One of the most delightful times of learning: the preschool years. For children around the ages of 3 to 5, eyes are full of wonder and their days are replete with opportunities to learn: to know and understand, to investigate and discover. My job is not to get in the way too much!
How can one get in the way? By so completely over-structuring days and time that all wonder-filled opportunities that present themselves in the smallness of the everyday are utterly snuffed out. No time for wondering aloud at the butterfly that landed on the flowers out the front window - we have to go to a class. No time for investigating, crafting, drawing, enjoying a picture book - we have x, y, and z planned.
Does your preschooler need outside the home classes or opportunities? No. They need time at your side in the quiet of the home: reading wonderful and rich picture books, learning good habits of obedience, truthfulness, learning to work hard and give best effort, and enjoying time spent wondering aloud. They learn more from your best efforts of modeling hard work in the home than any curriculum or class could ever hope to convey. Spend your time wisely nurturing good habits right now and you can
expect to reap the benefits of this time-well-spent in the years to
come. (Great resource for this:
Laying Down the Rails by Simply Charlotte Mason, compiled from Charlotte Mason's 6 volume work)
Notice that in my question I asked if a preschooler
needs outside the home opportunities, and the answer is a firm and certain, "No." Of course, there may be some great opportunities that don't intrude on quiet, wonder-filled days, and it will be up to you to discern those. Discern carefully, my friends. There are more "good opportunities" than there are "quiet moments", and you can never get those quiet moments back. Saying no thank-you to a good opportunity doesn't take away the good or the value of that opportunity, it simply means that you've discerned greater value in your time spent somewhere else...like being attentive at home.
The good news: you won't need to spend a gazillion bucks! And you don't need someone else to put together an expensive preschool package or curriculum for you. I know! I know! You're anxious to get started and you want to do this right....trust me on this! Invest time now. Invest a modest amount in building up a good home library. And you won't go wrong! You really can teach the ABC's and 123's on your own. Really. You can. And you really can learn songs together, walk in nature, and wonder aloud with your children without scripted lessons! You need good books, time to wonder, and lots of room in the day for exploring and investigating! Open your eyes to wonder!
"What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder."
G. K. Chesterton
Channel your inner child and enjoy this time!
I'd love to share a little peek into our days with you! This post will be replete with links and resources. Enjoy!
This is our little preschool space. I certainly don't mean to imply
that we consolidate or isolate learning to this one corner of our room, but it just
works out that everyone in the learning room has some little bit of
space for books and things, and this is where the preschooler's books
and things live. I rotate things off and on her shelf as her interest wanes. The books we read from are on the shelf above her table.
More on the books we're using in a minute...
I know you're all wondering about the little table because so many of you have asked about it! I researched and found these tables for our two youngest late last year, and they work so well for us! The best price I found was online through
Wayfair Supply. What you see pictured is a
Mahar Small Rectangular Activity Table. (If you're looking for a larger table, check out their
large table version - for some inexplicable reason, it's cheaper than the small table.) Here are the options we selected for the table you see pictured on this post:
- Foot type: Nickel
- Leg Size: Standard (This choice works really well for us because the lowest leg height is a good height for beginning learners, and then the table height grows and can accommodate up to an adult height.)
- Table size and shape: 18 x 36 rectangle (I chose this size for three reasons: (1) I have a lot of other things in learning room and needed our new work tables to be small, (2) I'm using the tables with small learners, and (3) I have two other tables in larger sizes that, as my big kids grow and graduate, my little kids can grow into. *IF* you are looking for a good, all purpose size table, I highly recommend the 24 x 48 size table. This is our favorite size table! It's big enough to comfortably hold a high schooler's work load, yet not so big that it takes up too much space. I have three sizes of tables in my learning room, and the 24 x 48 size is the most useful!)
- Top Finish: Oak (But as you can see from the pictures, it's more like a light maple. I really like it!)
- Trim Color: Blue
I am a big fan of these type of activity tables because they've lasted so well for us through the years. I bought my first learning room table 12 years ago, and it still looks great! In fact, my high schooler is still sitting and working at it! They've been written on, painted, glued, crafted, sparkled - and they clean up great! I like the durable, smooth writing surface and I love that the legs adjust to grow with the child!
I've had the little chairs since my oldest was my littlest. I'm a big stickler for the chair and table size fitting the child, especially for my early writers. The chair size for my 4 year old is a
12" chair.
And now to answer another burning question! Y'all really want to know where I got the beautiful number cards that hang around my preschooler's work area! Aren't they pretty? Those are
Eeboo Counting Birds Wall Cards. I am a huge fan of
everything eeBoo - their products are quite imaginative and well made. Nothing trendy. Just very pretty and imaginative art meets practical, functional, and educational!
