Homeschool Preschool Plans - A Month In | Still Playing School

Homeschool Preschool Plans - A Month In

By Devany | Labels:
Since August is almost over (!!!) we are finishing our trial month of homeschool preschool.  I am going to use this post to think aloud, make notes about what worked and what didn't, and talk about our plans moving forward.

I've found this great link about homeschool lesson planning and even though they seem to be working with older children, it really helped me get organized.  If you have any other links for lesson planning, please send them my way!

What went well in August:
- E LOVES school.  I do, too.
- She has our calendar routine down.
- A flexible schedule works well.  I'd like to have a few daily activities and some weekly ones and try to get to a certain number of tasks per day.
- Mixing preschool with scheduled social outings and activities varies our day.  This will continue in the fall as more of our activities start up again (library story time, dance class, our moms/kids group, Play & Learn classes).
- I found space in our house for school areas without feeling like it is taking over our home.  (More on these nooks later).
- The predictable text book I made with her name/pictures was a huge hit!  Maybe I can make one per theme so she has a whole library and we have a record of all we've studied.


What we need to work on/add for the fall:
- E asks for more work then I have planned, so I need to add in some non-themed activities that I can pull out any time. This will be especially helpful when D arrives.  Things she can do independently are even better.  Any ideas?  I love this quiet book and busy bag tasks like this.
- Make a visual schedule of our daily activities, maybe using magnets and incorporating it into our calendar board?
- We need more afternoon activities.  I was planning on doing most of our work in the morning, but if it is a day we are out and about, we could work after nap before dinner time since I am always looking for things to do then anyway.
- These monthly and weekly planning sheets provide a great framework.  I will probably continue to use the monthly sheets for blog and preschool planning and use the weekly one for our larger projects that I plan to blog about.  I need to create a system for daily planning
- Work on more organization and planning ideas!  I'd love to find some Pinterest boards all about homeschool planning, but I can't find quite what I'm looking for there.
- Finish gathering, buying, and prepping supplies.


Daily work:
calendar time
Handwriting without Tears (I need to order these wood pieces but I'll also be creating a lot of HWT materials myself.)
fine motor work (writing, coloring, scissors, tweezers, clothespins, play dough, scoop & pour)
invitations to play

Weekly/Per Theme:
felt board
journal writing (at least 2x a week)
letter identification 
uppercase and lowercase matching
letter sounds
pre-reading skills
patterns
matching/sorting
shapes
number identification
counting
science inquiry
real life discovery
pretend play
sensory play
art

7 comments :

  1. I was wondering, how do you do the journal writing? I'm very interested in this! I would love to do it with my daughter just not sure of how etc. Any ideas would be appreciated!

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    1. Maribeth, it is very simple at this point, mostly modeled, but I will write a post about it soon! Thanks for asking!

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  2. As a homeschooling momma, I love reading about what you are doing. I can't wait for Olivia to get to this age to do some of these activities!

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  3. This is such a great site! I have also been doing activities and such with my two and four year old for some time now. Some things they love are individual dry erase boards to practice writing (sock eraser):). I have several shapes and colors hanging in their toy room, they use a pointer and everyday at calendar time, after songs, I ask them to find specific shapes and colors. The alphabet is hanging along the top of the wall, along with numbers 0-9 and we do thsoe each day too. Not only do we have our calendar, but they have another that they can put the numbers on and activities on their own. I have made a song box. I have lots of nursery rhymes and songs on index cards that I have had laminated. They love to pick out their favorite cards to sing. They enjoy using the pointer to locate the color/shape. I have some poems for different themes that we say regularly. They also enjoy magnetic letters on cookie sheets, and of course shaving cream:). With our apple unit I have three apple trees that I made while student teaching. They go on the wall and they place the correct colored apples on each tree. Then we can discuss things like which color apples do we have the most of, the least, how many of each, how many more, less, etc. I also made a few graphs on the computer so after we go to the apple orchard this fall we will taste each apple and fill out the charts; our favorites, how they taste, etc. I have a larger dry erase board in the toy room with a letter in the center and we write words and draw pictures that start with that letter around it (whenever we think of a new one we add it):). I have lots of preschool workbooks and activities that I have made copies of and made foldders for each of them. I am so sorry for the book! I just thought I would share some of my ideas, even though they are all over the place! I was just very excited to find your site! It's so nice to find others that are as excited as I am to educate their children and have fun doing it!!:)

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  4. I wanted to add one more thing. My children love noodle days (uncooked noodles and rice, measuring cups, other manipulatives).

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  5. I don't know how costs compare to the HWT wood pieces, since they're "Not available" through the link, but we have this book, How to Build an A, http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Sara-Midda/dp/1579653782/,
    and it comes with sturdy foam pieces in the same shapes.

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