Preschool at home- Not for the faint at heart

About a year ago this time, my husband and I decided that instead of sending our daughter to preschool in town that I would teach her from home. It was a very hard decision to come to as that meant all the pressure to have her ready for kindergarten rested on my shoulders. After much thought we decided it was best as that would still enable her to travel like we always do and experience real life learning that she wouldn’t get in a normal preschool setting.

Do I regret it? No. Is it easy? No. I am a person who considers this my job on top of the normal day to day such as budgeting, grocery shopping, household cleaning, etc. I sit down every week and try and figure out themes for the week, the letter of the week and activities, counting activities, shape activities among others. I gather most of my information from Pinterest and other websites. I spend a good chunk of time on the weekend researching, planning, printing, laminating, and cutting things out. There are times when I think why didn’t I pay someone else to do this? But then I see my daughter excited about a theme or an activity or proudly telling someone she does preschool at home and I have my reasons. She has learned so much in her time and I can proudly say I did that!

Now don’t get me wrong it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. She (and I if I’m honest) have those days where we don’t want to learn. Where I’m forcing her to sit and do something (such as practice writing right now) and it ends up in her melting down, but overall I would not change anything.

Every week we pick a theme and aim for 3-4 hours of preschool 4 days out of the week. We attend storytime at our library about every other week, do play dates, and are able to spend a week out of town without worrying about what she might be missing in school. I read somewhere that 75% of a child’s emotional well being is learned by the time they are 5. Do I want that taught by someone else or me?

Halloween themed week for my 3 year old

This year since I have been staying home with my daughter, whose 3, we decided to spend two weeks doing Halloween themed projects.  I gathered most of my ideas for Pinterest and added a few along the way of my own creations.

Snacks:We did Swampy sauce: Green jello with gummy worms, spider rings, and other creepy Halloween items.  We did Wormy apples, baked apples with a gummy worm sticking out of the top.  We did pumpkin seeds and we baked and froze a pumpkin with which we made pumpkin bread.

Allot of my ideas for projects during the two weeks came from here http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2010/10/h-is-for-halloween-packet.html.  I usually pick and choose what I want from her packet and then supplement with other ideas I find on Pinterest.  We made paper plate witches, paper plate pumpkins, Ghosts out of two liters, we played pin the mouth on the jack-o-lantern, paper plate ghosts, rice spider webs and tissue paper pumpkins to name a few.  We did sorting, color identification, practiced writing, worked on learning the letter P and number 3. We went to pumpkin story time at the library, and went trick or treating at several free places around town and the neighboring community.  We had a busy two weeks and Lily still thinks every day is Halloween.  Below are pictures and if you have questions about any of the ideas just let me know.