Our curriculum? I almost hesitate to call it a "curriculum". It isn't anything prepackaged. It is delightful and relaxed, incorporating a lot of seasonal picture book reading, learning good habits, and beginning nature studies. It is based on
Charlotte Mason's list of attainments for a child of 6.
You certainly don't *need* lesson plans for preschool!!! But we're enjoying ours! With three other learners, our sweet little lesson plans help keep me focused and pointed in the right direction, and my little preschooler likes having her own lesson plans and her own big-girl books and things!
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| Click on the image to view it larger. There is a link below to download and print this lesson plan. |
These little lesson plans also work to help my big kids! How, you ask? Well it so happens that sometimes my big kids take charge of lessons with my littlest learner while I'm working with someone else! The lesson plans help them know what to do with her: books to use, and nature walks to enjoy together, and generally keep us all pointed in a good and fruitful direction!
For You...
You can download and print our
yearly preschool booklist here.
You can download and print the
lesson plans you see above here.
You can download and print a
checklist form of Charlotte Mason's List of Attainments here.
Here are some of the books and things we're using this year:
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| Always keep an eye out for fantastic Little Golden Books at your thrift stores and flea market! You can usually find these for 25 - 50 cents and the older ones are just fabulous! |
Religion
Poetry and Stories
Language Arts
- We are reading and enjoying several alphabet picture books, learning to recognize the letters of the alphabet, and building the letters of the alphabet (see resource reviewed below)
- Copywork of the letters of the alphabet and simple words
- ReadyWriter by Edwin Myers (really great resource for writing readiness!)
- Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children by Penny Gardner (I'm using for all ages as a copywork resource this year....just moving at different speeds for different ages/abilities)
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| Practicing number copywork |
History Stories
Natural History Stories
French
For learning French, I found a sweet little series and we're all really enjoying it! We watch 5 - 10 minutes of the program each week and practice the vocabulary around the house. I love how the program pauses and asks the children to repeat and respond. It really encourages them to join in. Since we're working on two foreign languages this year, our house is often a happy mix of Latin and French. Salve les amis. :) {Salve/Hello/Latin...les amis/my friends/French}
A note: the narrator in this series is a native French speaker, which is great for an authentically modeled french accent, but do note that her English is spoken with a French accent as well. It is understandable, but also quite recognizable so I wanted to mention that to you for consideration.
Now, don't laugh...but we still have a VCR and I quite like it because I can often find educational programs for pennies on VCR tapes these days! So I picked up the VCR tapes for this French series for a song! But - good news! - there are DVD's available for those of you that have safely moved out of the dark ages! LOL!
Discovery Toys Word Match First Words - Discovery Toys no longer sells this item, but at the time of this writing I could still find it on ebay.
eeBoo Alphabet and Number puzzle
Crazy
toy cash register. Who woulda thunk? And yet...every.single.child has played and played with this thing (I've had it since my 15 year old was 3). It is the single.most.frequently used math manipulative in this home. Should that be embarrassing? My preschooler is learning number recognition with it...in addition to pretending that it is her laptop and that pressing a barrage of high-pitch squeaky sounding buttons in random sequence will yield the weather forecast for the day. Just like Mommy's laptop. LOL!!!
{Please note the chicken accompaniment! LOL!! We love chickens! And this one is very special to us! He's never far from our learning spaces!}
How to Build an A by Sara Midda - I will add the disclaimer that the letter representation for letter "X" in the book is "X-mas". If you have a problem with that you might want to know about it, but it might be helpful to note here that one of the Greek letters in Our Lord's name - the
Chi (pronounced 'kai') - is represented by the letter "X" and that is how I approach the frequency with which we see the term "X-mas". For more about Our Lord's name in Greek see here -
the Chi Rho Christogram.
And with this book we like using a little set of
wooden alphabet building pieces which
Handwriting Without Tears makes (note: I don't use any of HWT's other products). I found a used set of these wooden alphabet pieces very inexpensively on Amazon. Check ebay as well for inexpensive used sets.
The book,
How to Build an A, comes with a set of foam letters but we just bought the little book used and it didn't come with the letters. Also, I read in the reviews that some buyers thought the foam letters had a chemical smell and they didn't fit together to make letters (like "B") very well...so we went with the wooden letters since I found them used.
One of the things you'll note on our lesson plans is a time set aside for noting and recording our common birds. Anyone can do this, and it's one of the attainments for a child of 6 that Charlotte Mason sets forth. I made a simple little sheet to print and keep on our clipboard for noting our birds that we spot, and I'd love to share it with you!
For You...
You can download and print this
form to record birds your family spots here.
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Edited after the original post to add:
Angela asked a question in the comments: ...wondering how you have found that early years with girls compares to early years with boys.
