Preschool and Tot School Resources

I've been scouring the "Not" Back-to-School curriculum blog hop this morning. Because I planned to start up a little more scheduled today. And I'm a slacker. A lot of it...um, doesn't quite fit us. I did find some useful things though!

All About Learning is cute - I'll use the freebies. The actual program is a bit pricey for us. I'm sure it's worth it if you're a regular homeschooler.

Found an older copy of Slow and Steady Get Me Ready on Ebay for really cheap. It looks like a great resource for both girls. There are mixed reviews as for the age-appropriateness and simplicity of the activites, but I figure for the price I got it, it can't hurt.

Handbook of Nature Study seems amazing. I will considering purchasing a membership in the future. The outdoor hour challenge is a great idea. I think we're definitely going to make a Nature Journal this year when we go out exploring the neighborhood.
There are some free notebooking resources from notebookingpages.com.

Preschool Printables from Mama's Learning Corner.

This Crayola Dry Erase Board could be handy. I've recently discovered laminating (without a machine) is hard. Ha.

We will have some time for Signing Time and Whistlefritz French every week. Some LeapFrog movies here and there as well.

Miss O plays free games on NickJr, PBS Kids, Scholastic, and Sprout.

May get Let's Find Out and Science Spin.

Continuing with the Alpahbetti books, 1 every week or so depending on how well Miss O is doing with it.

MEP looks like a good math program. We will try it out.

I'm going to try and find some tracing books at the dollar store. I printed and laminated a couple pages for tracing also from teacherspayteachers. (which is what we are working on today)

Of course we'll be reading and attending story time at the library.

Miss Em is going to be following along as well as she can because she loves to 'help' sissy. She's learning body parts and I believe we will work on color identification soon. Smart cookie.

Preschool July 2014: Week 1

Miss O is doing very well with Progressive Phonics. We started with the Alphabetti series, reading them on the computer and print out an activity or two that goes with it. I'm kind of skipping over the "ball and stick" letter formations....just letting her write the letter how she thinks she can and we sign it as well. Rhyme a week....eh. She is great with associations. The rhymes come with a set of cards where you finish the rhyme, and she will choose the right one based on the information, not the word sound. We'll keep trying.

This week the library is doing "hoofs, fins and wings" so maybe we can find something to go along with that.

• Coloring
• Dot-to-dots from education.com
• Calendar and weather, daily
• Patterns with Legos
• Library
• Observe the garden, discuss the parts we can see
• Continue Progressive Phonics
• Continue Rhyme A Week with Webbing Into Literacy
• Science projects to go along with Magic School Bus episodes via Scholastic

Working with Miss Em on body parts because she seems interested. She knows where her toes, belly button, hair, and nose are. She can point out my eye, but points to her own ear when asked about her eye.

Preschool June 2014: Week 4

Since we've been pretty off schedule lately, thought I'd organize a little bit. Plan of attack for the week, in no particular order:

• Dental Health - What happens when we have too much junk? How do we take care of our teeth?
• Coloring
• Dot-to-dots from education.com
• An Ivory soap experiment
• Brainzy trial
• Calendar and weather, daily
• Patterns with Legos
• Library
• Observe the garden, discuss the parts we can see
• Begin Progressive Phonics
• Begin Rhyme A Week with Webbing Into Literacy
• Science projects to go along with Magic School Bus episodes via Scholastic

Preschool Progress 6/17

So it's time for us to get back on track. Miss O has definitely been improving, little by little. 

She rarely struggles with letter recognition anymore, upper or lowercase. 

Does have some trouble reading numbers from left to right (i.e. she says 13 is 31), but easily recognizes 0-9 and tells me what prices are sometimes. 

Her counting groups of items by one has improved. 

She can spell her first name out loud, has some difficulty writing the letters h and e still. She does not like fine motor.

Great with beginning sounds, but struggles with rhyming words. I'm unsure how to approach it in another manner...

She knows our street name and our state, and can identify planet earth as well as the moon and sun on a solar system map.

The way Miss Em is progressing with her speech, I have a feeling we'll be teaching her more substantial things soon, too.

Preschool Goals for Miss O

We have a list on the wall right now that is basically copied from Mud Hut Mama with minor changes, and it's a great list, but I wanted to update and share it. I really love her categories, though I left off play, because that happens....pretty much all of the rest of the time haha.

Literacy and Language Arts:
Read and discuss stories; who, what, why, how...
Create books
Recognize rhyming words
Identify a few common words
Writing letters, upper and lowercase
Syllable recognition

Cognitive Skills and Math:
Count objects one at a time (goal to 20)
Counting numbers 14-19 and transitioning to the next 10 (30, 40, 50..)
Identify more complex shapes (hexagon, octagon...)
Work with calendar and clock
Number sequencing

Science and Nature Studies:
Keep an eye on our growing garden, discuss plant parts, what keeps them healthy
Keep a field journal for science experiments and discoveries
Discuss the seasonal/environmental reasons for [most] holidays we celebrate

Art and Music:
Draw people with body parts
Draw shapes with defined corners
Crafts that make use of fine motor skills
Identify and create instruments
Sing, dance, listen to, and create music

Life Skills:
Independence getting dressed and undressing, putting on shoes, washing in the bath, and properly brushing teeth
Recycling and care of environment
Simple chores, including cleaning up after self and putting away clothes in drawers
Help prepare meals and snacks and clean up
Street safety

