Letter G

G is for groceries, garden, and goats. We did garden for two days because I knew there were a lot of garden activities out there. I will just post the G specific things we did, and not give step-by-step instructions unless I think you need them to figure out how to do the activity.

As always we started out with tracing and making the sounds for G with the letter for our learning board on Monday. 

Groceries

B has some pretend food that I thought would be perfect to use as part of our activity. I made this grocery list that matched some of the food he has in his set. He first named all the things on the list, then pulled them out and colored the list so the picture on the list matched the food item. (I was fine with getting the colors similar.) 

Then I took both boys to the grocery store and B helped me check off some of the items from my list. I was running errands. He was learning. I call that a win-win! 

Garden

I found this fun yoga chart and we did some stretching during school. I also found this poem that you could do some actions to as well. There are LOTs of books you could read to go along with gardens, but we read "A Green, Green Garden" by Mercer Mayer (Little Critters). 

One of the things we are doing in out new house is planning out our landscaping. When Dad got home from work we went to the nursery to check out the trees they had to see what we might want to plant in our yard. We also looked at the seed packets to see what we might want to plant in our garden boxes that we will be putting in. We asked B what he wants to plant and he got really excited about planting carrots.

For our second day of focusing on gardens, we did yoga again and then did a carrot craft. I cut 1/2" squares from orange paper, and 1/4"x2" from green paper. Then I printed out this carrot template on white cardstock. B glued the orange squares onto the carrot template, and I glued the green stems on the back. I then "laminated" it with packing tape.

I made "dirt" by taking a piece of brown paper and cutting it in half vertically (hotdog style, if that helps) then folding it up about 2.75"to make a pocket. I used a stapler to close up the sides and in the middle to create two pouches for the carrots. (The "lamination" on the carrots makes it so the orange squares don't pop off while you're trying to slide it into the pouch)

Goats

We didn't do school this day. But I was planning on reading "Three Billy Goats Gruff" and making these finger puppets. To make the finger puppets, color the characters and then cut along the lines EXCEPT for the very center line. You will fold on that line behind the character and tape the sides to make a pocket to put your finger into. 

Letter A

Our first week of actual learning started with the letter A: airplanes, alligators, apples, and acorns. I won't walk you through what we did  step-by-step unless its not obvious. But I will give you links or printables to the activities that we did. If you need a refresher on how our day goes you can look here.

Here is the whole alphabet for what we use on Monday to trace and put on our learning board. I have the entire alphabet printed and stored on the back of my learning board.

Airplanes

We used this poem and this coloring page. We kept it very simple because we also went to the Aerospace Museum. I think B and A both enjoyed themselves.

Alligators 

I'm going to be 100% honest: I didn't actually do school with B for this day. But I will share with you what I was planning on using. We were going to sing "3 Little Monkeys"

(Three little monkeys swinging in a tree

Teasing Mr. Alligator, 'You can't catch me, You can't catch me!'

Along comes Mr. Alligator, quiet as can be

And SNAPS that monkey right out of that tree.

Two little monkeys swinging in a tree...)

Then we were going to do this letter activity, and I was going to read B this book, but I was going to change the crocodile to an alligator and name her Abby instead of Coco.

Apples

We watched this video of Miss Yumi reading "Ten Apples Up on Top" because we don't own the book. We also had an apple snack. I wanted to do this craft but... it didn't happen. If you don't have mini paper plates, large ones will work, or you could just cut out a circle from a piece of cardstock (you won't get the cool texture, but it will work fine)

Acorns

Being honest again, we didn't have school this day either. (Gotta keep it real.) But we could have played this game and found a book at the library ("Acorns Everywhere" by Kevin Sherry, "One More Acorn" by Don Freeman, "The Acorn" by Edward Gibbs, there's a lot you can find). Then I was planning on going to my in-laws house and gathering some acorns from around their oak tree in the front yard.

*Note- You may want to buy a pack of multi colored cardstock or construction paper to keep in your preschool supplies. I have a stash of scrapbook paper that I use for a lot of our projects. It's nice to have on-hand for little art projects.

