Quantcast

How We're Doing Flexible Preschool at Home This Year

Fall of 2020 is when I would have enrolled Sam in a preschool, but because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this year we are doing preschool from home. Because the older kids (in grades 2, 5 & 7) are also doing school from home, my home preschool time has to be very flexible. 


Here's what Sam and I do together:

  1. Read books - Sam loves to read, and we have tons of books. I usually tell him to pick a few for me to read aloud during "Book time."
  2. Play Games & Do Puzzles - At a younger age than any of my other kids, Sam loves games and puzzles! One of our new favorite things is this build a skyscraper set. 
  3. Play with Toys - Our favorites on rotation right now are Lego duplo, Magnet tiles, and Blocks.  
  4. Paint/Craft/Playdough - I'm using the Little Hands Art Book to help me plan some crafts. We don't craft every day, but we have fun when we do it. 
  5. Clean up - I am the absolute worst at making myself and my kids clean up. Having someone else teach my kid about clean up time is definitely something I like about preschool. Now I'm bootstrapping it and attempting to teach Sam to clean up myself!
  6. Watch a Show - Daniel Tiger, Magic School Bus, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse are Sam's favorites. 
  7. Starfall - With his siblings doing so much of their learning on computers, and Sam soaking in that example, he is dying to get on the computer himself. Starfall.com is an online learning platform that offers some of their content for free. (Back in 2007 when I first heard of it, it was all free. Different times.) Sam enjoys it, and it is simple and ad free. I let him have about 10 min/day. 
  8. Outside Time - Right now with winter in full swing, this is mostly either checking on the chickens or sledding. 

Real talk: I spent a lot of time this fall teaching Sam not to be on camera during his siblings classes. And while I have meant to do music time with Sam as part of preschool this year, I can't honestly say that I have, yet. There was one time, but it's definitely not even part of our very flexible setup. However I did start giving his sister piano lessons a couple of weeks ago, and he often scootches in on those.  

Just recently I wrote down a schedule for Sam. I'm sure we will make some edits and improvements to it, but here's what it looks like right now:



We are really enjoying it, and refer back to it when we need some structure. When we don't need structure, I just don't bring it up. Ha! 

Here are some of the resources I'm using:

Books for Me

Practical Wisdom For Parents by Nancy Schulman and Ellen Birnbaum - This book is a great reference to have handy as I'm trying to figure out preschool at home. It discusses in depth what a good preschool should have, and also what parents should do at home to support their kids. Rereading part of this is what prompted me to write down a schedule for Sam . . . I had been meaning to do it, but the authors made a great case for it, which spurred me to action. My full review of the book is here

The Little Hands Art Book by Judy Press - I'm just taking projects from this willy-nilly and picking the ones I feel like doing. We don't use this book every day, or even regularly on a certain day of the week, but I have enjoyed the crafts that we've done from it, and some of the older kids have gotten into them, too. 

Books for Sam

I wrote a whole post about the books Sam is loving recently! Add Good Guys 5 Minute Stories to that list, because it is a big hit right now. It is a compilation of a bunch of full length picture books, back to back. 

Games



Build a Skyscraper - I don't know if this set of sturdy cards is more game, puzzle, or toy, but it has elements of all three and we are enjoying it. I received it for review and we have spent a fair bit of time improving Sam's fine motor skills and just building cool towers. Sam especially likes the clock card, which makes your building look like it has a giant clock on the side, and the door cards. I like that it can be put away very small, but yet build towers that are impressively big. 

Count Your Chickens - This is a super simple cooperative game we have enjoyed together. You spin the spinner, and count how many squares you have to go to get to the picture you spun. Then, you put that same number of chicks into the coop. If you spin the fox, watch out! You have to remove one chick and put it back in the yard. If you get all the chicks in the coop by the end, you win!

We've also been enjoying classics like Memory and Hi Ho! Cherry-O

I figure playing games together is a good way to teach turn taking and rules, in the absence of a preschool environment. 

On Flexibility:

It's my tendency to be too flexible, rather than too rigid, about a schedule. So, writing down the schedule has really helped me, and Sam, too. The advantage of not putting times on the schedule is that I don't feel "behind" if something comes up. For instance, on Tuesday morning I had to run some errands. Because our schedule isn't attached to times of the day, Sam could just hang out with Dad while he worked. When I came home again, Sam was still in his pajamas and I didn't feel like I was off the schedule. 

Some days we don't do everything on the schedule, but most days we do. And some days we don't do it all in order, especially lunch. Lunch happens by the clock and the signals we get from our stomachs, so the rest of it shifts around to make sure lunch happens on time. 

I do try to get the kid dressed. As the old saying goes, pick your battles. I choose the parts of a routine that are the most important to me and let others move or be skipped to preserve peace of mind.   




1 comment:

  1. I was at home with my daughters, and while we had productive days, there was never a schedule, and I read zero books about... anything related to child care. Oddly, our days looked pretty much like yours. We were BIG on cleaning, though! Both did really well at school and now have full time jobs they love AND their own insurance. Definitely look into keyboarding practice and math flashcards. I wish more of my students could write well, too. Have fun!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...