January Home Preschool Plan

When it comes to preschool at home, I like a little structure, but not too much. For Q (my fifth-born) I've set a theme for the month and letter of the week plans, but haven't overly scheduled when we read which book and which days we do the various enrichment activities.

Here are a few of the things we are doing (along with a peek at the preschool spread in my bullet journal).

January Theme: Winter and Snow

Our Weekday Routine

Since last summer, Q has been accustomed to the idea of having a simple morning checklist: eat breakfast, use the toilet, and get dressed (in whatever order he was in the mood for). He knew he had to do those three things before he could ask for his little bit of daily electronics time. Around two months ago, I added "book with Mom" to his checklist, as I felt we weren't spontaneously reading enough. Now he is four, and has had over six months to get used to the idea of daily expectations, so I felt comfortable expanding on it slightly. His new morning checklist is:

• Use the toilet
• Dress himself
• Eat breakfast
• Book
• Desk activity (i.e.-scissor practice, writing, sequencing cards, etc.)

For the first few days, he accepted the additional expectation with curiosity. Then for a few days he complained about it, but I held firm: the whole checklist had to be complete before he was allowed any electronics time. Now he has accepted it, and will request it before choosing a book to read.

Below you can see the habit tracker I made for his morning checklist, along with a place for me to track how many accident-free days he has this month.

The Books

Picture books are the joy and the core of our preschool. Where we live, January is typically when we get our first big snow (though it seems late coming this year).
The first two books on this list are children's classics: first the story of a tractor trailer snowplow named Katy who works hard and rescues the city. My little engineers love the maps in the book. Next we experience a snow day through the eyes of a young boy in The Snowy Day.
Then we begin the beautiful modern classics. Poetic without rhyming, Kevin Henkes new series about the seasons of the year are sumptuously illustrated. Once we discovered that mommy and daddy cardinal were hidden on almost every spread, Winter Is Here became our newest "I Spy" book.
We learn what animals are doing in the winter through the poetic Shh! Bears Sleeping, and Over and Under the Snow. I like that I am not only teaching him that bears and some animals hibernate, but also that some other animals don't.
Perhaps it is redundant to have a second book about plowing, but my little boy loves vehicles, so when I saw the beautiful colors and the rhyming text in Good Morning, Snowplow! I wrapped it up for Christmas.
Lastly, I help him learn about the scriptures and making good choices by reading selections from The Friend magazine. My monthly favorite is the retold scripture story illustrated by April Stott (pictured above).

• Katy and the Big Snow, by Virginia Lee Burton
• The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keates
• Winter Is Here, by Kevin Henkes
• Shh! Bears Sleeping by David Martin
• Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner and Christopher Silas Neal
• Good Morning, Snowplow! by Deborah Bruss
• The Friend, Jr. (plus pages 20-21)

I left space in the journal underneath each book to tally how many times we read each book. Some mornings I will choose which book we read, but often he will. I keep some of these, along with a couple other favorites, easily accessible in his room. Many of our other books are up on a shelf, waiting for their turn to be loved again.

Scriptures to Learn by Heart

To go along with our letter-of-the-week (see below) I have scriptures to learn with him. I choose one selection to focus on that week. I will read the scripture to him and encourage him to repeat it. When he does, I color in one of the hearts I drew to the left of the scriptures in the bullet journal.

• Kk "God is the King of all the earth." Psalm 77:7
• Ll "Love one another," John 15:12
• Mm "My heart is glad," Psalm 16:9
• Nn "Noah built an ark," Moses 7:43

Learning Letters

I've chosen to do a letter of the week, but only have up to three activities for each letter. My main theme remains "winter and snow." I just want to spend enough time with each letter that he learns the basic handwriting strokes and gets some practice recognizing the sounds in words.

Since his co-op preschool wrapped up in December with the letter J, our January letters will be K, L, M, and N. 

Each letter has three activities to do (on three different days): write it on chalkboard, write it on paper, and do an initial sound recognition activity (i.e.-which starts with the sound /k/: kite or window?).

I've used Handwriting Without Tears materials for many of my children in preschool and kindergarten, and was surprised to realize I must have let go of my official little chalkboard. I bought an inexpensive replacement at Hobby Lobby. The idea is to first show the child how to write the capital letter, letting it take up the whole space in the little chalkboard. Then you hand them a wet cotton swab to erase your work, encouraging them to start in the same place (usually upper left corner), and trace to erase. Then they turn over the cotton swab to trace-erase it with the dry side. Once they have completed erasing, they will see a clean pathway on their chalkboard to guide them as they write their own letter. This technique is called "wet-dry-try," and is quite effective with young children.

I don't have a workbook for the days where he writes a letter on paper. He just barely turned four, and I am emphasizing quality (correct strokes) over quantity, and it seems a little silly to buy a workbook when I only expect him to write the letter once or twice (after he watches me write one as a model). In the past I have sometimes used an index card or cut-down computer paper so that there is less wasted space.

