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We are adapting our home preschool every day. While most of our learning and day is led by John’s interests {mostly in swords and weaponry — which I’ll share more in depth soon!}, I still like to follow a letter of the week.

Why do we do letter of the week?

Both of my children really enjoy our morning routine {detailed below} which includes letter, number, and recitation work.

It keeps things consistent, which is helpful for me as a kindergarten teacher at heart. I don’t feel that our routine inhibits my child’s creative nature, but rather, it has helped him grow as he learns new concepts, Bible verses, poems, or lego letter or animal creations.

It reminds me to find books related to our letter. I have been making Preschool Book Lists, and we read our books at the breakfast table every morning. It is fun to read together and enjoy new books from our local library.

We are reviewing many letters every day. We didn’t just look at the letter Ee. This just helps him focus, particularly on the letter shape and the lowercase letter recognition, which he has not yet mastered.

We still love our felt animals and our preschool alphabet book, and want to continue making them for fun reminders of our letters and letter sounds!

Aside from the above, we focus our time on play-based learning. We play with blocks, swords, our no-cook playdough, creating Lego vehicles of all kinds, having sword fights, going raspberry picking, taking walks, flying like Buzz Lightyear {or Superman}, making a beehive, making spider webs, lots of pretend play and imaginative learning, and lots of open-ended invitations to learn with small parts or for mathematical concepts.

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 of the listed materials for every letter, but we rotate around the curriculums and supplements.

{This post contains affiliate links, please see my disclosure policy.}

Our Schedule

1. Music, Movement, Dance Time

In the mornings, we sing songs and dance to fun children’s or Bible music. We have enjoyed the fun and familiar tunes of Laurie Berkner. Her latest compilation album, The Ultimate Laurie Berkner Band Collection, is available on October 14th. I love cds with a lot of songs, and this one includes 22 tracks in all! The album includes music from each of her eight previous cds, from 1997 up to the present, and shows how she and her band have grown musically — there are a few never-before-released tracks too. Many of our favorites, such as, “I’m a Mess” and “The Cat Came Back” are included, and the kids just love singing and dancing to it :) This is Laurie’s follow-up to her last greatest hits collection, the Best of the Laurie Berkner Band. The “queen of children’s music,” as described by People Magazine, makes incredibly fun music, and (sometimes more importantly), it provides easy listening for parents :)

{I was provided The Best of Laurie Berkner Band, the latest album from the highly talented musician, Laurie Berkner, all opinions are solely my own.}

I also created free printables to our Sing the Word From A to Z, the Songs for Saplings 123s, and our Play a Little Bible Songs — these I keep in a ring binder!

2. Bible Time

We read our Bible. We are trying to go through only one Bible at a time for morning time (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 read about all of 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! We don’t do a Calendar Chart — we will probably do a slimmed down version in our next round of ABCs :)

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 E as you’d write it and the little e as you’d write it.)
What vehicle begins with the letter Ee? (We are using the Zoomin’ Movin’ Alphabet curriculum from Royal Baloo.)
What else begins with the letter Ee? (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?
Let’s put ___ (green) objects in the basket! May and John, take turns! (Or a color hunt!)
What is the number of the week?
Can you put (1, 2, etc) Legos in the basket? (John runs to get 3 Legos, and places them in a little basket, with the number three 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.)
Let’s sing the Alphabet Song!

4. Letter Work Time

This time is devoted to alphabet letter recognition and phonics sounds through 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 were creating “stations,” that is, putting out about six activities at once, for him to cycle through, which he loved for the last several months, but recently he has not been enthused. Time to change it up! It is about knowing our children and their passions — you can read more at Connecting with my son and how he learns.

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 — check out our Montessori Fall Trays. 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.

6. We read books and enjoy one another.

John and May both got into the glue one day. What is it about squeezing those glue bottles?! John glued excavators onto his E.

And here he {Peter Pan} is cutting his oatmeal ball. Putting letters in order.One glorious afternoon, while May was napping, John decided he wanted to paint. He mixed the colors into brown {again — What is art?} and I had a wonderful time just watching his excitement.

We also explored nursery rhymes! Here is our Mary Mary Quite Contrary Invitation to Play post!

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.

E is for Egg-prints. We used a simple Easter Egg and made paint prints :)

ABC Felt Animal

Our felt animal this week was E is for Elephant! 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 collection for Letter Ee.

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.