Due to COVID, I decided to homeschool Harper and Mason. They were suppose to be going into their first year of preschool. I’m honestly so sad they don’t get to experience it like they should. I just couldn’t imagine them having to wear masks all day long at four years old. My older daughters are in middle school and I felt they could handle it, so they went back to in-person.
We just finished our very first week of at home preschool and I’m like… “is it too late to send them to school??” haha! I give teachers so much credit!! I decided to do Monday-Thursday from 8:00 AM until 12:00 PM. I did so much research about homeschooling before diving in. That timeline seemed to work well for the preschool level. I am looking into private schools such as Ravenscroft for next year.
Then I had to think about how I wanted to plan curriculum. It was recommended to do the “letter of week learning”. What that means is each week, we concentrate on one single letter. I also wanted to add a theme to each week. I think it makes it more fun for the kids! This week was the letter “A” and the theme “Back to School”.
Probably my favorite part of choosing a theme is picking which books to read! You know I love my books! We have quite the collection of children’s books but I am also heading to our library every week and grabbing more. Here are the books that fit in our theme this time.
On day one we took the normal first day pictures. Instead of getting on a bus, we just headed back inside to get started! I’m trying to make it feel like “real” school as much as possible.
Okay, so for the actual WORK. At the beginning of the month, I went through and planned as many weeks in advance as possible. Each week got their own folder and a planner guide on the front. I went to Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers, Google.. wherever and searched for free preschool printables. Pinterest seems to be the best for ideas. I have a whole board on there which is organized into all my weekly themes. There are so many good ideas for learning, arts + crafts, books, experiments… literally everything. Follow my Pinterest board – HERE.
I’m not going to share everything we did this week but some of my favorite activities were:
Letter of the Week Book: I found his idea from HERE. Every week we will create a letter turned into something else. I bought them each a binder so they can keep all their letter creations in there throughout the year. Mason turned his into an ant hill and Harper chose Angel.
Bob Books: This is a reading system that teaches children how to read. I bought the beginner level set and we’ve learned the first book so far. I can already tell a huge difference! They can read the entire book to me and recognize the words on flash cards. You can find the books HERE.
All About Me Activity: I think I found this free printable on google. I want to do all the typical cute things that school would do with them. I used to love when the girls would bring home these types of things. So I made sure to do it with Harper and Mason too. We even added a cute little polaroid of them!
Painting on Easel: This was hands down, Harper and Mason’s favorite thing from the week. I told them to paint an apple. I didn’t help Mason AT ALL. His apple is perfection! Maybe he will be an artist?!
At the end of the week I put together a little “we made it through the first week” snack. I definitely won’t be doing that each week but we deserved it this time! It was a learning experience for everyone involved.
My main goals of their preschool year is learning basic skills like cutting, gluing, and tracing. Also writing their own names, recognizing letters and some sight words. Rhyming, counting, putting numbers in order, patterns, etc.
Please pray for my sanity. 🙂
Here are some other blogs that have GREAT ideas for preschool curriculum:
