Simple Preschooling at Home
A few people (this is a wild exaggeration – one single person inquired) have asked for details about the homeschooled version of preschool I’m doing with Ella this year.
Simple at Home Preschool
So! Now that you’ve plowed through those four things, here’s my very official and impressive curriculum, which I should probably patent immediately.
Math: I bought this kindergarten math workbook and she does one or two lessons a day. She loves it and always chooses this to do first. The lessons are fairly short and I usually bulk them up a little by making up additional questions or problems with the provided pictures. Once a week or so, I have her play this Todo K-2 Math app (free! and quite impressive) to practice tracing numbers, doing basic addition, etc. She likes it and I try not to fall asleep because the music is very soft and soothing.
Reading: Ella already knew all her letters and the sounds they made, so we’ve been working our way through Phonics Pathways (we checked it out from the library). I’m not at all in a hurry for her to learn to read (since she’s just barely three and I don’t feel like there is any rush), so we do part of a lesson each day, sometimes repeating the same lesson a couple of days in a row. I want to make sure it’s fun for her, rather than stressful. She also will often pull the book out in the evening and have Bart help her sound out words from the many many lists of words in the book. (I’d originally planned to use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but my mom happened to mention to me that she’d used it with one of us and not been impressed at all – apparently of the four different things she used to teach the four of us to read, it was her least favorite).
Read-Aloud: I read aloud to her for about 15-20 minutes. We started with Socks (I liked it, but it’s not my favorite), and now we’re doing Charlotte’s Web which I think is much better and she seems to be following it more easily. Next, I plan to do The Mouse and the Motorcyle or Ramona the Pest. Sometimes she snuggles with me on the couch, sometimes she plays with Legos or blocks while I read to her.
Picture Books: My goal is to read all the Caldecott Winners and Honor books this year with her. We usually do three or four, depending on how long they are.
Other things I’m planning to add:
- Handwriting. I have done zero research on this, but I’d like to add a handwriting workbook to our routine, since she loves letters and she really loves workbooks (it’s like she’s my child or something).
- Science. I think it’d be fun to do a science experiment once a week or so. I’ve heard good things about Slow and Steady Get Me Ready, and Science Play: Beginning Discoveries for 2-to-6-year-olds (this last one has the best reviews and also is the only one my library has a copy of so you can guess which one I’ll be using).
There are so many fun things we could do, but I don’t want to overwhelm either of us, and so far this has felt extremely manageable and kept it enjoyable for us both. We’ll save the SAT vocab word flashcards for next year.P.S. On the topic of schooling, this post by Design Mom last week about sending her two oldest children to a very poorly rated public high school was fascinating to me and its been on my mind all weekend.
Oh, I'm going to share this with a few friends. Great stuff!
(And that link. Whoa!)
I love that you've got plans to read more Beverly Cleary books! My favorite! Although, Charlotte's Web is up there too. It sounds like you're having a great time! My mom taught all of us to read, too. 🙂
You must be having so much fun with Ella! I'm sure she just soaks up whatever education you offer her. I want to remind you of the Early Learning page of my website, http://www.teachthechildrenwell.com/early and also let you know about an iPad resource I have developed including lists of apps both paid and free (I added the math app you mentioned) https://sites.google.com/site/ipadsforelementaryclassrooms/
Ramona the Pest! Ahhh, I adore Ramona so, so much!
So… I am a moron when it comes to teaching kids ANYTHING…. what did you do to start her learning letters? Let's back up like two years… hahaha. But seriously. Do you just do what you like or do you read some book about raising kids and stuff? Alphabet flashcards/apps?
I haven't read a lot of parenting books, frankly (too many YA romances need reading).
As far as alphabet, we mainly just played with some big alphabet cards and read a ton of ABC books. Plus, some letter magnets.
(1) Rachel's one of my favorite people on this planet (she's how I heard about your blog)
(2) My guy is a little young for this, but I can't wait to use this info. Pinned for the future.
(3) Living in California where there are a lot of 2/10 schools, that's just the kind of article I needed to read, so thanks!
Ohh, a post just for me?!?! Thank you, this is perfect. Jilly is just starting to get the idea of school and I want to take advantage while it's so exciting to her
There is a great website for the alphabet and alphabet sounds. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f
I checked out your blog today – it's really great! Love the content and your writer's voice!
I've been wondering about your home preschool stuff and actually meant to email you about it! So there's two people who definitely wanted to know. Do the other parents who do this with you have any teacher/library training? It's not like I feel unqualified to teach letters and numbers, but I just kind of suck at playing with Hannah (taking her places where she can play? I'm really good at that) and question my own motivation to make lesson plans, etc!
Uh, just did a post today on our little coop preschool (although different focus). Great minds, and all.
That sounds ambitious and beautiful!
I'm sure that one day your daughter will look back on those hours and be grateful for your efforts.
Love from Germany,
Bambi
You guys make a great team, sounds like you both love what you're doing and that this preschool is a good fit. Nice work.
We listened to all the Romona books while doing the endless shuffling between activities. Everyone of my kids loved them (ages 4-9). It was a great way to make car time productive, or at least not boring!
You might want to check this out.
http://learningboxpreschool.com/
Highly HIGHLY recommend – Handwriting WIthout Tears. Silly name, excellent curriculum. Teaches letters capitals first, then lowercase, in order of complicatedness to write/construct. And especially if you are starting with 3-4 year olds, you will like the component that has wooden pieces to "build" letters before you write them. (Every letter can be made with some combination of four pieces – big line, small line, big curve, small curve.)
I cannot say enough good stuff about the curriculum. (It's what my sons 4yo preschool teacher used and it was wildly successful.)
(I don't homeschool in any fashion. WHOA. Glad you're having fun though!!!)
Great ideas! How are you liking Phonics Pathways? I started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but didn't really love it.
So far so good, but we've only done a couple of lessons.
Nothing to do with preschooling (I'd never be able to do it myself) but I just bought Lucy the same tee from Target. I had sworn I'd seen it before, but I couldn't remember who. Now I remember it was Ella! 🙂 I gotta love Target 🙂
Way to go! Jack was way into learning at home too. He learned to read at 3 no problem. Learned letters and sounds around 2 and a half or a little later. I like the BOB books a lot for teaching him to read words. They start with only 3 or 4 letters in each book so it's easy for them to get confident in those letter words and move on from there. T used them too, but he was a year or two older before he was interested at all.
I second Erin's thoughts on Handwriting Without Tears for a handwriting curriculum. I'm a pediatric occupational therapist, and I use and recommend Handwriting Without Tears all the time. The letters are taught in a developmentally appropriate order (capitals first) and it uses a multisensory approach. Three is a little young for actually writing letters, but if Ella is interested in it, I say go for it using some sort of multi-sensory approach. Writing letters in sand, dirt, shaving cream, paint, etc and building letters with wooden pieces. It sounds like you have a plan for math and reading, but Handwriting Without Tears also has a preschool literacy and math curriculum that are great.
I also like Kumon workbooks for developing pre-writing skills. My trick for using workbooks over and over is to tear out the pages, place them inside page protector sleeves and use dry erase markers or crayola dry erase crayons. Then you can just erase and repeat, without buying more workbooks!