That's a really great question, and I have noticed some differences as well as some things that seem pretty fixed. I had a fun time reflecting on my answers, but it got way too long to share in the comment box so I thought I'd share it here. I'll share my observations as long as you grant me the consideration that these are only my observations with my 4 kids - 2 of whom are boys, and 2 of whom are girls - and all of whom are very individual.
Preschool girls in my family...
- Are more motivated and eager to learn and move forward academically at younger ages. I certainly don't hold children back, and I also enjoy being attentive to their needs and requests while keeping lessons and more academic offerings gentle and appropriate. I'm a big believer in the notion that a preschooler's play is his/her work.
- Their fine motor development is usually light years ahead of where the boys would be at this age, and that has a tremendous impact on what my girl preschooler's are doing. My current little girl loves to write, and writes well. In fact, she's had good pencil grip for about a year now (not that I ask her to write - but Moms with multiple kids in the learning spaces know that little people pick up things earlier and do things earlier with older siblings around modeling...so she writes).
- Because of the earlier fine motor development, both my girls enjoyed scissor work in preschool. That never happened with my boys until much later.
- My girls enjoy reading and generally sit next to me for it. My boys are much more physical during reading time.
- My girls have been MUCH.MORE.VOCAL. Would you laugh at me if I underlined that? My girls' vocabulary and their need to get words out is astounding!!!! Even at young ages, they reason things out orally, problem solve orally, express emotions orally. And...on the "we need to work on being kind to our neighbor front," - they manipulate situations, people, brothers/sisters...through oral/vocal methods.
Preschool boys in my family....
- Need to be way more active! WAY more! Thus, any preschool work that required sitting had to be punctuated frequently with opportunities to move and explore. My girls will sit and enjoy all their work and be ready to move onto free time to explore. My boys need a more punctuated day, if that makes sense.
- Fine motor skills which affect writing and pencil grip develop much later in general with boys. My second son had better fine motor coordination and earlier development than his older brother, but still wasn't really writing much until around a late age 5. My oldest son was really late in developing in this area so early writing practice looked different: we did a lot with gross motor function, ie. writing big letters in the air, tracing letters in sand, building letters with manipulatives - anything that didn't require that fine motor grip.
- Both my boys have needed to be much more hands-on than my girls, and this was especially true in learning in the early years. Preschool work for my boys was almost exclusively hands-on, manipulative based, or oral work. My boys needed to see, touch and manipulate to understand.
- I saw (still see) major behavioral changes (aggressive, irritable, physical) in my boys if they have (1) been playing excessive amounts of video games (and these don't have to be remotely violent) or (2) watching television excessively. Since I saw this early on, I am very strict about limiting their attention in those areas.
- During read alouds and family prayer time, my little boys can be full of movement. Sitting still during a read aloud is a habit I gently start working on in the preschool years. I see value in building that habit...no one wants to interview a young man that needs to fidget and bounce from furniture piece to furniture piece.
- While my preschool boys have a great (and sometimes surprising) vocabulary, they don't use it nearly as much as the girls. They're quieter and a little more contemplative...in the kind of way that you can almost see the wheels turning in their noggins. I'm not saying they are quiet, just comparatively so, they're SOOOO much quieter than the girls were/are. Where the girls use words and tone of voice to manipulate a situation, boys get physical.
All of my children...
- Have been very intuitive at that age. I embrace their sweet and very literal understanding of things. It is a time to be treasured.
- Have enjoyed having some special "preschool books" of their own. I learned early on that I didn't need to purchase anything crazy for this - I just needed to thoughtfully gather a few books and things from around our home and set them aside for the preschool child.
- All of my kids have learned to read on a very different timeline, and I'm glad that in our home we could be open to their individual timelines without pushing a reading "agenda" and really suit lessons to meet their learning style and needs.
- All of my children of a preschool age go off the deep end if our normal routine is bumped...so nurturing quiet days at home as well as a normal routine has become a priority. When our normal routine changes, even out of necessity, I am very mindful of how that will affect my little learners and do my best to incorporate markers and pegs in their day that bring a sense of familiarity.
- Need healthy ways to express themselves. Neither are allowed to bully with their preferred manner of communication, whether it is verbally or physically. Ever.
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Well that's it! It's a rich selection for nurturing wonder - do remember we don't do everything listed all at once! Take a look at the lesson plans in the beginning of the post to see an example of how some of these resources work in the every-day for us. If we completed that lesson plan as written every day {full disclosure: we don't always} it would take less than 45 minutes total time. The lion's share of our day is spent reading...and folding, sweeping, washing, helping, drawing, investigating, playing, wandering, and just being delightfully little and full of wonder!
Keep your eyes open to wonder and enjoy days spent with your littlest learners!
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