Almost Go Time!

I can't believe it, my little girl is 4. WOW! That means we are officially starting preschool this year. She is ready and excited. All the books have been purchased and supplies are ready to go, even I am ready to start. Monday is GO day! 

This year we are starting Classical Conversations. CC, as it is fondly called, is a group of people who meet weekly together and introduce a new set of memory work that everyone is working on at home. After learning about different styles of education I think the classical model of education will be a great fit for Kyla and our family. If you are interested in learning more about what Kyla is learning you can learn more about the Foundations program here. I am actually going to be a "tutor" (their word for teacher) of K/1st grade, I am excited to be a part of such an awesome group of people. 

The program itself is not complete, we have to add math and phonics. We are about 15 lessons into Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for phonics. For math, we are starting with the Math U See Primer. I am actually excited to re-learn math as it is my weakest subject thus my least favorite! The other additional things we will be doing is Handwriting Without Tears and Long Story Short for our Bible overview.  

I am planning to post what I have learned about the classical model of education and why I think it will be GREAT for us and also why we want to homeschool! 

Here it is, our school shelf in the kitchen... ready to go! 

yes, that is a back pack. Was it necessary... no but did she really want one for school, yes and she was excited about it! For $9.99 from LL Bean I obliged :) 

Christmas Countdown

I cannot believe are so close to Christmas! As I am sitting here cuddling my sweet baby boy I wanted to share with you a few fun and simple ways to start getting yourself and your kiddos to think about celebrating Jesus' birth this christmas season. 

Last year we made a simple paper chain and had numbers on them, each day we read verses corresponding to the number. I got the verses from here. I actually ordered the tract so this year we will use it with stickers :) we will also use our homeschool calender with Jesus' birthday marked on it as a count down. 

Here are two fun preschool resources I have come across that we will enjoy doing... 

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/PreschoolPacksNativity.html

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/ChristmasFun.html

Happy December 1st!

What's Going On | Preschool

You know what even the best laid plans fail :) but such is life. I can say since we started preschool a few weeks ago life has been insanely busy or I have been so wiped out that sitting at the table doing something formal hasn't been my top priority. BUT what I will say is I am still being intentional with Kyla. I thought I would share with you things we are doing to encourage you to just live intentionally during what may be a busy season in your life. 

• Books, we read lots and lots of books! 
• I have a few special "school" type things that she has easy access to any time she wants. I will often turn off the TV and music on and generally that is where she goes first! (Right now in her boxes she has pom pom balls/colored cups for sorting and counting, lacing cards, tangram puzzle & her geoboard)
• Puzzles, this girl LOVES puzzles. 
• The Letter Factory Video
• When we are at a restaurant waiting for food we use the creamer, butter, sugar packets, sweeter packets, anything really to count, do patterns, matching, same and different. You get the idea :) 
• We have stopped and looked at and talked about buffalo on the side of the road. 
• Coloring
• Playing on her magnetic doodle board
• Lots of playing, and her imagination SOARS! 

We have fit in a few days of organized school, which has included a few workbook activities, tracing, drawing lines (pre writing stuff), working on the letter A and what it says, the days of the week, Bible and Catechism Questions and Scripture Memory. Counting and sorting with her bears and some cutting for fine motor skills! 

Hope school is going well for all of you as you continue to plug right along! 

Preschool | Day 1

First I have to be a mommy an minute and say... "HOW DID SHE GET SO BIG!" and "I CANNOT BELIEVE WE STARTED PRESCHOOL!" okay now that I got that out of the way I can get on with our day! 

As I have mentioned in the past (here and here) we are starting school because she loves learning and is showing interest. It is very laid back! I told her yesterday that we were going to start today and she was very excited, her excitement rolled into today and our first day was great! 

I of course took her outside for some photos, and I wanted a new blog header. 

We started with prayer and our calendar wall and moved the star to the date, talked about the days of the week and the weather. (I do have things to add to this still, shapes and a few other things) 

Next was Bible time. I have chosen to go through The Big Picture Story Bible. We are going to read the same   story all week long. This morning we talked about creation and that God used words to create the world and that His creation was good. We also reviewed our Catechism Questions and Scripture memory. 

Following Bible time I did some basic assessment tests. I used the Assessment tools I found on the 1+1+1=1 Blog (under the learn more section). I had a really good idea of things we needed to work on and this was helpful to confirm those areas. The assessment included her identifying capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers 1-10, shapes and colors, tracing horizontal and vertical lines, cutting straight lines, counting 1:1 when touching an object, and ABABAB pattern recognition. 

She capped out the morning helping daddy make eggs, in case you are wondering she was supervised! 

We also read some books and have had plenty of free play and daddy time today (since today is his day off)! While I was at the store Daddy threw in some computer time. Rest time/tv time has been spent watching Peter Rabbit and The Letter Factory. 

I pray her desire and love to read and learn continues as the Lord continues to shape and fashion her heart into His! 

Happy Monday! 

Here's the plan | Preschool @ Home

I have had a little more time to think and plan and things are beginning to come together. We are not starting here until September and will probably go through November. Baby #2 is due in early December so we will take December and January off and maybe February. 

Here is my lesson plan book & a few of my resources:

The only "formal" curriculum I will be using will be Handwriting Without Tears PreK Book. After reading various reviews and speaking with people I felt like it would be a good fit for me and Kyla. I am looking for her to show a few more signs of readiness before we begin but I think she will really enjoy it once we get started. 

