Homeschooling: 4 Year Old Preschool

Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about what my strategy for teaching Grace this year is going to be.  And what I came up with is I really want to take this year to prepare Grace for kindergarten (and myself since we are planning on homeschooling and I will be her teacher).  But if for some reason I'm not her kindergarten teacher and we decide to send her to a school outside of the home I want her to go in confident and ready.

Right now our day is pretty simple.  Caleb usually starts his nap around 12:30 or 1 and Grace and I get to hang out until 2 or so when she goes to her room for a rest time.  So for right now this is our school timeframe.  I can pretty much count on this time being just us and every once in a while when it's not I'll just make sure to find a different time during the day to have school.  I'm so happy because she loves it and asks for school everyday!  Granted it's only been just over a week so we'll see how that goes.

This issue of curriculum is something I've really gone back and forth on.  I feel like we can accomplish a lot of learning without everything laid out for us and don't need a strict curriculum.  However, I am a structured person and taught from a curriculum when I was teaching high school math.  So, I really want to find a balance between curriculum and being open to whatever learning comes our way.

I ended up buying a $15 downloadable curriculum from a website I really love.  It's a kindergarten curriculum but geared towards preK aged 4-5 year olds called the K4 Curriculum.  This has a structured plan with activities 5 days a week for 34 weeks.  I have enjoyed using it as a foundation and will let those 34 weeks define our school year this year.  I'm also adding in a Math book (love it!) and Reading (still undecided if I like it).

In addition to all this we are having a calendar/weather time, some type of devotion/bible story, and reading together everyday.  Finally, we will be doing as many crafts as I can handle because Grace loves them. So, I'm going to try to do some every week depending on what her interests are or what she wants to learn about.  It may seem like a lot but it really only takes us 1.5 hours (or less) of structured time.

I think I got a good summary down in this post.  I really can't wait to go back and read this in a few months or at the end of the year to see how much things have changed or what we really ended up doing:)  I'm super excited about this adventure we feel our family has been called to for the time being.

I bought a laminator for $25 and I love it.  I just want to laminate everything.

Homeschool space.