In our preschool {Week 1}

I was not planning to start school with our Littlest Man this past week so that I could focus on establishing a school routine for the older four kids first.  However, Littlest Man begged me to do his school too.  The problem with that was that I didn’t have a plan.  So I figured that I’d just start at the beginning and wing it.

 a is for apple

As we started to work, I was surprised to find out that he all ready knows many of his letter names.  Why was this a surprise?  Perhaps it was that he rarely ever wanted to sit down for any type of letter learning lesson last year.  He has been involved in some lessons or at least sitting in the vicinity of his big sister’s lessons these last three years so I guess he learned what he knows from that.  Just one of the perks of homeschooling, I guess. {smile}

 making apple prints

The other thing I learned about our Littlest Man is that he does not want his schoolwork to look like schoolwork.  I pulled out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons just to see what he could do with it.  He ran away the second he saw the book…literally!  I think I can pick up on that child cue pretty easily!  (And no offense meant to 100 Easy Lessons.  It is a good book and works for many.  It has even worked for us on some of my older children.)

 counting bears and counting coins…then lining the bears up and bowling them over {smile}

So I’m still without a plan for our K4 year!  I know we’ll do letter sounds and learning easy words.  I will do some of the fun activities from this plan because Littlest Man’s lessons are going to need to be fun and lively to hold his attention.  Maybe I’ll pull out the My Father’s World Kindergarten plans that I used with his big sister.  And books…many, many books because he loves them.  For the past week and a half, all of his lessons have been pretty much whatever I can quickly pull together.  And guess what…he’s still learning…he even learned one of his big sister’s sight words (just by sitting in the vicinity of her lesson!)

 fishing for letters and numbers from the Preschool Activities Bags

It truly doesn’t have to be elaborate to teach our littles.  We simply can give them our time, read good books to them, count with them, talk to them about everything, do things with them, and spend time outdoors with them.  This year, I’m going to strive to let learning be as natural as possible while having fun with a craft or two thrown in {smile}.   And I guess that is my plan for our K4 year!

 Littlest Man’s favorites:  legos, cars, and airplanes

Some of the books we read this week:

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