Preschool at Our House

Timmy will be four in a couple of months and with his impending birthday, plans for preschool are swirling around in my head. I am actually excited to return to the early grammar stage. With Jeffrey heading to high school and Christian in middle school, I have missed those early learning years much more than I thought I would. While in the trenches of teaching my older boys how to read I was tearfully convinced that I might not make it through but thankfully a few veteran homeschool moms loaned me an ear and sometimes a shoulder. They were right! My boys did learn to read! Hopefully I will be able to pass their encouragement forward to others.

This year I've experimented with some of the methods of Classical Christian homeschooling with Timothy and have been very excited to report, great results. Just the other night while I was putting an alphabet puzzle back together, he was able to tell me almost every sound. I haven't fed him phonics and we haven't bought into the "Teach your baby to read" programs! We have read stories and looked at picture books every day for as long as I can remember and I do give him tons of opportunities to practice and learn about the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. I am also very particular with the toys we choose for him. Lauri Puzzles and Melissa and Doug Toys rank at the top of my list!

Every day we wake up and spend a few minutes cuddling on the sofa or in momma's bed. Then he helps me wake his brothers and completes his morning high five. (Get dressed, make bed, eat breakfast, kitchen job, and brush teeth). Timothy watches "Tad" on Leapfrog's The Letter Factory DVD (yes the same video every day) while Christian, Jeffrey and I go over the days requirements at our command central bulletin board in the kitchen! Christian and I can usually work through the new concept in his math lesson or complete a dictation sentence while Timmy finishes his movie. After watching "Tad" he joins us in the kitchen where he heads to his activity boxes. This idea came from several "work box" blog posts.  I repurposed a plastic Sterilite brand tower with 4 narrow drawers and 3 wide drawers. Here he finds various activities to work through. I am looking for a different container for next fall but for now this one works well. 

Every drawer has a single activity that he should enjoy. Tomorrow's drawers are packed and ready to go!



The first drawer holds a simple coloring book and a box of crayons.  The pages have slightly raised edges to help kids stay in the lines.  Timothy and I colored this page together.  I used red and he used green! 

The second drawer holds sandpaper and yarn. We had fun making our letters and shapes today and for tomorrow I added pipe cleaners to this drawer.  We have a lot of fun making pipe cleaner animals and then counting the legs! 



The third drawer this week holds safety scissors, a hole punch and the cards that magazines insert into the center to solicit subscriptions.  

The fourth drawer has a selection of easy puzzles.  and a home made Humpty Dumpty that velcros back together. 

This Crayola Dry Erase board stays in the drawer or on top of the tower most of the time.  I place mazes, and coloring sheets inside this board and he loves to use the built in markers and eraser.  This was around fifteen dollars at Wal-Mart.  The fish mat is from a box of laminated easy draw and trace mats that I purchased through Scholastics during their Dollar Days sale! 

 

This deep drawer holds our peg board and pegs.  When he plays with this toy especially I like to direct clean up by saying things like "pick up all the blue pegs."

This is our bead stringing drawer! 

  

These drawers and the toys inside are his to use.  There isn't a specific order or amount of time spent on each drawer.  Sometimes a single drawer may occupy him for ten minutes, sometimes for ten seconds.  Sometimes my older boys will pick a drawer and help him complete the activity.  Often one will play with Timmy while I am working with the other.

We try to make sure we spend time outside every day.  He loves the trampoline, his sandbox and chasing the dog.  On days we stay home we head outside morning and afternoon.  We also read stories all day long, in the morning, before our nap and before we go to sleep.   He loves his books and is at the stage where he wants to help me read it!  He has his favorite books memorized verbatim!  There is so many other things we do throughout the day.  But we stick to our routine and are very repetitious in our activities.  We watch the same videos, play the same games, count the same pegs. This I will continue into this next school year as Timothy continues to learn and grow.