Yesterday I spent all day organizing and turning the spare bedroom into a bedroom and mini classroom. Come Monday, Gabriel will start PreK-2 here at home. Also known as, a routine to help STOP the many I am BORED meltdowns he has graciously has been giving me lately.
Before
After - still have a few things
to hang on the wall
Working with what I have but it works.
Today I will label - I love a good label maker!
I went to the Cincinnati Home School Convention last year with some friends and another day with Nathan. I went to get an idea of what is out there for homeschoolers and check out some curriculum. Mind you I taught inner city 3rd grade students before I became a mom, but I have never looked into homeschooling our kids. As of right now, I plan on sending Gabriel to public or private school as soon as his age allows him to go. Until then, Gabriel and I need something to do during the day. This fly by the seat of your pants stuff doesn't work for me. I have to have organization, structure, and a game plan.
The game plan is Flowering Baby 2-3 and Carson the Caterpillar. As well as planned outings for the park, museums, play dates, the library, and other resources I may pull from such as No Time For Flash Cards, Confessions of a Homeschooler, Star Fall, Enchanted Learning (few of the many sites that I like).
Nathan and I did not see many Preschool curriculums at the convention. The few that we did see, seemed to have a lot of worksheets or were geared for the PreK 4 and 5 year olds. I am not a fan of worksheets and hardly used them in my classroom when I was teaching (yes they have a place but not for everyday use IMO). I think that is why I went with Flowering Baby and Carson the Caterpillar. They are fun, creative, hands on, focused on age appropriate activities and learning for PreK school aged kids of 1-5 years old.
Yesterday while I was getting the daily lessons together and organizing the room, I became really excited. I felt like I was back to my summer days getting my classroom ready. Mind you I have no desire right now to go back into a "real" classroom but I am really excited to be in the teaching mode. Excited because it is my own child whom I will be teaching!
Best of all I think Gabriel is excited. He helped (as much as a 2 yr. old can help) set up the mini classroom and all day I heard wow, oh, and momma look. Then not to mention how bananas he went over the puzzles and paint brushes. Yeah I really think he is going to enjoy daily activities.
I hope you come back each week and check out what we have been doing!
Oh, how I wish we had extra space to make a fun learning environment. It looks great, Rachel. William is really taking off with all the activities we're doing. I also do the worksheets to introduce a letter, and the rest of the time we're doing craft projects and or working on writing out letters (using playdough and shaving cream). At the end of each week, we do a fun activity outside the home that involves the letter we're working on. For the letter A, we went to the Air Force Museum, for B it worked out we went to a Birthday party. It's a lot of fun, and you're right helps minimize melt downs and helps the days not drag so much. Good luck with everything, and thanks for the extra resources. My sister-in-law sent a ton of stuff as well, just wish I had all the fun teaching supplies to go with it (don't have the extra cash for that right now). Looking forward to reading your posts and gaining some ideas of what to do with William and Patrick when he gets older.
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