Music

We have three songs this month. Our more "serious" music appreciation song is listening to "Fossils," from Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saens. It's actually written for young children, and is an excellent instrumental piece for them. I will periodically ask Alexa to play the song for us.
Then there are two songs to go along with our study of the scriptures at home and at church. We are beginning our study of the New Testament this year, so "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus" and "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" are the two I've chosen to focus on this month. Sometimes we will sing a song together. Sometimes I'll see him playing quietly and play the music from my phone for him to appreciate passively.
We were also really looking forward to attending a children's "Lollipop Concert," but the tickets sold out, so we didn't get to do that.

• "Fossils," by Camille Saint-Saens
• "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus," by W. H. Parker
• "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus," by Janice Kapp Perry

Scissor Skills and Other Activities

Now that he is four, I've decided it's time to work on scissor skills. I keep the scissors and some strips of construction paper out of sight in his closet, and only get them down as a desk activity that I sit and supervise. The biggest challenge right now is to get him in the habit of holding the scissors the correct side up. I gently correct him every time, and he is getting better. The lines down the middle of the strips of paper proved more difficult than I expected them to, so I count it as growth to watch him studiously cut the strip of paper into confetti.

There are some cute books out there to practice scissor skills, but for now he just needs practice opening and closing the scissors. 

I also made a list of "Activities," which includes an outing, simple snow-themed crafts, developmental activities (like spreading peanut butter on bread by himself), and sequencing cards. I inherited a very old box with colorful cards to sequence. Rather than introduce him to all of them at once, this month I will get out the building a snowman set a few times, and have him sort them in the correct order. This is important as both an early math activity and an early literacy activity.

Playground School

It was supposed to be "bike school" for the day. It almost was. We packed read-alouds, flashcards, workbooks, and our fabric world map (thanks Mom!) in backpacks with snacks and water bottles. Mia and Nephi had biked almost halfway to the park when we realized Mia had left her backpack at home. I wasn't sure if Nephi had the stamina to bike to the park after that, so we just got in the van and drove there.

Little Nephi enjoys his snack while
Mia matches analog time to digital.
The world map? That was for shade.

                  

I can't say it was especially comfortable teaching school at the top of a playground slide . . . but the kids enjoyed the change of pace for the day, which is really what it was for. Maybe next time we'll use playground school as an incentive to do great M-Th, and then go on Friday.

Learning with Marbles

You know those preschool worksheets. The kind that have children matching household objects with a line or color that specific flower that specific color. They always have an "objective" at the top. "Following directions," or "colors," glorifies the simplistic worksheet.
Little Nephi asked me, again, to build a marble set with him. That's when those objectives hit me.

Preschool Objectives for Building Marble Sets:
spatial reasoning
review colors: red, yellow, blue, and green
position relations: "The green slide goes under the red straight. The blue straight goes between the red slide and the green slide."
following directions: "Put the blue funnel there."
teamwork: "Take turns with your sister."

Conclusion: Parents who play with their children have smarter children.

Plus One

One of the preschool activities we enjoyed this winter/spring was adding one or two to single digits. Having seen what happens when you only give your kindergartener a day or two to master simple addition before moving on to the bigger numbers, I was quite willing to take it slow with manipulatives and repetition.

Still, I was surprised recently when Mia began spontaneously announcing random addition facts. We were driving together when inspiration struck. I recited the addition facts from 1 to 9 (1+1=2; 2+1=3, etc.) in numerical order. Then I started over, still in numerical order, asking her fill in the sum. She was quite quick up through about seven. When she paused on the next number, I "helped" her by answering. She told me, "Don't say it Mom! I can figure it out!" Then she did. I'm so excited that she figured out the "rule" of plus one addition: the sum is the next higher number that follows the big number in the problem.

Numerical Gumballs

We printed-off a gum ball counting activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Since I had gone to all the work to paint that silly board with stenciled numbers on it, I put the two together. Mia had to count the number of gum balls in each machine, then match it to the stenciled number. This natural placed the machines in order from least gum balls to greatest number of gum balls. A great number awareness activity!

Beading Letters

I like to get each of the kids at least one "educational" toy or book each Christmas. My 2010 reading goal for Mia is to have her sounding out simple three letter words by the time she turns five. For her for Christmas, I chose a Melissa and Doug Deluxe Wooden Stringing Beads set. It comes with over 200 beads, and shoelaces to string them on. She was eager to spell family names (with careful help). Then she wanted to spell "Mat sat on a rat." It was her idea. I wonder how she came up with something basic and phonetic out of the blue. I talked about spacing between words, and encouraged her to use the flowers to separate the words.

Matching Upper to Lower Case

Mia and Little Nephi are learning to recognize and name their letters. After that, we'll work on letter sounds.

We purchased Melissa and Doug's Magnet Wooden Alphabet. The set includes upper case and lower case letters. I cut cardstock in half, the

n traced each of the letters with a pencil (pictured below is the only set I attempted with pen).

The first time the children saw them, they just had to have every card laid out at the same time. It was a lot of work for them. After that, I decided to only get out one card at a time, with just the letters that go with that card (mixed up). Miriam quickly lost interest in this alphabet activity, but Little Nephi has been requesting it several times a week for a month or more. I try to stay nearby so I can name the letters when he picks them up. Now I will give him up to three cards at once. He can name almost every letter of the alphabet (although a few he pronounces incorrectly).