As I mentioned, a few of my friends asked if I would share details on what I do for my 3 year old's preschool lessons (which we like to refer to as games :). I do not claim to actually have any clue as to what I am doing--but I am glad to share, nonetheless. We started our preschooling a couple of weeks before Bella was born, then took a break for a bit and have now started back again. We are only in our 4th week, but we have found this to be not only DO-able, but really fun! I love having the one-on-one time with my son and he LOVES doing "the super fun games while sissy is sleeping." His words. I quote. As soon as I tell him I'm going to put Sis down for her morning nap, he runs to his place at the kitchen table and waits for me to get back and start our lesson. The format I have come up with is: each week we study one letter and one color. I prepare 3 days worth of lessons to allow a little flexibility on the other days, but a lot of the time we end up doing 4 days. On the 4th day, I either repeat some activities, catch up on ones we ran out of time for, make up some new ones, or just do some art projects.
This is how I put our lesson plan together. I use 2 MAIN resources. I use this workbook that I purchased from Mardel for our color activities (we will do shapes and numbers when we run out of colors). I love this workbook for many reasons. 1. It is reproducible. That way I can just run a quick copy of a coloring page, etc. and I can reuse it with my other kids! 2. It has one "chapter" per color. It has some coloring pages etc, but then it has different color activities broken down by "subject". For example, there are science activities, language, arts, fine motor skills & large motor skills. And there are several activities for each subject. It also explains how to do the activity and what the child will learn from it.
This website is AWESOME!! I would like to meet this lady and shake her hand. She has created such a resource for homeschooling that is incredible. She offers tons of FREE printables that you can download one at a time, or you can purchase large packs of her stuff for a very small price. The website is www. confessionsofahomeschooler.com. I mainly use her letter of the week curriculum for our letter activities. On her site, you can go to PreKCurriculum, then ABCs & 123s. She has it separated out by letter. I just click on the letter we are doing that week and then decide which activities I want to use.
This is my homeschool box. I keep a random assortment of craft supplies in here. I also keep my lesson plans for the week and any supplies I need for that week's activities in here. That way, when it is time to get to work, I just grab this and we have everything we need!
This is my lesson book. Isn't it pretty :)
The very first page in my book is our calendar. I just print a blank month off of our Outlook (or whatever the Mac version of that is. For a 2-time mac owner, I am very Apple-illiterate.) I decide what letter and color we will study that week, and then I write in the activities for each day. (more on that later)
When I sit down to begin my planning, I grab a piece of paper, my workbook, and my computer. I look at COAH first and download/print any of the letter activities I want to use for that week. I save everything I download in a folder before I print it, so that I have it for later down the road. As I print things off, I write it down on my piece of paper so that I have a nice list of all the things I've found.
I use this letter tracing sheet from COAH every week. I put it in a sheet protector (with a sheet of cardboard behind it to help make it sturdy) and then he uses a dry erase marker to practice his letter. I just put the new letter paper on top of the old letters. That way, I can pull them out to refresh his memory on the old letters.
On the back side of my sheet protector, I put these "pre-writing skills" sheets. I have a few different ones stacked in there and I switch them every once in a while.
After I have gotten all of my letter activities, I move on to the workbook for the color activities. Basically, I skim through the chapter and see which activities I think he would enjoy. I try to choose out of several of the subjects.
When I find one I like, I make a copy on my printer so that I have the instructions handy when it is time for that activity. Also, if there are any coloring pages I want to use, I run a quick copy of those as well. As I am copying these off, I also write the activity on my handy dandy list.
Lastly, the ONE thing that I have actually done on my own, I print off the Verse of the Week document I created. COAH lists a few verses for each letter. I just pick the verse I want him to learn, and type it up. I also change the color to coordinate with our color for that week. Because I want our fridge to look nice and matchy. And because I have issues :)
But see, doesn't it look nice and matchy. I also cut out our letter out of construction paper (using that week's color, of course).
I tape the new verse on top of our old ones. This keeps it nice and tidy looking, and then I can just flip them up as we go through all of our verses each day!
Ok. So now I take my handy dandy list and my calendar. (My list for 3 days is usually longer than this. I didn't write everything down). I then divide up the activities between the 3 days. I start with the things we do every time (memory verse, some sort of letter tracing/writing), then I try to make it to where we do a few letter and a few color activities each day. I also balance them to where we don't do all writing one day and art the next day. A little of everything everyday. I even try to write them in the order that I will do them, just for ease.
Then I look at each day and gather up all the things I need for that day's activities and put everything in one sheet protector. (in order I will do them, of course)
If any of the activities have lots of pieces, I put them in an envelope so they don't get lost.
After I have filled all 3 sheet protectors, I check my supply box to see if I have everything I need for that week. If not, I either track it down in my house or add it to my shopping list. I put my lesson book in and I am ready to go for the week! It usually only takes about 30 minutes of planning per week. I usually try to do at least 2 weeks at a time. And that's it!! I keep my school box in my kitchen so that I can just pull it out when we are ready. Easy Peasy.
I also keep this little box to throw all of our old activities in. Some of it is reusable for the next kid, some of it I just like to keep as a record of his handiwork :)
Some of the games/activities, I keep in a sheet protector in the back of my lesson book in case we run out of things to do on a particular day. I can just whip one of these bad boys out and we are good to go.
Sometimes, Sis refuses to nap so I try to include her in our games. It usually works out pretty well. I have a small tupperware container filled with colored squares of cardstock that I cut up. I use these for pattern practice, sorting, etc. Sissy likes to put them in a bowl, dump them out, put them back in. She could do this for hours on a good day.
That is pretty much how we do it. I thought I would show you a few more pics of some of the things we have done, just to give you some ideas.
This is a sun we made on yellow week. We cut the centers out of two paper plates (see sis above), colored them, shaved some yellow crayon onto waxed paper, melted it, (ruined a tea towel), put the wax paper in the hole and made a sun!
It brightens my day while I do dishes.
We use shaving cream to practice writing our letters.
I'm trying to help him get over his dislike of getting messy!
This is a yellow bumblebee we made. (from the color, shape, number book)
I bought this dry erase board at Mardel for about $4. They also have them at Wal-mart. The back side has lines on it. Sometimes he likes drawing letters on this better than tracing them.
I usually have one of these activities every week. Either we look for things in a magazine that are our color, or that start with our letter. Then we label the pictures and talk about how they are spelled. Brother decided that he wanted to label this yellow one himself. Some of them he even spelled himself! So Proud.
We also make these labels (copied from our workbook and colored by momma). We go around the house and find things that are our color. So far, we have left them all up because he enjoys looking at them. This is one of his favorite games. We do this on the first lesson of each week.
And these are the pre-writing pages I mentioned. If he stays on the "road" and doesn't wreck, we always have to take a picture to show Daddy.
Well, I'm sure that is WAY more information than anyone cared to know. But hopefully it is helpful to some of you. I know that there are about a million ways to homeschool, but so far, this has been easy and fun for us. If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to attempt to answer them. There are also approximately 80 million websites and blogs that offer so many ideas and resources. My personal experience was that I tend to get overwhelmed with TOO much information. Then I don't know where to start. I decided to just keep it simple this first year and really enjoy my time with my boy. There is plenty of time to be stressed out when I have to try to teach him Physics down the road! yikes :) Hope you all have a wonderful day!
-Mica
No comments:
Post a Comment