Preschool

I'm not a teacher but I did learn a thing or two about teaching when I was in college...especially since my major at one time was Children's Ministry.  A few months ago I decided to start "preschooling" Caden (and of course, Emberly too!). I figured he's old enough to start learning how to write his ABC's and his name and learn about Oregon and the USA and all that other good stuff. He already knew how to say his ABC's and count from 1-20 but he didn't know anything else. The internet and Pinterest are a huge resource for preschool, and school in general, so I've been doing my research. It's been a little slow going but we've made it through the letter D and have talked about geography and different animals. The format I chose to do looks like this:

1. Talk about the calendar on the dry erase board (day of week, month & date, activities or birthdays in the month) .
2. Talk about the weather for the day (look up the temperature and the kids look outside and tell me what the sky looks like) and draw it out on the board (clouds, sunshine, blue sky, etc.).
3. Sing a few songs (Old McDonald, Wheels on the Bus, etc.).
4. Talk about the letter or theme of the day. If it's a letter day I write out the upper and lowercase letter, and we talk about which words start with that letter and what it sounds like. 
5. Then we practice writing the letters in a book I got him at Dollar Tree and then he practices more on a piece of paper.  
6. He gets star stickers at the end if he was a good listener and followed directions and also if he does a good job writing his letters. 

 
Some of the supplies I have are: pencils, crayons, spiral notebook, ABC/Numbers/Colors books from Dollar Tree, Dry Erase board with lots of different colored markers, flash cards, place mats with a US map/World map/Presidents and assorted coloring books. I'm also in the process of making worksheets for him that I can print off whenever I need them. I'm making writing templates (dash letters he can trace over) using Word (ie. lowercase and uppercase A's, ones with just his name, numbers 1-10). 

Here are a few pictures, more to come! 

Caden has been pretty receptive to his "lessons". It was a little rough at first and he got frustrated really easily but as we've done it more and more he's gotten more patient and enjoys doing it. I have a list of several different areas to include and am looking forward to those. I'm not creative on the fly, so I have to get things planned out and research ahead of time, but it's fun and I enjoy it too. And not only are we working on learning how to write and sound out our ABC's but we're also working on how to listen when the teacher is talking and raise our hands when we have a question and other good skills that he will need to learn and know how to do when he does go to school. 

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for fun things to teach preschoolers?