/Letter DVD	Breakfast & bible story, Weather chart	Play/Letter DVD	Play/Letter DVD
10:15	Breakfast & bible story, Weather chart	Breakfast & bible story, Weather chart	Library	Breakfast & bible story, Weather chart	Breakfast & bible story, Weather chart
10:30 (Cole- nap)	Play	Play	I	Play	Play
10:45	Reading: Story & letters	Reading: Story & letters	I	Reading: Story & letters	Reading: Story & letters
11:00	Chores/Play	Chores/Play	I	Chores/Play	Chores/Play
11:15	Numbers	Numbers	I	Numbers	Numbers
11:30	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
12:00	Chores/Play	Chores/Play	Chores/Play	Chores/Play	Chores/Play
12:15	Daddy/TV time	Daddy/TV time	Daddy/TV time	Daddy/TV time	Daddy/TV time
12:45	Exercise or Art	Exercise or Art	Exercise or Art	Exercise or Art	Exercise or Art
1:30-3:30	Baby Rest time/Mommy Devotional	Baby Rest time/Mommy Devotional	Baby Rest time/Mommy Devotional	Baby Rest time/Mommy Devotional	Baby Rest time/Mommy Devotional
3:30	Snack	Snack	Snack	Snack	Snack

 I don't schedule us at all after 3:30 because I feel like I may get burnt out if I feel too tied down, so right now this is working great for us.

The resource I am loving the most right now are these preschool packs from 1+1+1=1. I have printed and laminated TONS of resources from this site and my toddler is completely in love. The Batman pack and Knights (I also used some of the Princess pack for this unit) are fantastic! I sure do wish learning was this fun when I was little! If you ask him about school, he doesn't even know what you're talking about because all this is is fun!

I also found this really cool app that helps you organize your library. I love it because I am able to quickly look at what books we have to go along with what we are learning. Finding them- now, that's another story! :)

A couple other resources I really like are these two DVDs. I am not usually motivated to use TV for learning, but I have found these two to work really good for us. The first is called Rock N Learn Preschool. My toddlers LOVE this DVD and it's from the Wal-Mart $5 bin! It takes them through each letter using a circus theme. The second is Kids Yoga with Phonics and it has a yoga pose for each letter. I love that they are exercising and learning at the same time.

 

A is for Airplane!

Lastly, I wanted to share my date and weather board. I made this really inexpensively. I bought a piece of foam backed poster board and then printed and laminated each word or item and attached Velcro to the back of the words and to the board. We do this each morning as we are eating breakfast and they love it! We read the story Jesse Bear every Monday and then choose his outfit daily.

 

Watch for lots more homeschool-preschool posts coming up soon!