Good morning friends!
So some quick background. I decided to keep our 4 year old daughter home from her final year of preschool, which would be pre-kindergarten, in the fall 2020. It was a tough family decision, but we felt it was best for us. This is a crazy and scary time for everyone and it’s incredibly hard to make the decision to homeschool your children, send them physically back to the classroom (if that option is available where you are) or start virtual school with your current education system. You need to do what’s right for you and your family. Please don’t feel pressured by anyone to do otherwise.
Please note, in this post I am only discussing the workbooks and some learning materials and resources I will be using. I will be discussing in a later post about how I am implementing them, along with the many other ways our daughter learns during the day.
Please note some links will take you to Amazon, as I am an Amazon associate. Please click here for more information.
Check out my homeschool schedule here!
Our curriculum
I use the term curriculum lightly since this is pre-kindergarten and the emphasis is on play, emotional, physical and social development sitting down to work on workbooks is not that intense (or some may argue necessary). As you can see in our schedule I only allocate 60 minutes a day to workbooks or other learning resources, the remainder of our time is hands on learning involving helping around the house; working with food, general chores, playing outside, gardening, swimming and physical activity. I decided I would search out workbooks but also different play based learning methods from around the web and here is what I came up with for us.
Each day, my daughter and I sit down at the kitchen table for about 45-60 minutes and work on learning activities I’ve discovered along with completing between 1-3 pages of each designated workbook for that day.
Below each picture I have the links to Amazon
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Some additional learning materials
Below are a few learning materials I also implement into our hour “school” time.
Materials I created
Art and Piano
Additionally I will be using workbooks for music and art (art mainly for inspiration!)
Piano Workbook - “Play It - Level 1”
Monkey Puzzle Make and do book
The Snail and the Whale make and do book
Finding inspiration
I first looked into homeschooling when my daughter was just a wee baby, so I’ve been keeping track of ideas and methods I picked up over the last several years that I am now implementing. I also worked as a figure skating coach with children of her age group and learned quite a bit about how to teach.
Over the last several weeks I have searched for more inspiration across the web and here are some of my favorite Instagram accounts sharing learning activities.
There are SO many other instagram accounts out there full of inspiration and information and I encourage you to seek out new accounts (and share them with me!). I find these accounts amazing to jump start my planning and provides inspiration and also materials.
I also, of course, lean on Pinterest for ideas to include in our weeks. I have started my own pinterest board if you’re looking for a jumping off point or some new ideas.
Coming up next in this series will be discussing:
How I will be implementing these resources in our day
Additional ways my daughter learns during the week
Highly recommended Homeschool curriculum for Kindergarten up
What resources are you using for preschool / pre-kindergarten? Let me know in the comments or on social media!
