Our Homemade Preschool Board

I have wanted to share our preschool board for awhile now. It was just a matter of getting out the camera, taking the photos and uploading them. ;) I first created this five years ago when I decided to keep Thatcher home for his last year of preschool. I had no idea for how long we would be homeschooling and I didn't even know there were formal curriculums that could be purchased. Even if I had known, I would still use this tool. It takes less than 10 minutes a day and covers lots and lots of skills in a fun and hands on way. Thatcher loved it and now Haddon is enjoying it, too.

I am a big believer in keeping preschool light and fun yet finding a way to build a solid foundation for future learning. This is part of our family's solution...along with tons of games, great books, music, art, nature walks, field trips and much more!

It's just made from a simple display board I purchased at a craft store.
I'll walk you through all the parts and the skills covered in each.

Here on the left I have a Hundred's Chart. We started the year making sure Haddon could count to 20 forwards and backwards. Then I taught him to count by 10's and then all the way to 100 by 1's. After that we added counting by 5's to 100. Now we are learning to count by 2's to 20 and by the end of the year he'll be able to count to 100 by 2's.

Below the Hundred's Chart are these cards. I have all three sets. We started with sequencing a three-picture story and now he can easily sequence six-picture stories.

Below that are our rhyming word flash cards. We started the year with a simpler set and moved to this more advanced set with three words. Each day we play fun words games with these. He'll make a sentence with the rhyming words and then we'll generate a list of all the other words we can think of that fit in that rhyming family.

At the start of the year we also had a set of opposites flash cards but he worked through all those.

Next is our money strip where we add a penny each day. At first we just dealt in pennies and dimes. Then when he got comfortable with that we added nickels. We'll introduce quarters by the end of the year.

Finally are our counting bears. We use these to work on several skills. Sometimes I make a pattern he has to continue. We also work on ordinal numbers. I might say something like, "What color is the 7th bear?" or "What color is before the third bear?"

This part is pretty self-explanatory. We practice days of the week, months of the year, and we add a number to the calendar each day (here I put up the number 25 because he he wanted to count up how many days until Christmas). He completes the sentences at the bottom and we add a stick to our place value cup every day, too. He loves when he gets to move each group of 10 stick "next door" to their new home in the 10's house! :) There is a weather graph on here but it's never been used (where's a blushing emoticon?!).

On the right he does an addition problem each day from this DK Math Puzzles set. First semester we focus on addition and second semester he'll do subtraction. The last month of the year he will do one addition and one subtraction problem each day.

Below that is a piece of felt. Each day he pulls a different sized string (precut and kept in a baggie) and estimates how long it is and then measures it. We started with inches first semester and now we are working with centimeters.

Next are some simple flash cards I got at Wal-Mart years ago that spell out simple 3 letter words with short vowels.

And finally we have our clock. Each day he grabs a flash card and makes the clock show the time on the card. In the photo above the flash card is on the wrong side. Wish I would've caught that before I took the pic!

Here is what the board looks like with nothing on it (except the money that Haddon didn't want to remove). Everything is attached with sticky back velcro, and yes it was a small fortune in velcro considering that I used velcro for every.single.element that goes on the board. :)

And here's the back of the board. I store as much as I can in baggies that have a strip of velcro attached and what doesn't fit on the back goes here...

...in a bucket I keep behind the board.

We have enjoyed this board so much. I will use it for all three boys so in the long run it is much less expensive than many preschool programs and it meets my goals for preschool - fun while building a solid foundation.

What the '09-'10 School Year Holds for Haddon and Beckett

Most of the focus for the past two years on this blog have been on Thatcher and our academic endeavors with him. That will be changing as his brothers are getting older and starting their own scholastic pursuits. Expect to being seeing more posts relating to preschool in coming months!

Starting in September, Beckett (3) will attend preschool at our church two days a week from 9-2. It will so good for him and me! Let me explain. I have not shared much about this little guy in the past so let me introduce you to him. He is my Jekyll and Hyde. He is either completely endearing and adorable, full of hugs, kisses and smiles...or he is completely ticked off and often yelling and screaming. He is 100% happy or 100% angry, no in-between with this little guy. And 100% personality to boot. He is the most demonstrative child I have ever seen, constantly talking with his hands and so incredibly expressive. He is a complete hoot, a complete joy and a complete challenge. The most demanding of my three (at this stage) by far, even with Thatcher's ADHD and Asperger's in the mix. He is incredibly strong-willed and will go 100 rounds and then 10 more if it means he thinks he will finally wear me down. ;) He challenges me each and every day and in the midst of it all, I love this kid to pieces.

In addition to preschool, next year he will be tagging along with many of Haddon's readings (listed below) and school videos. We will be working hard on learning to play independently, completing simple games and activities and lots of character building ala CM "Laying Down the Rails". We will be doing lots of play dough and tactile activities as well. He already knows his colors, numbers, letters and letter sounds. More pre-reading games and activities, if he shows interest, may pop up as well.

