A Little School Time

Last spring I decided I wanted to start doing some form of preschool with Emily in the fall.  She is naturally curious and loves learning and I wanted to add a bit of structure to our day.  I started brainstorming with a friend of mine and we have decided to do a weekly lesson plan that centers around a theme and includes a scripture story, primary song, book, activities, coloring pages, and snack. We break up the options into four different days (because life is crazy and we seemed destined to need one pass day) with the days activities taking 10 minutes to an hour, depending on interest level and time.

Last week the theme was Things that Go.  We talked about Nephi building a ship and acted out sawing, planing, and hammering (with green and blue colored pencils, depending on the task – Emily’s idea).  We read Go Dog Go and made a list of all the things that go.  We acted out all of the different options and did them again while singing Do As I’m Doing, and ended with crawling over and over again because it was Emily’s favorite.  We pulled out red, yellow, and green construction paper and ran on green, walked for yellow, and stopped on red.

On Friday we had friends over and floated boats and other objects in the backyard; it turned into a water free for all, but it was fun!

Emily and I went outside to find acorns to float in our boats before everyone arrived. She found one and struck an unexpected pose:

Two weeks ago before we had officially started preschool, Emily discovered the felt board in her closet.  We had tried playing with it several months ago but she wasn’t interested in anything except pulling the pieces apart. This time she got really into identifying the objects, telling stories with the felt, making homes and chairs and bed for people, and putting the cars in the houses.

Not quite ready yet but she flashed a very cute smile:

 

I’m excited to see how things progress with our preschool plans throughout the year. If you’d like to join us, Elise and I have created a blog where we post the weekly schedule on Saturday or Sunday night for the upcoming week. There is a print button at the bottom of each post to print out the weeks plan and make notes or further plans. Feel free to pick and choose!