How We Do Preschool At Home

This fall Sweet Girl will be headed off to preschool. She is so excited to go to school, and I'm excited because I know how much she is going to love it, (and it doesn't hurt that it will give me some free time in the mornings). I have been collecting preschool ideas on Pinterest for awhile now and figured we should start doing our own at home preschool to get her ready to go. So we started a few weeks ago and it has been so much fun. I love getting to spend time together and I especially love how excited Sweet Girl gets about preschool. She even decided totally on her own, to call me Mrs. Mommy during preschool. How adorable is that?

I like to keep it pretty simple. After all how much flash does a preschooler need? Mostly it's just about us spending time together and learning a little on the side.

So here is how preschool has been playing out for us:

I choose weekly themes to guide our learning. For example our fist week was I is for insect. We did all sorts of insect activities. Sometimes the theme lasts for just one activity and sometimes it lasts for two. I have found two weeks is about the max for us before we both start to get bored.

First preschool only lasts about 20 minutes four days a week. We do it while Little Brother takes his morning nap.

We start with Calendar Time. I made a sad looking little calendar on my bulletin board. I just cut out 2 inch circles and wrote the numbers of the month on them and then hole punched the top so I could hang them on a straight pin. I am hesitant about posting a picture of it because it really isn't fancy, but I do want to show how simple it can be.
We use a pointer (Okay it's the drumstick to our Rock Band drums.) to count the days so far in the month. I also have three circles to show the weather; sunny, cloudy and rainy. That about covers the weather in our area.

                                               

Next we have Story Time. We just read a book to go along with our theme.

Math Time come next. We do a simple math activity. We count, do patterns, sorting, shapes, colors, etc.

Then we have Literacy Time. Here we practice letters and their sounds, writing, and words.

Finally we have an Activity. This one varies a lot.It's everything from science to singing to using scissors to dramatic play.

Yo help me get started I used the Mommy School packets from Oopsey Daisy blog. They are really great. It was the perfect way to start, because everything was in one place. But after a few weeks I wanted to start picking my own themes. Now I get lots of ideas from Pinterest. My hope is that I can start sharing what I have collected.