I am also going to be using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It was given to me and I have heard great things about it too, we we are going to give it a shot!

Above and beyond that there will be weekly trips to the library for story time and to check out books and play on the computer. Puzzles will be put together and games will be played. You can see my post of manipulatives here. These will be things we will be using daily. Thrown in with small unit studies (i.e. milk comes from cows, let's go to a dairy and see cows being milked. She thinks milk comes from the grocery store :) ). I also have plenty of the cheap work books to work on counting, cutting, coloring, dot to dot... you get the picture. 

Since Kyla is still young my hope is that her and I can get into a schedule of sorts and begin to take steps toward more intentional school in the next 2-3 years. This is what my lesson plan book looks like, it has 8 squares to go with my toddler/preschool schedule.  I plan to schedule at least 3 days a week.

There are two things that will happen daily, Bible & Calendar time. I am still working on my calendar wall, it will include the day of the week and the weather. During that time daily we will review catechism questions from the A Catechism for Boys and Girls (you can download it free here or here) (here is another great resource, Truth & Grace Memory Books) and review scripture memory. We will also read for a story Bible (The Big Picture Bible, Read Aloud Bible Stories, My ABC Bible Verse, The Jesus Storybook Bible, or Leading Little Ones to God). 

In a nutshell, that is how preschool will look for us! Thanks for looking!

This is linked up to the Preschool Corner, for other WONDERFUL preschool/homeschool ideas click below!

Are you weary?

I don't know about you but I think being a parent is the hardest job in the world! I am sure you would agree, there is no responsibility like molding a child's heart. As a Christian parent I must continually and consistently correct, rebuke, reprove and train my child (and myself) in righteousness. Ya know what, that is TIRING! 

I find great comfort in Galatians 6:9

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

If you need some encouragement as you press on, check out this post on the Girltalk blog. 

For God's glory and my daughter's heart, I will not become weary!

Preschool @ Home

I have been looking forward to writing a series of posts on what we are doing at home for weeks but we have been swamped here with life!! Even though things have been busy I have been getting ready for "school" let me assure you I use that word lightly considering my kiddo is barely 3, but she is eager and ready to learn and enjoys activities and other such things. My biggest goal with "school" is to get us on some type of schedule for doing life together. Right now we fly by the seat of our pants, hopefully come September we will have a routine of sorts. 

Everything I have been told is to relax and have fun, so that is what we plan to do. I plan on lots of trips to the library, books being read, games being played and life being lived. My goal is to be intentional with life, for example Kyla now knows the stop sign is an octagon, now we are working on the fact that the octagon has eight sides :) 

Enough rambling, what I am wanting to share with you today is what we are using for manipulatives and how it can be done on the cheap! 

The above photo is our school area, it has three plastic clip boxes I bought from Dollar General for $3.00 a piece, I will put 3 different activities every few days for Kyla to do.  Currently there is a peg board (which she got as a gift), wooden beads and cord (hobby lobby for cheap), homemade geoboard (all I had to buy was thumbtacks, I got the wood/paint from my parents), and the Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards (which I got for 12.99 from TJ Maxx with Birthday Money, regular retail is $14.99). 

Although we are not ready for school (or should I say I am not) she has LOVED and spent HOURS playing with these four various activities. 

Here is the rest of our manipulatives:

I spent the most on the counting/sorting bears and the pattern cards, but she had b-day money so we bought them ($30.00 for both), there are multi-sized pom-poms for counting and sorting, foam dice (9 pack for I think 2.99 from Mardels), homemade lacing cards from a pack of foam ($4.99 for lots of foam from Hobby Lobby and cord I bought to use for the lacing cards and wooden beads - $1.99), Pipe cleaners, beans to spray paint later to use for counting, letter & number cookie cutters (I already had). Some things you don't see that we will use is homemade play dough and colored cheerios or fruit loops.

I made the geoboard from this post ours is 8x8 size, Kyla loves it!!

  

Here is a shot of our school area, that will be changing to a family bulletin board that will include scripture memory, who we are praying for, catechism questions, and probably a mission statement. I think the colors and shapes will be moved around and a calendar and maybe something else will be added. She knows letters and numbers but I think it still will be helpful for awhile. 

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or what works for your preschooler I would love to hear it!! 

Happy Schooling!

Wanna See Someone Else's Lapbook

My Friend Michelle has made two lapbooks, one on trains and the other on the body/anatomy Check them out!

While you are there check out the File Folder Games! 

Muncha Muncha Muncha Lapbook

I finally got around to putting my Muncha, Muncha, Muncha Lapbook together. It goes with the book Muncha, Muncha, Muncha. Here is a video of the lapbook and below I will post resources I used and another link to add to what we are already doing. 

The Book!

Lapbook Resources

Resource From the Author

Toddler/Preschool Schedule

In my post on the Easter lapbook I mentioned the need of some structure. I finally finished our chart and I am really happy with it! Let's hope Kyla is too! A few things I like about this is Kyla will know what to expect once she learns what each of the pictures means and I will have some sort of routine to follow. I love the idea that it is flexible and not the law! The box next to the pictures I can either use a photo of Kyla and move it when we are onto the next subject or write in what we are doing that day! I did another video just because it was easier and quicker for me!!! 

I would love to hear what works for you!