Preschool at Home

We're a young homeschooling family. All that means right now is that we have kiddos that are under school age and we're planning to homeschool. But since Boo is nearly three and some of his buds are headed to preschool in the fall, I've been doing some preschooling at home. We call it learning time and he loves it. And it's a great way to ease us all into homeschooling.

With suggestions from teacher-friends and great resources I've found online, I've developed a very loose curriculum based on the alphabet. Each week or so we do a different letter. The activities and lessons for that week {or two weeks - let's be real, sometimes life gets too busy to keep up with it all each week} revolve around the letter. I made a learning board from a dry erase board and scrapbook accessories to keep track of what we're learning each week.

It's divided it into several categories: craft & activities, spanish words, cooking, and bible verse.

Crafts & Activities

We love crafts and always do a letter of the week craft. This blog has great ideas for those. Every week we work on tracing and writing that week's letter using print-outs from here or here. We often read a bible story about a person in the bible whose name starts with our letter. After reading the story, I have my toddler do a craft or color a picture of it.

Spanish Words

Throughout the week, we practice our Spanish vocabulary words that start with our letter of the week. We have a children's Spanish picture dictionary that we often look through and practice our words.

Cooking

We love to cook around here so it's only suiting that we spend some of our learning time in the kitchen. Some of our favorites so far have been making fruit skewers, mixing vinegar and baking soda to make bubbles, learning about Jesus feeding the multitudes by making our own version of fish {tuna salad} and loaves {toast}, and making fresh-squeezed lemonade.

Bible Verse

Each week Boo has a new bible verse to memorize. The first word of the verse starts with our letter of the week. I've used a song on a Psalty CD called The Bible Alphabet Song for our verses. They are short and easy to memorize.

Other Ideas

We also do computer time during the week where he can work on his letters using modules like those found on Starfall.com. He loves navigating through each letter and doing the educational games at the end.

Here are some other great resources I've found online:

NoTimeForFlashcards

ABC and 123

Occasionally, I'll share some of our lessons here. So stay tuned for more preschool at home ideas.