A New Year of Home Preschool
We’re now two days in to the 2008-2009 home preschool “school year” in the Hill household. I decided to purchase a full curriculum called “Bright Beginnings” to use for our preschooling this year. It’s not a perfect fit, but it has some strengths that I found appealing: I got a good deal on the two books in the curriculum (purchased used), it doesn’t require a ton of prep work for the basic activities, and it is flexible.
A year ago in the fall we tried out a free online curriculum, but it turned out to not fit our style (too much printing, cutting and other prep work for me…and Madeline didn’t enjoy the activities that I spent so much time to prepare).
Last winter and spring we tried a patchwork of sources to supply our activity needs. We tried a bit of the literature-based unit study approach, but Madeline didn’t seem too keen on the idea of spending a week basing all our activities around the same story. We did some of the activities in the “Teaching a Young Child to Read” book, but it quickly became clear that Madeline wasn’t developmentally ready (and still isn’t ready) to move beyond letter recognition and letter sounds. Putting those letter sounds together to make words requires (I think) a mental “switch” to flip that just hasn’t flipped for her yet. We also did an assortment of other activities compiled from various books and websites. However, the quality of our activities each week seemed to vary greatly based on whether or not I actually had time to do the prep work ahead of time of looking through the books or websites to select activities, gather the necessary materials, and so on.
Based on these experiences and our growing busyness in life with a preschooler, a toddler and another baby to arrive in late January, I knew I needed to have more of the activities laid out for me. I also knew I needed to do some prep for the whole year, before the year even started. I purchased the curriculum late last spring and began reading through it. I was also able to get a full morning with out the kids around to make a file folder system to keep me on track. I have a filing box with a folder for each week of the school year. I had the bindings cut off the “Bright Beginnings” books, and I filed either three or four lesson plans per week into each folder (4 per week this fall, and 3 per week this coming winter/spring after the new baby comes along), along with supplementary worksheets and occasionally other materials. I also made a folder for each month with a couple of unit studies, and some ideas for science experiments taken from our preschool science books (since the one thing this curriculum is light on is science) I can always go back and add in other activity ideas to the monthly or weekly folders if it seems necessary. Finally, I made a general supply list of things I need to purchase (especially for the science experiments) so that I will hopefully always just have on hand any supplies the activities call for.
If a family did all the activities that “Bright Beginnings” called for in each lesson/day, it could almost take all day long. We’re going to focus on the basic activities of pre-reading, math, some of the “health/safety/manners” lessons, and the “God’s world” unit studies (besides adding in a science project or two each week). I’m not quite sure yet how we will incorporate the daily Bible stories and acompanying activities. We’re already reading Bible stories every night at bedtime, and her kids class at church is also going through Bible stories…so I’m not sure if it will be confusing or not to have a third spot we are reading from in the Bible at the same time. We’ll continue to do art, music, and so on spontaneously — those are things that Madeline just loves to do and doesn’t generally need a curriculum to tell her her how to do it.
As we go through the curriculum, some days we will do the activities as written, but if the activities seem to easy or hard for Madeline’s ability level, we’ll try and improvise to come closer to meeting her needs. Many activities in the beginning of the book are more where Madeline was at when she was 2.5 or 3, but toward the end of the book some of the activities would still be over her head, at least with where she is at developmentally right now. Even if I have to spend a few minutes looking up an idea to replace one that isn’t going to work, I’m so much further ahead having a topic to start from (compared to last spring when I had to think of the topics and the ideas!).
I’m planning that most days we’ll do some preschool in the morning (and try and keep Erik occupied either playing with toys or watching/interacting with us), and have more preschool time in the afternoon while Erik naps. The days we have a playdate or our new homeschool co-op in the morning, we’ll probably just do our afternoon time unless we can sneak some time in before we leave. We’ll also be trying to get in plenty of read-aloud time. We started last spring using some recommended preschool book lists from other homeschool curricula and other lists of the best books for kids Madeline’s age. I’m trying to remember to get several books each week from the library off of these lists, as well as whatever other random books we happen to find each week.
We’re only two days in, but I am feeling somewhat confident that we have a plan in place that will take us through this school year, and get us poised to start our “real” homeschooling next fall when Madeline is kindergarten age.