At Home Preschool Day 1

Grant is 3 1/2 and we had considered putting him in preschool this coming September but we figured 2 years of preschool was unnecessary.  So instead I decided to start doing some preschool activities at home.  Not only for the learning of letters, numbers, shapes, etc but also for the structure and focus time I feel like Grant really needs.




My mom works in the school system and a company brings in books you can purchase.  They had a Pre-k workbook she bought for Grant and it was perfect timing because I was looking for things online and this book had it all.




We took a trip to the library just to get some letter specific books.  We got If You Give A Cat a Cupcake., If You Give A Mouse a Cookie, and Clifford Goes to School (Grant loves Clifford and has the stuffed version he carries to bed most nights).  I already have the book by Eric Carl, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (and the stuffed caterpillar to go with it) and Grant has noticed loads of them crawling around our sidewalks recently so I thought starting with the letter C would be perfect.


I printed a letter C sheet from here.  I want to do a letter a week.  I've read varying pros and cons of doing one letter at a time but I couldn't wrap my head around teaching them all at the same time, it just didn't make sense to me.  So a letter a week it is for us and we will see how it goes.  I don't plan on going in order because I want to do all the letters I think will be the easiest for him to write (or trace) first.

For our first day I got out the flashcards and showed him the letter C, we went over what sound the letter makes as well as the difference between uppercase and lowercase.  Then I gave him a worksheet for him to trace the letter C.   I gave Grant a bingo marker (bought at the Dollar Tree) and the C sheet I printed out from here and had him only put dots on the inside of the outlined letters.

We did a caterpillar craft.  I cut out varying sizes of circles from construction paper and had him put them in order from largest to smallest.  Then we got out the glue, yes I was a brave woman yesterday with the messy glue, and glued the circles onto a white sheet of paper.  I had him draw eyes, legs, and put dots around the caterpillar with the bingo markers.


We read The Very Hungary Caterpillar by Eric Carle and went over how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.


We practiced tracing straight and curved lines,

 

 as well as cutting them.  He is getting better and better with scissors.

Grant had so much fun and wanted to keep doing more.  I decided to do preschool at home and keep it short and sweet, by sticking to 20-30 minutes of school time a day  His attention span is short and I want to make sure we are keeping it fun so he doesn't lose interest or feel like it's "work".