More Preschool

The last time I blogged about preschool I said I was going to write my own preK curriculum. Just to clarify, while I have written curriculum in the past, it can be an insane amount of work and so, I am looking for quality curriculum to use with the program, but I am not writing it from scratch myself.

Anyway, I've been surprised how much Jovi wants to play school with me. Every day she asks to play more school, so I'm starting preK early for her. I say, why wait, she wants to learn and I am happy to teach someone so eager.

We got two completely unused math "workbooks", the kind they use in the lower school grades in the clearance section of Half Price Books. One was Kindergarten level and one First Grade level. I don't have the teacher book with the exact directions so i've been winging it, but I think I'm getting most of it right. Jovi has been going through the kindergarten book but has kind of gotten bored with it. When they have 5+ pages of drawing 1-5 objects and then writing the number I don't blame her for getting bored. SO, we started the preK touchmath program today. Unfortunately I think she would enjoy the Kindergarten program alot more. This would be a perfect program for 3-4 year olds, but is a little lower level that what Jovi needs. I have a feeling she will move through this really quickly, but at least she is having fun with it and learning her touchpoints. Once she learns the touchpoints I should be able to use any math book.

I am planning on going to Mardel's tonight, getting a calendar set and laminating it. I'm also laminating words for our word wall. I'll post pictures of our upstairs "school room" as soon as it is put together.

I was having terrible school flashbacks while writing the words for the word wall. I was attempting to write in D'Nealian style because that is what Frisco ISD teaches. It is also what I failed at learning when in elementary school. Handwriting was always my lowest grade and I dreaded those sheets coming back from the teacher with lots of red marks where I didn't quite have the letter shape touch the appropriate line and I never had the right slant to my letters and my curves at the end of the letters were always too big or too small. Oh, how I hated handwriting, that and spelling were my most dreaded subjects. I was in heaven when we got to start typing our papers, no worries about handwriting AND I could use spellcheck. Anyway, my sister was sitting with me while I was writing the words and gave me a nice dose of reality when she asked; "Are you really worried that your four year old will be judging your handwriting?". I know she will just be happy to have them available so she can write the words. Oh, here is a site that has lots of free D'Nealian worksheets, which I obviously need to use as much as Jovi.

I finally found a reading program and we started it yesterday. I love it. It is the phonics program on Reading A-Z. It is more expensive than just a book, but less expensive than a program with readers. I love that the lessons are fully developed with games and printable books. The whole site is FULL of printable books. We started the phonological awareness lessons and Jovi loved the first one. Each part of the lesson is short enough that she didn't get bored and then there is a game to reinforce learning and a read aloud book you can print or an option for you to use your own book (something I think we will be doing fairly often to save on ink). Once she is ready for the actual phonics program each lesson has its own decodable reader and my favorite part of this program is that it doesn't just stop at teaching CVC words, it has lessons for blends, long vowels, digraphs and more. It is a great site for the price.

I also got these:




I like that both Jovi and Corbin can use them and they are really cute. This way Corbin doesn't feel left out of the whole school experience.

I'm working on adding some science and art every day. I plan on having a fairly integrated program in the Fall, with monthly themes but right now I'm just adding things as I can get to them. It is so fun teaching Jovi when she is so excited about it. She calls me teacher and tries hard to follow directions. I hope she is this excited about school forever.