Computer Skills:
Type name
Open and close a program
Patience

Geography:
Simple maps and land forms
Postcard exchange?
Continents

Monster Calendar

I know I haven't been posting preschool things. It's not that we haven't been doing them, it's just nothing picture worthy, and honestly kind of boring. Miss O has trouble with fine motor. That's what we're focusing on. Mostly writing or tracing letter and numbers, some coloring in the lines. We've also had some gross motor practice with soccer over the past month. I had intended to go on a nature walk for Earth Day, but wasn't feeling great so we stayed in and discussed recycling instead. It's almost Beltane though so hopefully we'll do some fun spring outdoor things for that.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. I've mostly finished our calendar/weather chart. There will be a few more additions (and maybe another board at some point), but for right now this is it! I do still need to cut out the weather cards though.

Monster Weather Chart by The Teaching Treehouse (I printed this 2 pgs per sheet -- it is originally about the size of the board)

(Actually, had I seen this set as a whole first, I probably would have also gotten the calendar that matches, but I did not...oh well! The Kinder Craze ones are super cute)

A Year of Monsters Calendar Numbers by Kinder Craze

A Year of Monsters Calendar Headers by Kinder Craze

Preschool Week 3 - Five Senses

I didn't do a good job taking pictures this week.....had a pretty hard time keeping her on task, too. Oh well, we did what we could.

Daily: Calendar (will post more about it soon), weather, how do you feel?, practice writing name, computer, color

Monday: Head Start instructor was out, we played with a really neat magnet board (I want one!!) that had 3 different options. 5 senses (which Miss O did great with), weather (also really well, though she had trouble differentiating spring and summer), and animals (this one was a little weird with the categories being 2 legs, 4 legs, feathers, fur, and scales, and she had trouble with it).

Tuesday: Story time at the library - butterfly stories and craft. practiced cutting and gluing

Wednesday: Practiced number writing in the Elmo book. There was an old lady who swallowed a rose.

Thursday: Used the granny from yesterday's printout to identify senses around the house.

Friday: Head Start Learn & Play. Apple - how does it look, smell, feel, taste, sound...

Preschool Week 2

Alright, I really hope as it is now officially spring, the weather will stabilize...a little. I want to be outside!!

I found a nifty little resource. Teachers Notebook. Free to sign up, all sorts of lessons, activites, teaching aids...probably the majority of them are for purchase, but there are so many freebies! I think this will make it easier for me.



Daily stuff: Practice writing name, introduce house number, color. Computer/screen time as seen fit.

Monday: Head Start instructor came out - feelings puzzles and games, one was a memory game and she did pretty well. Good at identifying feelings, but can't explain how she can tell. Colored a rainbow. Worksheet - traced letter L and identified things that start with L. Feelings faces on shamrocks.

Miss Em wanted to color, also!

Tuesday: Story Time at the Library - Read about caterpillars, made a caterpillar puppet.

Outlined a picture to help her stay in the lines

Wednesday: Make up day for Head Start - matched lowercase to capital letters, self portrait with parts of body.

Thursday: Dyed eggs, did some climbing at the park, made bread. Ostara story and coloring/counting sheets from Pooka Pages

Friday: Found this book at Dollar Tree, doing some work in it. Cut and glue practice.

Preschool Week 1

Let's get this school thing started!! I've decided to incorporate what we're covering in story time...I will have to alter it slightly though because this week at story time was our St Patrick's Day party, and I will be doing St Patrick's as well as Ostara related things next week, as that's when they are. Which left this week kind of up in the air as far as theme. So, since we have been working on Miss O writing her first name without visual aid for Head Start, I thought we'd just do more around that this week while we got started.  We didn't do a lot, just getting a feel for this school thing.

Daily this week: write name, practice problem letters, discuss our street name, read books. computer/screen time (nick jr, reading eggs, etc) here and there

(Will add pictures later)

Monday: Head Start teacher came - worked on car and street safety, puzzles, and counting

Tuesday: Story Time at the library - Letter bingo, door hanger craft.

Wednesday: me book, legos

Thursday: number 7 activities, feelings, signs for feelings

Friday: Head Start Learn & Play, did a preschool assessment from Marie and Me Learning


So next week, I'm looking at five senses, St Patrick's day, and Spring/Ostara

The Preschool Decision

There's been discussion about preschool lately amongst the mothers of our 4/soon-to-be 4 year olds.... I think I've decided to skip it and homeschool for pre-k. This decision was made in large part due to finding
this post by mud hut mama. Also because I don't want to send Miss O to a private school and the public school she would be attending isn't exactly great.

Besides, this way I can teach her the things I want her to know. So, with that decision made, I figure I may as well start now. The main purpose of this blog is to keep me on track, right? Right. I will take the rest of the week  to figure out some (basic) lesson plans and we will get started and stick with it! I hope I can encourage her to enjoy learning. She is ahead in most areas, but has difficulty with fine motor skills and gets very frustrated with writing especially.

For right now, I'm going to link up these pages for my own reference.

• Mud Hut Mama: Weekly Lesson Plans
• Starfall
• Letter of the week
• crawford the cat
• Rhyme a week
• Wee Folk Art
• Perpetual preschool
• Little Pagan Homeschool
• Pagan Stories for Children
• (more for Miss Em)
• WildWood Naturals: Wildschooling