This week I have started teaching Brantley preschool. Over the past few weeks I've been realizing how bored she was and honestly, how lazy I was being and it was time to do something about it. Sunday night, I found THIS website that provides Preschool curriculum for free that was created by a SAHM as she taught her own children at home.
We are using the 26 week Preparatory Curriculum that teaches the letters of the alphabet, colors, shapes, numbers, has a weekly themes (animals) and a vocabulary word to go with each theme.
So far we are enjoying our "school" time. We only spend about 20-30 minutes each morning learning our new thing for the day and reviewing the previous days.
I'm thinking about doing the preparatory curriculum twice and then moving on the the Letter of the Week curriculum that begins to teach letter sounds and more.
Below is our Learning Board. I will be changing the pictures during the
week depending on what we are learning about that day. This week, we
learned about Cows and the vocabulary word- calf on Monday, the shape
square on Tuesday, the letter A on Wednesday, today we'll learn about
the number 1 and Friday I'll be reviewing all of these things and
teaching Brantley the nursery rhyme "Hey, Diddle, Diddle".
This is my lesson plan for this week. On the website she gives ideas and suggestions for each day, including a list of books that can be checked out from a local library to support the theme for the week.
Day 1: Brantley colored a picture of a cow and we talked about them and I taught her that a baby cow is called a calf. So far, each day when I ask her about it she is still able to tell me that a baby cow is called a calf. I'm pretty impressed! After school, we went to the Hoover Library to check out a few of the books but unfortunately, they didn't have many of the ones on the list so we just read one of them at the library and then came back home. I'm going to have to do my preparations on the weekends or in the afternoons when I'm by myself so that I can go to more than 1 library.
Day 2: Brantley learned the shape, Square. She colored this page that had a bunch of squares on it. Then we went through the house taking pictures of things that are in the shape of a square. For some reason, this is the hardest shape for her to remember, but we're working on it and hopefully she'll get the hang of it soon.
Day 3: Yesterday we learned the letter A. Brantley painted the letter, we sang the ABC's and pointed out "A's" on boxes and signs throughout the day. I think that this will be the hardest part for BR. She can sing the alphabet all the way through but actually naming each letter is still a little above her head. This is why I'm thinking about doing this curriculum twice so I can make sure she really knows each letter before jumping into letter sounds.
Today will be day 4 and I'll be teaching her the number 1. Brantley can also count to 14 but she doesn't completely understand what the value of each number means. I'm hoping that after this morning, she understands just a little bit more about how many "1" is.
Our New Daily Structure
So far this week has been really great and I'm loving our new structure. I've started getting up with Chase at 5:15 for a cup of coffee and a quick devotion time for he and I before he leaves for work. 5:15am is really early but if Chase can do it every day then I can do it everyday as well. I then get a shower and I'm ready for the day by the time Brantley wakes up around 7:15. We eat breakfast until about 8:00 and then it's onto school time. After school we're able to run errands, go to the park or down to Star Lake to see the ducks and geese. Snack at 11:00, lunch at 1:00 and nap at 2:00. Ever since we said bye-bye to passy, Brantley has been fighting her nap. By moving it back to 2 o'clock, she is more tired by then and falls asleep faster. So far, her naps have been shorter than they used to be, which is hard for me to get used to, but she's growing up and I know she can't take 3 hours naps forever. Hopefully, our new structure continues to work and keep BR from becoming too bored and me from being to lazy. I know all of this will change come the end of May when Savannah joins the family but for now we're going to keep at it.
