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We have begun our Preschool Journey!! It has been wonderful having a fresh start. Since it is the summertime, we are moving quickly, but not too rigorously. We try to fit in as much as we can, but if we read together, we call the day a success.

You can see full details of our Preschool Plans here. Below is our schedule, and at the bottom of this post are all of the materials that we use. We don’t use all on one given day, but we rotate around the curriculums and supplements to keep things interesting.

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Our Schedule

1. Music, Movement, Dance Time

Every morning, we sing songs and dance to fun children’s or Bible music. (I created free printables to our Sing the Word From A to Z and our Play a Little Bible Songs — these I keep in a ring binder. I keep this handy for song and learning time — I will share its growing contents soon!)

2. Bible Time Then we try to read our Bible. We are trying to go through only one (the Preschool Hands-On Bible — you can check out my post on this wonderful Bible and how we create a page each day in our Bible Notebook). But, often, the kids will want to read more, so we will pick and choose between our many Bibles (you can check out our Preschool Bible Resources to see the Bibles we love!)

3. Recitation Time Next, we move through our above chart (here is a similar one). All of the items on it are free (with the exception of our Montessori sandpaper alphabet cards)! Home preschool does not have to mean high cost! I have chosen to not have a traditional “Calendar Time” for Preschool. The reason is simple, he will learn it in his time. We have Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, etc, to learn the days and months and specifics. I have a whole calendar and 100s chart and weather chart waiting, but for now, this is simple enough for me!

We follow the following sequence for morning time:

What is the letter of the week?
Can you feel the letter? (We feel each sandpaper letter — putting our finger on the big A as you’d write it and the little a as you’d write it.)
What vehicle begins with the letter Aa? (We are using the Zoomin’ Movin’ Alphabet curriculum from Royal Baloo.)
What else begins with the letter Aa? (We are also using the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.)
Let’s read our Bible verse together!
What is the color of the week?
What is the number of the week?
Can you put (1, 2, etc) Legos in the basket? (John runs to get 2 Legos, and places them in a little basket, with the number two inside.)
Can you put the clothespin on the little letter?
Let’s read our little book together!
Let’s count from 1 to 30!
Let’s count by 10s!
Let’s count by 5s!
What month is it?
(We are beginning to sometimes sing the “Month Song” and the “Days of the Week Song” too.)
What is our poem of the month? (We recite a poem from my 24 Monthly Preschool Chants.)
What is our poem of the week? (We recite a poem from my 12 Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson.)

4. Letter Work Time: We work on alphabet letter recognition and sounds with various activities, games, and objects from our curriculums. I focus on hands-on learning activities versus “worksheets.” Cutting, gluing, making the letter with various manipulatives (resources are at the bottom of this post) occasionally coloring. We like to do this at the table. I create “stations,” that is, I put out about six activities at once, for him to cycle through. This takes him only 10 minutes max. He grumbles when he sees me putting them out, but then gets excited after beginning the first one.

I know my son (see Connecting with my son and how he learns) — I know that he will delight in his work once he gets started. I make sure that he only has one “difficult” sheet on the table. He often asks for a second round of stations after he is done. I will usually only do 2-3 rounds of stations per letter.

5. Craft, Sensory, or Practical Life Time This time is often done with my younger daughter. We make sure to make our ABC Felt Animal and our Preschool Alphabet page for the week. We also try to do another sensory fun activity and a practical life activity.

I am trying to stay very low key about this portion of our Preschool plans. John is not a craft little boy or a messy painty boy, but he does love sensory “clean play” (likes beans or water play) and playdough if I have him on the right day. So we will continue with these and enjoy the summer months.

6. We read books and enjoy one another. Here is our numbers chart. We lost the 10 and 28, lol, but I printed new ones out by the time we got to letter Bb :) And our Month Chant and our Classical Poem of the week.

Color of the Week

Going on our Color of the Week color hunt! We marched around looking for red items :)

We’re going on a red hunt,

We’re going to find some red things.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared!

Adapted from our beloved book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Lunch outside most days.

Stations

“Stations” on the kitchen table have been working very well for John. Check out the Learning Stations at The Measured Mom for some wonderful ideas for this presentation for children. This has been a wonderful invitation to work and learn for my son.

All of our curriculum printables are listed at the end of this post. If I ever use something that is not a part of them, I will list it here — but I won’t be going into every detail of our letter work ;) Using Counting Bears for numbers 1 to 5. You can see all of the Preschool Materials I recommend here. He loved lining up the big and little Aa’s!!!! Playing Chutes and Ladders with daddy! (He won every time :)

ABC Clothesline

Our letter work for the week.

Preschool Alphabet Notebook

We are making an alphabet book with uppercase letters. I save these and will put them in a “book” — probably just with three pieces of yarn — for him to remember each letter! We are using printables from The Unlikely Homeschool. This is simple — just decorate your letter with something related to that letter.

This week was A for Apple — we did some simple Apple Stamping :)

ABC Felt Animal

Our felt animal this week was an A is for Alligator! You can check out all of our ABC Felt Animals here.

ABC Preschool Books to Read

I am starting a new collection of Preschool Books to read for each letter. Here is our list for Preschool Books for the Letter A!

Our Chosen Materials & Activities:

Zoomin’ Movin’ Alphabet curriculum from Royal Baloo

Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler

The Preschool Journey by Teaching Mama. There are many wonderful ideas for crafts and activities for each letter in this eBook. We will pick and choose different activities according to my son’s interests.

My First Hands-On Bible: Reading through the Bible with our Preschool Bible Notebook. I adore this Bible and could not recommend it more highly. I devoted a whole post to “why” here.