Week 1: Getting them hooked

I didn't plan anything educational the first week. I wanted our first week to be getting used to setting everything else aside for a little while. I totally hyped up the whole "having school with mom" thing for about a week before we actually started and he was very excited. 

Day 1

My plan for the first day was to go through the whole schedule, but really talk him through what each activity would be like as we did it. If I were to transcript it, it would go something like this:

"This is our calendar. At school we use a calendar to know what day it is. We need to know the day of the week, the month of the year, and the numbers of the date. I will tell you a number and you need to look for that number and put the post-it on it. Today is the 27th. Can you help me find the numbers two and seven together on a card? (B searches and possibly needs help finding the right one) Awesome! Today is Monday, August 27th. Every day you get to help me with our calendar!"

If you don't feel like Preschool Teacher Barbie at least a little bit you're not doing it right. I basically did that for everything we did which included: welcome song, calendar, weather, story time (If You Take a Mouse To School), coloring (this page), and play doh. 

I wish I could say that our first day was perfect and B loved every minute of it, but that would be lying. Singing and dancing to the welcome song stressed him out and he started crying. He calmed down during the calendar, and really enjoyed the weather and the story. But then I told him he couldn't dump out all his special school crayons (he got a new pack of Cars crayons especially for school) when we colored and he started crying again. When we go to do play doh he was initially really frustrated because I set some rules (play doh has to stay on the table, only one color at a time) but once he got playing with it he calmed down again.

Even though I wouldn't call our first day an unparalleled success, B was very excited to tell Dad about it when he got home from work and was excited when we told him he got to do school again tomorrow.

Days 2-5

We talked about school buses (Wheels on the bus and school bus coloring page), his favorite movie (a Cars book and Lightning McQueen coloring page), Sesame Street (The Monster at the End of This Book, an Elmo video on youtube and a Big Bird coloring page), and our family (we looked through our family scrapbooks and I helped him draw our family). We also did puzzles, games, and more play doh.

For days 2 and 3 I reminded B of how we do each of our activities. On days 4 and 5 I asked him to explain how we do them. Since none of the directions are very difficult he was able to talk me through it with very little prompting. B really enjoyed focusing on his favorite things and I feel like it was a great way to keep him excited about school.

Daily Schedule

As for the "when" of preschool we still haven't nailed down a specific time that works best for us. I think between trying to get settled into our new house and dealing with a three-nager and a 7 month old, our lack of set schedule is pretty normal. School happens for us generally in the morning, but depending on what else needs to happen that day and what errands we need to run it occasionally happens in the afternoon. Luckily, we haven't had to have night school yet; however, we have missed a few days. (Part of what makes having a letter of the week so great is that if we skip a day B still gets 4 days of focus on that letter. I call that a victory!)

When it is time for us to start school, I put the learning board up wherever I want and make sure I have all the materials we will need for that day's activities (crayons, tape, books, etc). Then I call B over and we sing our welcome song. We use this song (skip to 0:40 for the beginning of the song) including the actions, but we just do it a cappella and sing the first verse twice.

*note- B was really embarrassed the first time I tried to do this song with him. He loves to do the actions with me, but still doesn't sing all the words. It is perfectly FINE if you don't get great participation. Just keep doing it! You want to use this to set apart your school time from the rest of the day. A silly song is a great indicator for your little that this part of the day is going to be a little bit different. (Here are a few other ideas for welcome songs.)

After we sing our welcome song we look at the calendar. I keep it very simple- I have B move the little post-it arrow to the right day (I normally say something like "Today is the 12th. Can you find the card that has the numbers 1 and 2 next to each other?" and most days its the next block over which makes it easier). Then I will say "Today is Wednesday (point to the day of the week) September (point to the month) 12th (point to the date)" then I make him repeat it with me.

B's favorite thing to do is check the weather. He runs to the sliding door and I read him all the different options. He decides which one is most like the weather outside for the day and moves the post-it arrow to the right picture. Then we decide what the temperature outside it. If we had a thermometer it would work better, but he just kind of goes off what the weather was like yesterday and factors in that days' sky conditions.

