Preschool Corner: Preschool for the rest of us!

Tornado is 4 years, 1 month old
Sweet Pea is 2 years, 10 months old

What do I mean by "Preschool for the rest of us"? Doing preschool with our littles is a great goal. It really is. Since I'm on the subject, preparing a complete dinner every night, sweeping the floor sometimes and keeping everyone's underwear drawer from going empty are great goals too. But they just don't always happen. Perhaps I should do a (long) series of posts on "Life for the rest of us". Maybe I'm the only one they would apply to... or maybe, just maybe, there are others out there who find that they are falling behind too. (Would any of you others like to come clean my bathroom??? It could really use it!)

Sorry, back to preschool. It's been a while since I've participated in Preschool Corner... and even longer since I've been deliberate about "schooling" my littles. Ok... so it was shortly after my 5 month old was born that I tossed out my "official plans". Sure we've been reading! Gladys Aylward, Charlotte's Web, and lots and lots of picture books! But's it's been more haphazard.

With the advent of a new year, I've set myself up to go again! Last year I started fresh with the new year and we had a great run of it. But at least it was something!

We're going to give it a go this year too! :) This year I'm not using any particular "curriculum", but instead piecing together my own thing based on different themes each week or so. And it's pretty relaxed. Though apparently not relaxed enough or I wouldn't be missing things already!

This is where the "preschool for the rest of us" part comes in. I'm no Jolanthe or Carisa or Erica... but I'm so glad they are. I make the plans (I have a thing for the planning part), it's just the implementation that I struggle with.

I'm trying to base my plans on a relationship based model, spending time with my children (duh, right?) and enjoying them. I have a new schedule/routine for us, but we've yet to actually complete it as written. As the weeks go by, I'm trying to add in more from the schedule to our real lives, so it's really more like a routine goal!

Ok... long windedness. Sorry. What are we actually doing? Well, here it is... for the last couple weeks since I didn't get around to this last week:

Bible

We got the kids the The Jesus Storybook Bible for Christmas. Really, I wanted it for them... but I'm thrilled that they really like it too. I decided to use this book as our Bible "curriculum". We're going through a story a week. I have no idea how many weeks that will take us, and we will probably do somethings out of order around Easter, but we're doing it. I read the story of the week each day (more or less) of the week and we talk about it.

Also during our Bible time (approx. 10-15 minutes total) we practice our verse. I put our verse sheet (click the pics above to download) on the fridge and they love to do it at meals and throughout the day as well. I find the big letter and the picture help them remember "which one" we're working on. The rest is really for me since I'm the only reader! :)

We are starting our Bible time by learning/singing the Doxology (we walk in a circle like "ring around the rosy"). They seem to like it so far. Then at the end of the time, we sing a related song/hymn. When learning about Creation last week, we sang "In the Beginning" from Donut Man. The kids like that one and we have it on a CD. This week we've begun learning the hymn "Trust and Obey" to go with our story about "the Fall". They really like that one and ask to sing it all the time. They already know the first verse and chorus themselves, so we may work on adding a verse this next week.


Our "theme" is outside our Bible time most weeks. Right now we are in a "Winter/Snow" theme. The kids have really enjoyed the snowman related materials I found here, here, and here.


Here Sweet Pea is practicing poring with pony beads and her tea cups:
Sweet Pea is also learning how to help Mommy do dishes. For real this time! (I'll try to get pics sometimes.)


I'm trying to incorporate some "manly" activities into Tornado's day since Daddy is gone all day:
This week Tornado had a chance to shovel the front porch and around the car (with my help of course). He was very proud!

That same day, (since we got several inches of snow) I brought some inside.


And of course there are other crafts...
... like this one. I don't think any of our crafts are done... from this week or last week. I'll try to include pics when they are. This will be a cute snowman head. We started 4 inch earth balls last week (a long story I'll share when they are finished) to go with our creation story. Sigh... maybe we'll finish them this next week with the rest of our snow crafts.


And then we're also doing some normal things. The kids think they are play... and they are. But I also know they are helping in the area of math, problem solving, etc.

"Look Mommy, I'm making a garage!" And he did it all by himself for the first time ever!



As you can see, we did do some things. But it's hit and miss at best. Some days all we do is Bible time and I call that a successful day. Other days, like today... we don't even do that. But we're a work in progress.