Preschool at My House!

We officially started preschool during daycare last week!  While I enjoy taking a break in planning a curriculum during the summer, I'm always excited to get back into it in the fall.  New supplies, new ideas, and a fresh new school year!

Last year I taught using the Fireflies curriculum from Funshine Express.  In past years I have used Mother Goose Time, Carols Affordable Curriculum, and made my own based on the many early childhood books and websites I have in my arsenal.  Funshine Express and Mother Goose Time are both really great curriculum, but Funshine express is just a bit less expensive - and since I don't charge my daycare parents for preschool... every dollar counts!

My goal is to save a couple years worth of curriculum guides, supplies, and materials so I will be able to stop ordering them but keep on teaching them on a two or three year rotating schedule.  Every month I make copies of the worksheets and parent hand-outs, save all of the supplies and teaching guides, and one day I'll only have to plan the corresponding crafts, and make the typical adjustments based on developmental levels of the children (this is the part that takes the most time anyway)... the rest will be done.  I'll probably be able to do that after this school year!

This is our weather chart.  Every day someone gets to be the weather-watcher and it is their job to report what the weather is that day (or at least at that particular moment).  They then get to choose the correct weather picture and stick it on the chart for that day.

This is our calendar.  Everyday someone else gets to be the Calendar Helper.  We all say the days-of-the-week song, and today's date, and the calendar helper puts the date picture on the calendar.  It is also a pattern, so they get to practice recognizing patterns and predicting the next item every day as well!  The calendar and weather chart are from last years supplies, we'll be getting a new set later this month with October's order!

This week we start focusing on the alphabet with the letter A, but last week we were concentrating on rhyming.  We've been reading lots of poems, books that rhyme, playing concentration with flashcards that have rhyming pictures, rhyming word worksheets, and naming off words that rhyme throughout the day.  The whole point is to help them train their ears to pay attention to the sounds in words, to build phonemic awareness, which is vital in learning how to read. One of the poems we read is pictured above, and they almost have the whole thing memorized now because they like it so much.  To extend the activity we found and circled the words that rhymed with different colored crayons.  For example, we circled the words "go" and "so" with a blue crayon, and "bite" and "right" with a green crayon.  Then we made a craft which gave us the chance to practice tracing numbers 1-5, counting, color recognition, and gluing skills.

This week we are starting the letter A and Ants theme, I'm hoping to tell you about it next Monday!