We are 3 weeks into our preschool homeschooling journey. Basic summary: LOVE it! :) It's been so fun getting him into a routine and there's only been one day that he hasn't wanted to jump right in. And the nice thing was, on that day after some extra cuddles and some Daniel Tiger, he was ready for school. I'm loving my curriculum and it's been a blast digging through my school files to find fun things to add in. I also really love the workbox system we're using. It's definitely been a learning curve getting back into a routine of prepping school work every week, but I love how it's given our days a bit of structure, even if it's only 45 minutes.
Ellison is still a nightmare (love you sweetie) during school time, so I'm trying all sorts of things to keep her busy and keeping her from standing up in the middle of the table throwing crayons and eating paper. Not that she tried that or anything. :)
Here were a few things we did last week while learning about the letter D (yes, we're going out of order). I found a cute set from the Dollar Tree that had stickers, a cardboard "scene" and a couple cardboard dinosaurs. He had a blast playing dinosaurs and loved the volcano part. We had to recreate the volcano we did awhile ago.
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| Sam working with magnetic pom pom and Owen doing a puzzle |
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| sorting capital and lower case D's |
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| dino color puzzles |
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| using pattern blocks to make the letter Dd |
For our final activity, we did a dinosaur fossil dig. I grabbed all Owen's small dinosaurs, a bowl of sand, and some plaster of paris. I mixed together the plaster of paris. I pressed a dinosaur down into the sand.
Then I poured the plaster into the dino shape and let it sit overnight. It worked pretty well! 
I buried about 15 dinosaur fossils and “footprints” in the sandbox. It was really chilly in the morning, but he could not wait to get outside. We took shovels and paintbrushes to brush off the sand and started digging. We matched up the fossils to the dinosaurs that made them. He stayed focused for almost 2 hours, digging, matching, re-burying and talking about being a paleontologist. It was so much fun to watch! 
They stayed engaged for about 45 minutes- an hour which is about what I planned for. We mixed in lots of dancing and singing to keep things interesting.
One of the hardest parts to everything was the cute little thing here dressed in a dress. Ellie. She was into EVERYTHING. I had a box of new toys for her that only get pulled out at school time, but she was still into everything. She did great when she could dance, sing, or color. But other than that, watch your crayons boys. Whew, that will take some tweaking to find what works best for her.
I was definitely impressed with his willingness to work and work hard. I know, I know it was his first day. But in general, it was super fun and I think he really liked it. There was one page he wasn’t willing to do and I told him it just needed to get done before nap. After lunch, all on his own he went and finished the page!
While we were at lunch, I did a short survey with him so we could remember this time:
I’m really excited about what this year has in store for us! Yes, it’s going to a lot of work to stay on top of everything. And there are so many ideas out there, I’m really going to have to pick and choose the things I want him to do. But for our family, for Owen, and for this year, this was the perfect choice (I think after day 1). haha
He takes off the number and puts it on this sheet. I only have enough open spaces for the amount of boxes he’s doing today. For example, today we started with 5. Box 3 held a snack with the activity which he thought was great.
Here’s an example of what’s in store for tomorrow. Excuse the dark, night time pictures.
Box 2: cut out the apples and glue them onto the tree (great cutting and gluing practice)
Box 3: put together the 6 piece apple puzzle and read the words
Box 4: practicing positional words – I will say “put your apple above the basket, put your apple under the basket, put your green apple beside the basket, etc” We will them write a sentence about where he hides his apple.
Box 5: a truck coloring page where he has to color the capitals one color and the lowercase another color.
Box 6: We each will get an ice cube tray. He will roll the dice and that’s how many little pieces of felt he gets, one in each little spot. It goes back and forth and the first person to fill their tray wins. Great for learning to count the dots on a die, and learning one to one correspondence. And maybe to learn about losing. :)
It’s easy for me to refill every night and I’m not scrambling during our actual lesson time to pull things for our next activity. I’m very excited about this system and while I know we’ll have to tweak it as we go, tonight he was already asking what was in his work boxes for tomorrow. Keep up the excitement kiddo!
Her activities have a great range of skills covered and are themed with cute graphics and easy to make instructions. I of course will be supplementing with ideas from my own teaching like a long calendar time, teaching ALL the letters (not just the one of the week), lots of singing, and tons of art projects. I’ll do a separate post and link to various curriculum, books, and CD’s I love and will incorporate throughout our year.
I dug out some of my school room decorations. While it’s not my dream school space (someday our basement will get done) it’s going to work PERFECT for where we’re at right now with school. Literally a few minutes before I was going to buy a table on Amazon, this little guy popped up on Craigslist. How I love Sir Craig and his list.
Ahh, is there anything prettier than new school supplies?
Here’s a little closer look. You will see a calendar with a season and weather graph. Our letter, number, and shape of the week are in page protectors at the top so I can just slip in a new paper every week. The color book is hanging on a hook. I have a clipboard with my plan for the week and a pocket chart and white erase board. 
The red apron is an idea I tweaked from my friend Christine. When school is in “session” I wear my red apron just to signal that it’s a different time for Owen. Today when I took it off he yelled “now you’re mommy” so I guess he got it.
This is our workbox system. I’m going to do a separate post on that as it’s too long for here. Used it for one day and already am in LOVE!
And that’s the start to our new homeschooling journey!
Welcome to Pinned It, Did It Monday where I report about actually doing some things I find on the time-sucking site that is Pinterest. Just a couple simple ones for ya today.
I’m always on the look out for simple crafts things for Owen. My bestie Sara, texted me saying she did this so we had to try it. 
Picture I pinned:
Review: Really good! These will definitely be making it into the regular food rotation. I didn't have a red pepper, so her's look more colorful. But they were still super yummy!
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