Once all of that has been done, I point to each thing on the schedule and read it out loud to B. The first thing we do is the letter of the week or word of the day. Letter of the week only happens on Mondays. I give him the blank coloring page and help him correctly trace with his finger the way your form the letter when you write it. I have him color the coloring page and then we tape it to learning board. *Note- B doesn't hold crayons correctly yet, form the letters correctly or stay inside the lines. I've decided that its FINE; he is 3 years old. It is something we can work on throughout the year. For the word of the day I show him the word, ask him to point to the letter of the week in the word (normally the first letter, but not always) then read the word to him.

If I have a story or poem to read to him, we normally do that right after I introduce the word of the day. Then its usually a coloring page or art project that matches the word of the day. Sometimes I can find a song on youtube or have a personal story that goes along with the word of the day too. 

When B finishes coloring I like to do something fun with him to finish our school day. (I'm serious, thats as much school as we do for the day. It lasts about 30 minutes depending on our projects) This is when we pull out the play doh, do some of his file folder games, or go outside and slide. If you wanted to, this is when you could incorporate some other academics such as counting or shapes. B's file folder games sort of take care of that, but he just thinks we're playing games (mom win!).

I know most real preschools go for about 2 hours. There are a few reasons I keep our school day so short. First of all, I am busy. I have two boys to look after, dishes to clean, laundry to do, errands to run, cleaning to stay on top of, potty training (which is the worst!), meals to make, and somehow still try to have time for myself (HAHAHA). My full time job is mom. Preschool comes after that. Second, B has a very short attention span. This daily schedule is enough to keep him occupied and focused and still look forward to it every day. Lastly, I don't think he needs more than this. I know the world that we live in is pushing our kids to know more sooner, and master more concepts. But my little guy is 3. This is enough for him right now.

The Learning Board

After I decided "what" I wanted to teach B, I needed to focus on the "how" to do it all. Me and my trusty side-kick, Pinterest, went to work. I knew I couldn't dedicate a whole room in my house to preschool, I didn't even think I could dedicate part of room to preschool. Eventually I discovered someone who used a tri-fold poster board and I thought it was GENIUS. She used hers mostly for a calendar and teaching months and days of the week, but I thought, "Why not use it for everything?" Thus the idea for the Learning Board was born.

Let me explain why I love the tri-fold learning board. I can store it almost anywhere; it folds up flat so I can stash it wherever I want. Most of the time I store it between our computer and the wall. But it is small enough that it could be pushed under the couch or along the wall of our coat closet. I also love it because I can use it wherever I want. Its a nice enough day to be outside? Let's do school on the back patio! We need to be at the kitchen table because we're doing a project that requires paint (and therefore a seat with a buckle on it)? Let's go to the kitchen table!

To make it, I went to the dollar store and bought the project board. Everything else I whipped up real quick on my computer. (I'll share everything with you at the end of this post. No reinventing the wheel for you!) I drew the calendar on the board and covered it in contact paper (acts like lamination). I stuck the headings on with contact paper, and then created areas to tape things on with more contact paper. I promise I'm not obsessed with contact paper, but if you try to move things around without creating a smooth surface first, you'll pull off the top layer of paper on the board. Along the same lines, I added a strip of packing tape (also acts like lamination) on the back of all the cards and calendar pieces so they wouldn't get ripped either.

I wanted to be able to store everything I needed for school together so I added some ziplock bags on the back. (I used packing tape to secure them). Top left: curriculum map. Top right: this weeks stuff (word of the day cards, letter coloring page, other coloring pages, art project instructions, etc) that I print off at the beginning of the week. Bottom left: calendar month strips, other letter coloring pages. Bottom right: extra calendar cards, schedule cards, post-it arrows.

If I were to spend time to redo our learning board I would probably make the calendar and weather take up less room in the middle of the board and add space for shapes, colors, and numbers 1-10. I would also probably mount all the headings on colored paper just so they stand out a little bit (personal style preference). The ziplocks on the back of the board work, but because I taped them flat they are really hard to get things out of. I can't think of a better solution. If you come up with something brilliant, please share!

