How to get started?

Although we have only just recently began our homeschooling preschool adventures, lately I have been asked what our normal routine is and what we do as far as curriculum. I feel like the biggest obstacle we faced was sorting through the overwhelming amounts of information there is nowadays on homeschooling. As a mom who has been there, spending endless hours searching the internet late at night and purchasing one too many books on homeschooling to find all the answers I could possibly need. Save yourself the confusion! Pick what your goals for the year are and go from there, it really is as simple as that. For our preschool year we decided our focus would be on the following:

• Learning the alphabet and being able to write each letter
• Learning to count to 20
• Developing fine motor skills like using scissors, holding pencils correctly, using glue, etc.
• Incorporating bible stories into our daily routine
• Developing gross motor skills by plenty of exercise, swim lessons, tots sports teams, etc.
• Learning life skills and becoming more independent in them like using the bathroom, getting ourselves dressed, pouring our own drinks, and simple chores around our home
• And lastly learning about our community with experiences like field trips to the local fire station, farmer's market, trips to the zoo, or even just a trip to the library

I have never wanted to completely recreate a classroom inside of my home. Rather I wanted to make learning and education a part of our lifestyle, including it in playing and everyday tasks. This is where it becomes a great idea to get some kind of idea on what type of approach you want to use for teaching curriculum of any kind.  Remember all those book purchases I made on homeschooling that I mentioned earlier? Well, there is one book that I just couldn't rave enough about is:

 

Seriously, of the handful of books I read a majority of them only briefly touched on homeschooling preschoolers (and by briefly I mean maybe a page or two). This book really just helped me realize all the different styles of education there are to choose from and which philosophy you feel closest to. Then taking that and working it to fit to your own child's personal learning style. Out of all the information available I found this so helpful because who would of know that there were so many approaches to learning out there? For my family we found that an eclectic mix with unit studies and a bit of unschooling would be a great fit for us. As far as preschool curriculum this year we decided to come up with our own curriculum based on using the resources we already had available to us. Here is a peek into what we have come up with.

 

Workbooks:

These are some basic preschool workbooks that we have for during our school week that we purchased from our local Target. They cover a bit of everything from learning the alphabet, writing, numbers, matching, patterns, and basics.

 

 

 

Reusable materials:

I can't say it enough, especially if you have multiple children like me that when it comes to materials you want to find ones that are reusable instead of a one time deal like the workbooks I mentioned above. These dry erase booklets were something given to us at some point and the dry erase board for writing was a dollar store find that is truly awesome. Honestly, save yourself some money and go this route for part of your supplies.

 

 

 

As far as the rest of our preschool supplies would all fall into a hands on learning category because let's face it learning, especially at this age should be fun! Here are some of our materials we have on hand.

Magnetic letters and numbers from Melissa and Doug: These get a lot of use in our household and I absolutely love them because they are made out of real wood rather than some of the plastic alternatives, so they really are durable throughout the years.

 

 

Lacing cards, also from Melissa and Doug: These have really helped with developing small motor skills and hold up surprisingly well to all the use they receive. Also comes in handy for a quite afternoon activity while our daughter naps.

 

 





Clothespins: I saw this idea while browsing on Pinterest one night and loved the idea of it! We wrote on clothespins uppercase letters, lowercase letters, we have some that are numbered, and another set that are colored. These get used really frequently because of the hands on experience they give our son and that he can do these activities more independently.

Flashcards: I think these really go without saying because even if you aren't homeschooling, if you have toddlers then I am sure you have a set of these lying around your home. We had these sets given to us over time and incorporate them into our days (especially on days where we are really just not feeling any homeschooling).

 

 

Then there are the rest of our materials like craft supplies that would include children's safety scissors, colored paper, crayons, glue sticks, etc. We also use puzzle, pattern blocks, a wide variety of children's books both from our own personal collection and the local library, and of course play dough. We create our play dough from scratch at home, here is the recipe. And that is just a little peak into what our curriculum and materials look like. I will be going more into detail on what our actual preschool lesson plans look like and how we break up the lessons over the year in my next post.