Homeschool Pre-K

Going to keep threading on through homeschooling with each of our little learners.  Four, almost five, Claire, is our easiest to school.  She's Pre-K age and obediently completes any task.  She smiles the whole time and LOVES completing each of her baskets. 

My girl is starting to sound out words and is working through her Bob book set. 
At the end of each one, "THE END" is read with a big exclamation point! 
Sometimes we also "row" books from Before Five in a Row. 



As explained here, Claire gets baskets laid out for her each day.  Usually, just 4-5 with a little reading, a little writing, something math and something artsy.  She chooses the order.  Outside of reading books together, these take her around an hour, saving most of the rest of the day for as much playing as she can squeeze in to her awake hours!

Math is usually just IDing or ordering numbers, sorting coins or adding piles of crayons. 



Journaling is one of our favorite dailies.  Her basket always includes her journal, tape, a pencil (She uses these awesome pencils to perfect her grip.) and a big envelope of pictures of fun things we've done. 

She tapes in a picture and then tells me what to write.   At the end, she "reads" it back,  traces and writes a couple of the words and then circles all the sight words she can find.  Both girls have these journals and they are awesome little, keep forever, kind of scrapbooks. 

The most formal thing we do is Handwriting Without Tears. 
I love, love it, and is by far my favorite workbook ever purchased.  We'll be buying more. 

Because our life is full of crazy, we also need some- save momma's sanity- kind of activities.
 Most of these have been holiday gifts,

 like this Melissa and Doug spelling puzzle,

 Tag Readers (Oh, thank you, God, for these!),

 Hot Dots Jr.,

and really good puzzles. (Nope, all our puzzles aren't all educational.  Promise.) 

 If I can't muster up schooling some days, I feel good about pulling out these to "play" with. 

Another DIY is this "How to Draw" binder made with Googled drawing tutorials. 

 When we really are doing school all formal like, Claire works on printable

sight word packs from the 1+1+1=1 blog.   

 Our Ipad has a favorites folder with tons of learning YouTube videos

on rhyming, animals, days of the week, etc. 

 Now, please remember that this is a glossed up look at our school ideals.  Sometimes we watch Sesame Street and call it a day.  I do really love having my girl home.  She did preschool for two years, then we decided to pull her for Pre-K.  Best intentional decision we've made.  It's given us scheduling freedom, easy mornings during a life-changing year, lots of one on one learning together and plenty of time for all kinds of play. 

 

 

Our little Claire Bear might just be the sweetest student ever.  

We're Going on a Bear Hunt: BFIAR Pre K

We had so much fun reading We're Going on a Bear Hunt!

We read the book every day, did the Homeschool Creations lap book, went on a little nature walk bear hunt, talked about different types of bears and learned about cubs, paws and claws. 


Chocolate pudding made the perfect yummy "mud" to snack on. 

Little hands drew big eyes on bear faces.

Most fun of all was painting the different settings from the book


and then using them as the backdrop for one crazy puppet show for Mamaw and Papaw!

This former teacher momma LOVES curriculum, and it is so fun to read a classic book and then roll with the learning.  Truly, it is a creative outlet for me.  As much as I enjoy it though, I must control my Pinteresting and keep it simple.  It is so, so easy to spin my wheels and overthink things.  What I find most of all is that the most learning happens with a really good book, two little listeners and a blanket to curl up under.  Simple, simple, simple.  Remind me of that when I see you, K? 

Blueberries for SAL, BFIAR Pre K



We've been "rowing" (Before Five in Row) through Pre-K for a few weeks now and are settling into a routine.  Trying hard to balance simple with stretching and creativity. 

A shelf has been designated for our book/theme. 

It was fun to see the girls play with the bears and read through the books all week. 

It was a "this might actually be working" gut check for my doubting self. 



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Our next classic book was Blueberries for Sal, which is a favorite, and continued our bear theme.  

 

All of Claire's "work" goes in our wanna-be Montessori baskets. 

After reading the book every day, I show her all of her work baskets.  She then can pick the order that she does them. 

 

We scored with a library find of the book CD for one of her tasks.  

A fun task we started, but never finished, was painting blueberry hill.  Reality, peeps. 

Ain't no perfection 'round these parts. 

A wee bit of word work,

 

and some math with "blueberries" for Sophia.  Sometimes learning is easy and fuss-free. 

a counting book for our bear. 

 

 I also left out "berries" in tin buckets and canning jars for acting out the story. 

I had a Sal and a bear cub kirplanking and kurplunking berries all week. 

 

My brain was rolling with all kinds of "I could do x,y,z" ideas,

 but simple proved to be enough. 

Jesse Bear PreK (BFIAR)

PreK is all kinds of fun.  Our plan?  To read our way through the classic children's books in the

Before Five in a Row book, expanding on themes and ideas. 

First up was, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?, and Claire was instantly mesmerized by it. 

For science, we started a study of bears.

She learned the words hibernation and den under our dining room table. 

 

She did a lapbook from Homeschool Creations, sorted and counted gummy bears, learned to draw a bear and did some bear math.

My girls love a good "book party" so they planned a teddy bear picnic, complete with bear decorations and bear pancakes!

BFAIR is perfect for Claire, who loves books, and needs repetition. It's perfect for me because it is low key and a I love more classic children's lit. 

By the end of the week, our girl had Jesse Bear memorized and wanted to read aloud over and over. 

It was high on cuteness factor, and needed to be recorded to preserve her sweet four year old self.