Here are all the printables you need to make your own learning board. I added the font I used to any of the ones you may want to customize so if you think of more you don't have to have mismatched cards. (I'm just a little OCD about some things)

Title Piece

Headings 

Calendar Cards
Calendar Days Cards

Schedule Cards

Weather Cards

Curriculum Map

Now that you know the "why" of this pre-preschool idea I had, I want to share with you the "what"I would teach him. One of the biggest lessons they tried to drill into our heads during my teacher training classes was the old phrase "Don't try to reinvent the wheel." So me and my good friend Pinterest are co-creators for what I use. Mostly, I knew what I wanted to do and I searched to see what other people had done and sort of just meshed it all together.

My goal was to have something to do each day with B that could focus on a letter of the alphabet. I found this curriculum map on Pinterest and thought it was incredible, but I didn't love it for us. So I tweaked it a little bit. I found this book list for each letter of the alphabet and decided that I don't really care if B knows alphabetical order yet. I also tried to think of fun "field trips" we could go on that wouldn't cost too much money and successfully get us out of the house for the afternoon.

Here is what I came up with.

Let me explain my reasoning a little bit. I first decided to place specific dated things (holidays, birthdays, etc) where they needed to be. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines day and B's birthday were on the schedule. Z was also taken care of because our zoo does free zoo days on the last Wednesday of the month during the winter (and I am cheap). Next I placed seasonal things where I thought they made the most sense. After that I just used the rest of the letters in whatever order I thought would be good. 

Most of the "Word of the Day"s only require one day to talk about them. However, if I felt like we could stretch it, do more than one activity for the word, or there weren't many other options for that particular letter I scheduled it for two days.

I also included field trips on the map. Generally for the field trips I scheduled two day- one day for reading a book or doing a project on the subject, the second day for the field trip.

The original plan was to have school go until the end of a regular school year, or at least until spring break for the school district we live in. But... I ran out of letters and I haven't planned anything yet. Maybe I'll get ambitious and start on counting or shapes when we're done with the alphabet. Until then, I hope this gives you some guidance or inspiration.

Introductions

Welcome! I'm so glad you stopped by to check out the blog. The purpose of this blog is to give parents a resource for a simple at-home preschool. Before I jump into the details of how I set up our at home preschool (I'll put it all in another post) I wanted to give some background about me and our situation. 

I graduated from Brigham Young University in 2012 with a degree in elementary education. I taught school for 3 years before I had my first baby. Between my student teaching experiences and positions as a full time educator I was able to teach in grades 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. For the past 10 months I have been teaching the Sunbeams (3 and 4 year olds) at church on Sunday too. All in all, it may not be the most impressive resume but I hope that its enough to instill some confidence that I know what I'm talking about a little bit.

There are a few reasons I decided to start "school" with my little guy. The first reason is that he (I'll refer to his as "B") is a very bright little boy. I am constantly amazed by how much he remembers and by his vocabulary. I felt like teaching him some academic stuff formally wouldn't be too difficult for him. Second, because he's so bright I don't feel like he'll need two years of preschool before he starts kindergarten. B turned 3 in March, so technically he could have started preschool this year. But we moved this summer and I had a lot on my mind, and researching preschools was pretty low on the list of priorities especially since I'm not worried about his development. Third, I love having a project and I miss teaching. While this is a VERY scaled back version of teaching I love that I get to interact with a "student" and see B's excitement as he learns new things. Fourth, having part of our day set aside for learning is a great break from the other stuff B spends his time doing. I love that its part of the day when I don't have to listen to Daniel Tiger on TV, the sound of cars crashing on my dining room tile, or worry about what he did to make baby brother (I'll refer to him as "A") cry.

So there's the "why" of this at-home pre-preschool I decided to start for B. The plan for the rest of the blog is to show you how I prepped for school, and what we do every day/week. My hope is that even if you don't use all of my ideas you will find something to help your little learn. There is nothing more satisfying than watching your child grow and understand the world around them.

*Please remember that I am catering specifically to B and our life as it is right now. If you have comments or questions I'd love to hear them and respond, but keep it kind. We're all just trying to do our best. And remember that no matter what you do, your child will love you and think you're amazing just because you're their parent.