Pruitt Preschool

As I've mentioned, Lucy is not attending a preschool program this year so she and I are doing preschool together. She loved her class last year and still talks about all of her friends so I'm hoping she will enjoy preschool with Mommy just as much. Her favorite part was her friends and I can't provide that but I have lots of play dates already in the works with lots of different friends so hopefully she'll have plenty of social time.

We are doing preschool on Tues. and Thurs. mornings and using the rest of the week for field trips, play dates, and unfortunately regular household chores. (Contrary to popular belief, stay at home moms actually have lots of work to do... Who knew???)

I'm a little on the OCD side and I need a fairly strict schedule to stick with or I'll put things off until they never get done. I used a sample preschool schedule as a guide for our schedule, changing the activities to fit what I want to do. Here's our schedule:

9am: Morning Meeting

9:30: Art

10: Snack

10:30: Table work

10:45 Playtime

11:15: Music

11:30: Bible story

11:45: Review/Reading

Here is a {very} detailed look at what we will do:

Morning Meeting:

During morning meeting, we'll be using our Morning Meeting board:

• Knock Knock song (This is a song we learned at story time at the library forever ago that Lucy loves. I tried to find it on You Tube but I can't so maybe the librarians made it up??? Maybe one day I'll video Lucy singing it. )
• Greetings (What can I say? I'm an SLP and it's never too early to work on appropriate social greetings.)
• Days of the Week song
• Days section of morning meeting board
• Months of the Year song
• Calendar section of morning meeting board
• Color of the day (Lucy chooses a color from a pile and sticks it to the morning meeting board. I point out some things this color, we talk about other things that are that color then I set a timer for 2 minutes and we go on a color hunt for things around the house that are that color. Throughout the day, I point out things that are the color of the day.)

• Letter of the week (There is a letter of the week curriculum that I know nothing about other than you focus on a different letter each week. All of our activities for the week will revolve around this letter. During this time, I introduce the letter, we talk about the sound it makes and read a book filled with this letter. Ex. A is for Apple so we will read 10 Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss.)
• Bible verse of the week (Ideally this will be a verse related to our letter theme, but sometimes that just won't be possible (I don't think there are D- donuts or dentists in the Bible) so I'll have to stretch it for some of these.)
• Weather (I printed this chart for us to fill in each day. We will then use our weather report to dress Lucy. I took the idea of "Weather Bear" and made a "Weather Lucy" by taking a picture of Lucy in her undies (I felt kind of creepy about this) and printed it in an 8x10, cut it out, and laminated it. Then I "shopped" for clothes for each season online and printed and laminated those. She'll check her "weather report" and dress her picture each day. It's never too early to learn how to dress appropriately for the seasons, right??? She's wearing her Fall dress in the picture below. I'm currently on the hunt for a picture of a great pair of boots.)
• The idea of the morning meeting is to introduce our theme and some basics that I want her to know. You would be surprised how many children don't know how to read a calendar or understand basic time concepts. My child won't be 1 of them!
• Originally I wanted a very small calendar so we could talk about the days of the week and learn the months so I started with this:

Obviously the words are too small and there is so much going on with the scrapbook paper you can't read anything. It just didn't turn out like I expected so I did a little research and came up with my Morning Meeting board. I really would have preferred it to be smaller but I kept thinking of skills I wanted to work on each day and didn't really want a million smaller boards to carry around if we do preschool on the go so I made 1 big one. All of the pieces are velcroed to the board so Lucy can easily stick things on when it's time. (She loves this part!) I keep all of the extra pieces in laminated envelopes on the back so everything is with me when I need it.

Art

Last year in preschool, Lucy "illustrated" her own Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? book by painting the colors of the book. I stole this idea and decided to have her create her own ABC book. Each week, she'll decorate a letter according to the theme. For example, for A week, she'll stamp A's with apples cut in half and covered in paint. This activity will account for 1 art activity for the week. The 2nd art activity will be theme related. For example, for B week, she is going to make a bird feeder by covering a pine cone with peanut butter and rolling it in bird seed.

Snack

Snack will also be theme related. For C week, we are talking about cookies and candy so she'll get to eat cookies for snack. (Any recipes for healthy cookies are welcome!!!)

Table Work

You'll notice that table work is only 15 minutes long. Preschoolers learn best through play and hands on activities so that will be the majority of our time but I do want to target specific skills each week so we will have some theme related but fun table work. For example, for B week, one of Lucy's field trips is going to Teddy Mountain to build a bear. She will use this bear during the next day's table work time to follow directions and locate body parts while putting bandaids where I tell her. (i.e. "Put the bandaid on Teddy Bear's ankle.") See, fun and educational all in 1!

1 "work" activity we will do each week is a letter hunt. I will hide our target letter around a room, on various themed toys, or in plastic eggs for Lucy to find. At first I'll hide all of 1 letter to help her learn to recognize individual letters. As she becomes more proficient at recognizing letters, I'll start hiding various letters, some for that week, some not so she learns to discriminate between several letters.

For help with skills to target I am using The Core Knowledge Sequence. Last year I was able to download the preschool goals in this sequence, but now I can't find them. This link is the closest I can find. I will also be using this book.

Play Time

Sometimes I will select a variety of theme related toys for Lucy to play with during this time (Ex. F is for food so we may have a pretend picnic) but most times I'll let her decide and follow her lead.

Music

1 of my fabulous practicum therapist created a song folder for 1 of our therapy programs and gave each student clinician a copy. It's basically pictures representing various kids songs (Wheels on the bus, London Bridge, Itsy Bitsy Spider, etc.) printed, laminated, and velcroed to a laminated file folder. Lucy picks a song, we sing it, then repeat with another song. She also likes to go on You Tube and sing songs/watch videos of kids songs. We'll also use her instruments to make our own music.

Bible Story

Since is it my job as Lucy's mom to "repeat (God's commands) again and again to (Lucy); talking about them when we are at home, and when we are going to bed and getting up," we will be reviewing Lucy Bible stories from church during preschool. Each Monday, our fabulous Kidz Creek leaders post that weeks Bible story/scripture reference on the church's blog and gives ideas for connecting church and home. I will re-read the story, talk about it, review the memory verse, and pray with Lucy during this time. I may have a coloring page for her to work on while I read if I feel the story is a little long for her attention span, but she enjoys these stories so it may not be necessary. (Just to brag a bit... last month she learned about Jonah and the whale. On Saturday, she told me the story of Jonah and said she wanted to tell her friends at dance. Yesterday she learned about David and told me that he was a shepherd and God helped him fight people. Yep, that's my 2 year old!!!)

Review/Read Books

During this time we'll review our letter of the day, verse of the day, and talk about what she liked and didn't like about preschool that day. This will help me plan future lessons. Lucy loves to "read" so she will have some time to read our themed books from the library while I make lunch.

I will {try} to post our preschool fun each Friday. Of course, this is just the preschool overview post and this week we will be beginning "C week" so I'm not off to the best start. That's the great thing about being your child's teacher; you can be a slacker and there's no one to complain about it! Happy learning!!!