He is ready for preschool NOW but wouldn't start until the fall. I have definitely seen a shift from self lead play to needing parent lead activities. Its like he one day stepped out of baby/toddler-hood into big boy world. I remember saying to a friend that he needs something more, he needs me to do more with him.
So...we looked into preschools, we looked into homeschool curriculum and for now we are doing preschool activities at home. AND HE LOVES IT!! It is amazing how fast he picks up on things. And he thinks its play. He always asks to play in the school room but most things in there are school work.
We converted our third bedroom to a school room. The closet is full of craft items, paints, learning games, puzzles, etc. We bought a desk so that I had a place to prepare school work. We bought a little cubby with drawers so that each 'assignment' Luke has has its own cubby drawer. He loves pulling out each drawer to see what he gets to do for the day. We have a table to work at, a reading nook, and a place for circle time.
A day at school for us looks like:
Circle Time:
We put the date on the calendar, talk about what day it is, check the weather, review our "...of the week" chart, sing songs, and read a story.
Table Time:
We review the Bible verse, the letter of the week and get started on 'assignments.' This is where Luke gets to work on his own, whether its practicing writing, matching numbers with pictures, doing a craft or a project. I try to have things for Brody to do and go back and forth between helping Luke and playing with Brody.
We try to start school about 9 and it usually takes a couple of hours. We'll do more thoughout the day but this is "school time" for us.
Each day I try to focus on different things so that we are getting a well rounded 'diet' so to speak.
Monday - Reading and Writing, Library Day
Tuesday - Math Day
Wednesday - Art
Thursday - Science
A couple of my favorite things so far:
Luke loves to write. He's usually not one to sit for long periods of time and work on something. But he loves the writing worksheets. Each week he practices the letter. He's done L, T and H now and he will sit at the table for a good portion of Brody's nap time practicing. The worksheets are in a sheet protector so that he can use a dry erase marker and just wipe it off to start over.
Brody loves school too. His favorite is circle time. All of our calendar and weather pieces have velcro on them so that we can put them up and switch them out easily and he loves to do that! As we do our calendar, the days of the week, and the weather we have a little song that helps them learn. One day as I was preparing school for the next week, Brody came in, sat in our circle area, and pretended to do circle time. He was babbling away (he's a pretty good talker but I couldn't understand anything he was saying, but he was going on and on teaching somebody!) and he was singing the songs! It was so cute to hear him sing "March, April, September, October..." He wasn't singing them in the right order or the right tune but he was saying the months! That was cool.
My favorite 'science project' we've done was our first week of school. We were learning the letter L along with the verse "Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." (Sidenote: Cool thing was that Luke starts with L, and this is the verse I chose for him when he was born. It was hanging on the wall in his room for a long time.) We were also learning the song "This Little Light of Mine." The verses in that song talk letting your light shine, not hiding it under a bush, or letting Satan blow it out. So I got out a jar candle, turned off all the lights and showed them what it meant to let your light shine. Its just a little light but it can light a dark room. Then I showed them what happened to the light when you hide it under something and I put the lid on the jar. The candle went out. We relit the candle and talked about what happens if we let Satan blow it out. No more light! They loved this! They kept wanting to do it over and over, put the lid on, blow it out...It was awesome.
We do a lot of our activities with some friends of ours. When we go over to their house, Luke...actually I think it was Brody who noticed first...they have some of the same posters we do and they get all excited that "we have that too!" One day we got together and traced the boys bodies on big construction paper. Then we hung them up on the wall and let them color them. My boys worked on that project the whole week! They just kept adding to their posters all week long!
This month we have been learing "About Me." I can't wait til next month when we learn about Family!
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