Home school Journal- Month One-- Looking back

Searching for the moon!

Well, I thought it would be a good idea to journal how things have been going each month and note a few things I have learned along the way.

Last year we did the Preperatory Curriculum through the Letter of the Week website. This was an awesome program and really helped me get my feet wet as a homeschooling mom.

When I would tell people that I was doing homeschool preschool with the girls I often got a bit of a negative response. People kept saying, well you don't have to do much with preschoolers. This is true. You don't have to plan a full day of school. In fact an hour a few days a week of focused activities would do it. Here is the thing, you have to plan to do it, or else you won't do it.

The Letter of the Week program gave me enough of a structure so that I was motivated to do things with the girls, but flexible enough to work. Each week we had a theme. I would check out books from the library on that theme and then we would read them through out the week. We also had a learning poster that we could add the letter, shape or color, nursery rhyme, verse and vocabulary word to.

Sometimes we would have structured time where we would put everything on our chart. The program was designed to add things to the chart through out the week.  We would ususally add them all in one day, or sometimes they went straight to our poster review book. I made a book of all the pictures and things we would put on our poster. This is great because we can sit on the couch together and review.

There was a lot of trial and error as I went along. We had to get into the habit of school. I had to find out what times my children were most ready to do an activity with me and most ready to learn. After a while we got into a routine of sorts.

Here are a few things that were invaluable to me:

1. Book Basket: For us the best time of learning was just sitting and reading together. On Monday morning I would fill our book basket up with all new library books that focused on our theme. The theme each week was a surprise which really built excitement.
* Since this worked so well for us, I realized that a literature based home school curriculum would probably be the best choice for us in the future.

2. I tried to do field trips that had to do with the theme through out the year. This was great motivation for us to get out and do things as a family. I also rearranged the order some to meet our scheduling needs. We went on a road trip when we were learning about cars. We visited my Aunt who works at an airport when we were learning about Airplanes. We visited a friend who raises rabbits when we were learning about rabbits. We went to a farmer's market and watched someone spin wool to yarn. These out and about, hands on activities were so much fun. With out having the themes in place I would have never thought to go on those field trips.

We got out Daddy's train set the week our theme was trains.

* I really want to keep this active and adventuresome side of learning alive in our homes schooling. So I was looking for a program that would inspire and get us out and about. If I couldn't find it in a program, I wanted to make sure I planned for it myself through out the year.

3. An activity basket. Children (especially preschoolers) can learn so much by doing things with you. These side by side moments pop up through out the day. The more I can involve them in what I am doing, the more they learn. I also learned that keeping an activity basket on hand worked great. When the children needed some kind of activity I would just grab out the paints and craft supplies and we would start crafting. Having crafts and learning activities on hand made it easy to grab something and do it when the timing was right. This worked much better than trying to sit down for a structured school time.

Doing preschool was as much of a practice and preparing me for school as it was for the girls.

I am thankful for this learning year. It really laid the foundation for our second year. I wanted to take our homeschooling to the next level.