Next year I will be starting K-4 with Haddon. K-4, as I define it, means that we will start our Kindergarten curriculum but take our time getting through. If we finish next year, great. If it takes us a full two years, that's okay too. We will most likely still be doing 2-3 hours of daily therapy with Thatcher in addition to his school load (lightened somewhat) so some videos and media time will be needed to help fill his day.

Now I get to tell you about Haddon. He is my compliant middle child. Peace-maker and tender-hearted, but he is no push-over. He can stand up to big brother - and little brother for that matter, too. ;) He is very much a pleaser and is always looking for and needing affirmation. He adores his big brother, is our dog, Wrigley's, best friend and loves animals and critters of all sorts. He currently is wanting a kitten of his very own. He can't wait to start school with Mommy.

Here is what he will be doing for K-4:

• Ambleside Online's Year 0 Reading List
• Kumon Workbooks: My First Book of Coloring, My First Book of Tracing, My First Book of Mazes, My First Book of Pasting: Jigsaw Puzzles.
• Explode the Code: Get Ready, Get Set and Go for the Code.
• Leap Frog DVD's: Talking Words Factory 2 and Learn to Read Storybook along with the others we already own
  
• Educational software - Kindergarten games as well as Starfall.com and other free sites
  
• Lots of educational games - homemade (I'll blog about these soon) and from Lakeshore Learning.
• Our preschool board (Blog about this soon, too)
  
• Weekly nature hikes and trips to the library
• Monthly field trips to learn about community helpers. We will visit a fire station, police station, post office, vet's office and hopefully a bakery and pizzeria, too.
  

Week 11-12 Report

I am late, late, late in posting our weeks 11 and 12. I have had a hard time keeping up with reports now that I am running early in the morning again. My bedtime has moved waaaay up and cut into my blogging time. Lol! As I have thought through my schedule and considered ways to streamline (read - cut things out!) I considered not doing weekly reports. You know what though...I like these reports and here's why: It gives both Thatcher and myself a sense of accomplishment to see our week all neat and tied up with a bow (or a slide show!). It also provides me a time and a place to process what is happening at Smooth Stones Academy. Some weeks we get so busy we are just going through the motions without stopping to reflect. Here I get to reflect and process.

History is going so well and Thatcher loves it! I wish we had more time for projects but it is just not happening this year. I keep reminding myself that he is getting so much more in this area than I ever was able to do as a public school first grade teacher. We did stop and have a little fun one day because Thatcher had been begging me to make him into a "toilet paper mummy". The photo shows our third attempt because the first two times Thatcher lost his balance and fell over ripping all the tp apart!

Science is also going really well. We started off very slowly but are rapidly picking up steam! Do you like Thatcher's frog he drew on his animal profile page? It's from Ed Emberly's Big Green Drawing Book. We got such a kick out of this and Thatcher was very proud of the final product.

We love United Streaming! Just in the past two weeks, in addition to our regular Spanish lessons, we have watched a Magic School Bus video on frogs and two excellent history videos on ancient Egypt. Part of my lesson planning each Sunday night now includes checking US to see what videos might match our lessons that week. We couldn't find much on snails and worms for science this week but reptiles will be more promising I am sure! Also, I have been very pleased with the Spanish program they offer, especially considering I was about to spend $200 on a different program. Instead, we got US and all it has to offer for only $129.

Lastly, because I hardly ever mention my little Haddon I thought I would type out what I am working on with him this year. He turns three next week so have not started anything formal, yet I have many things I want to teach him through play this year. By his age Thatcher already knew all these things and more but Thatch was an only child and his memory is one of his absolute greatest strengths. Haddon is much more interested in bats, balls and climbing than anything academic, although that is changing. Here we go:

• Colors
• Count to 10
• Recognize #'s to 10
  
• Say his ABC's
  
• Recognize all 26 letters
• Know basic shapes: circle, square, rectangle, oval, triangle, heart, star

In addition, each day we try to make sure we: read at least 10 books together, work puzzles/shape sorters/stacking toys, read from one of our Mother Goose books, sing songs, and do finger plays. Some days we don't get it all done but we certainly try.

Next week we are going to take off since we have a Halloween Party with our other home school friends on Tuesday, Halloween is on Wednesday (won't get anything done that day if I tried!) and I will spend all day Thursday baking and decorating Haddon's cakes for his party on Friday. For Halloween Thatcher is going to be Peter Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia. Haddon is going to be his younger brother, Edmund Pevensie, and Beckett is going to be Aslan the Lion! All the costumes just arrived today and they are cute! Can't wait to post those pictures and see all the cute ones of your peanuts too! :)