Our Preschool at Home Plans

Since Caden is now three and a half years old we are starting to get more serious about homeschooling. I’ve contemplated all summer long about what our learning goals are for this year and thinking about what I would like our home learning to look like. I’ve gone back and forth between different expensive homeschool curriculums, free curriculums as well as putting together our own lesson plans. It has been a long process, but I have finally settled on what we are going to be doing and I hope it will be a good fit for us!

Let’s start with some learning goals! First let me say Caden is not academically advanced. He doesn’t know all his ABCs, doesn’t recognize numbers, and is a little shaky on shapes and colors too! I think this is important to share with you because so many homeschool bloggers have toddlers who are academically advanced, but I’m not one of them. Caden is just your average three-year old little boy and I’m okay with that! Instead I’ve chosen to let learning come naturally and through play! Throughout our home learning adventure I haven’t focused on academics, but rather building his vocabulary, naturally through conversation and play. And I must say I’m rather proud of his vocabulary! We’ve also focused on giving him new experiences. Just this summer we’ve moved to a new state, saw all kinds of wild animals in our backyard, picked wild blueberries on top of a mountain and went camping, among other things.

Our goals for this year include:

• Learning the ABCs
• Basic Math (number & shape recognition, counting, patterns, etc)
• More fun Science (lots of nature studying!)
• Reading lots of great books
• Having Fun!

So what are we going to be doing? I decided going with an expensive curriculum for a preschoolers was just too much, and planning our own lesson plans just wasn’t going to happen this year. So I’m going to be using the FREE Simple Seasons Homeschool Companion Guides for preschool and kindergarten offered by Wee Folk Art. Even though Caden is a little younger than the ages they were written for, I think they will be just perfect! The weekly plans include great children’s books, a craft or activity, field trip suggestions and more! I will also be adding some themed math activities, science lessons and experiments as well as sensory play! Below you will find some other resources I plan on using!

I will also be joining the Playful Preschool Virtual Homeschool Group! This is a new, private Facebook group started by Amanda of The Educator’s Spin On It. The purpose of this group is to help support fellow homeschool parents or care givers of preschoolers whose goal is to create a playful learning environment for their children.

Members of this group will receive:

• Bonus learning activities
• Teacher support
• Weekly discussion questions
• Troubleshooting & advice
• Weekly teaching videos to watch with your child.
• And a place to share your child’s successes!

I hope you’ll join me there! The Playful Preschool Education Team is a great group of creative bloggers who will be bringing you awesome preschool learning activities all year-long! (Disclaimer: I am being compensated with a free membership for promoting this group. But I really do think this will be a great resource for new homeschool parents of preschoolers!)

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Check back here each Wednesday for our weekly Preschool at Home posts where I will be sharing all the fun we’ve had the week before! On Saturdays I will be sharing our science lessons and experiments with the Saturday Science Blog Hop!

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