Homeschooling Preschool: Week 1

I officially love preschooling my boy. He's 3. And I've been noticing these past few months that he was on the verge of ready, so when he turned 3 in December and then I stumbled on what I think is the very perfect preschool curriculum for our family and it was free online... I decided it was time to start! So I started making plans to start with the new year.

Why am I starting now instead of with a traditional school year? There are a few reasons... first, because he's ready now and I hated the idea of waiting 8 or 9 months just to be "standard". Second, because I'm having our third child in August and I'm pretty sure this will be easier now than later. And finally, because I don't care about the "traditional" school year. I'm thinking we will eventually school year around anyway, so why does it matter? Especially since our state won't start caring about my children's education for a number of years still.

I've mentioned our curriculum before. I just love it. She's done all the work I've always wanted to do, but with more creativity and experience than I ever could have. I'm hoping to share some of the highlights with you as we travel through the next 30ish weeks of preschool (sometimes I may even have pictures).

Week 1 and 2 are in large part an introduction, but are crutial to the overall story of Scripture as they begin at the beginning, and she says they are the most labor intensive of all the parent planning. The projects are very cute and easy though and she includes pictures from when her kids did them. These first two weeks don't include a letter of the alphabet, but focus on other things. Once I saw the big picture, I understood completely. She has outlined all the Bible stories to match with letters of the alphabet, therefore "A" for "apple" doesn't come in until we learn about "the Fall" in week 3. So what are these first two weeks about? Creation. Each of the first 6 days of creation are matched up with the first 6 numbers and each of the colors is worked in too. So over the first 2 weeks of curriculum we cover numbers 1-6, the week of creation, a number of sciency topics as they relate and colors! Also included is phonetic awareness, calendar time, and other preschooly topics. Take a look.

So this week, being week 1, we learned about God creating night and day, the sea and sky, and the land, trees, flowers and grass. We got to make a page for our creation book each day giving opportunity to use glue! Very exciting in this house. We read books on colors we were discussing each day and learned numbers 1-3, including how to recognize them and form them. I think Tornado's favorite number activity was making the number 1 with his finger in a tray of black beans (black and white were the colors for day 1 when we learned night and day and the number "1" was for the first day of creation). I just love how it all works together.

Overall, Tornado loves "school". Sweet Pea seems to enjoy it too. I keep her right with us (except for the day we did school during her nap time) and give her something similar to do at the table. She reads books with us (she really picked up on the color blue during reading time... now everything is blue!) takes turns at the calendar with Tornado and sings her noises during song time.

As far as organization goes I need to be careful to stay on top of things in the prep department. I think we are going to push today's schooling off till tomorrow so that I can prep during nap time today. Overall though, I think it's going pretty well.


Are you doing anything with your toddlers or preschoolers? Have you used Hubbard's Cupboards Bible and Rhyme curriculum?

Labels: As it happens..., Homeschooling my 3 year old

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 9:43 AM