With that in mind I set to prepare a 'weekly curriculum' for my preschool kiddo. My goals are to teach upper and lowercase letter identification and initial letter sounds. We will also focus on counting, numeral identification and eventually, beginning addition. I also want to foster a love for science, so I have one science lesson planned for each week. Since I also have a two year old who insists on being involved in everything his big brother does, I have planned on a couple activities geared towards him as well. This includes developing motor skills, color and shape identification, and holding writing utensils. So, without further ado, let me show you what we did our first week with the letter M.
I begin each day with 'circle time' with the two boys. During this time we pray, sing a worship song, and review our alphabet memory verse for the week. We then move to our letter of the week singing a little song about the letter's sound, tracing the sandpaper letter, and then doing a little craft or lesson that pertains to our letter of the week. I try to keep it pretty short since the attention span of the guys is pretty short.
Monday we did a letter mouse craft
Tuesday we talked about the states of matter. I'm using the Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science for some simple science lessons. I read the section on matter to them and then demonstrated them with water. Liquid in a measuring cup, an ice cube and steam. I'm not sure he really got the concept of solid liquid gas, but he did get the idea that everything is made of 'stuff" and we call that stuff matter.
Wednesday we made monsters. I got the idea from here but I made it a little more educational. First, we read The Monster at the End of this Book featuring THE Grover monster. This book is a favorite of my children. And then I provided numerous shapes for the kids: rectangles, triangles, squares, circles and semicircles. I made a sample monster to give them an idea of what a monster could look like. As I helped my tot with his, I named the shapes we were gluing. Once my preschooler was done we counted each type of shape he used and I wrote the number down for him to see.
Thursday we reviewed what we had learned that week. I had planned on reading Moongame and playing hide and seek having the boys find little ms everywhere, but I ran out of time. So I just reviewed with him with the letter sort basket I made. I was happy to see he had really improved on this from the beginning of the week.
The bulk of our school time is spent during "free time" where they get to chose what activities to do from the shelves I have set up for them. I changed up a couple things after I took these pictures but for the most part here are our shelves for this week: I made a video of them at the end of the week if you would rather see it instead of read its here.
Melissa and Doug letter/item lacing card
fine motor skill of placing marbles on a bathmat. This was a big hit with my tot. He made a game of putting the marbles on having me take a turn then taking a turn.
music basket. I included a harmonica, rhythm sticks, egg shakers, jingle bells and a canasta, We had to go outside to play with this one because the baby was napping.
Playdoh with golf tees and marbles to balance on top. I included 10 tees and marbles so my son could count them too if he wanted. I think the marbles I chose were too big though, or maybe I should have used modeling clay instead of Plyadoh because the tees kept falling over and the kids got frustrated with it. Good concept, just needs a bit of tweaking.
basket with bags to open and close. This was completely ignored by both boys. I thought the snap on one bag and zipper on the other would be fun or at least interesting for my tot but I guess not. I will try something like it again and present it better.
a coloring page featuring the color blue (not pictured)
a color basket focused on the color blue. I tried to fill this with items that my kids could interact with. So I made a lego truck, included a ball and bean bag for tossing, and a bag that my tot loved filling up and playing with. I also tried to make the items baby proof so that the baby could explore them too.
I put a monkey with a fabric letter in a little basket for baby to play with too.
Our letter shelf featured:
A letter Playdoh mat with a tracing sheet on the other side that he can use with a dry erase marker. This is laminated so that it can be used over and over. My 4yo did it once, but wasn't super interested in either side.
letter sort basket. I put upper and lowercase magnetic letters, fisher price little man, moose, knit mushroom, and a mouse for my m items. Then I just grabbed 4 random non-m items that fit in the basket too: a fork, seashell, car and a lego.
sandpaper letters with 'salt tray' I didn't have much salt when I put this together so I used cornmeal instead
basket with our 'm' books. I just put out the books in our personal library that have M letters: Are you my Mother?, Moongame, The Monster at the end of this Book, Mouse paint, and the Mitten
Mouse Paint color sort Printable found here
clipboard with worksheets from a preschool workbook. I know it's not Montessori, but I thought I would put it out anyway and 4yo absolutely loved this and spent much of his free time coloring these.
The math shelf featured
build a monster tray
I found the printable and directions for this activity here I then laminated the cards so that they could be used over and over. Its a really simple matching exercise where you match the card with the right bead bar. He would count the number on the card then find which bar matched it. He is all about counting these days so this was a hit.
circle stamps my brother saved from the trash and the boys have converted into building blocks
Melissa and Doug shape sorter/size sequencing puzzle.
After the kids start to be a bit squirrely I try to round them up to finish up school with reading a book from our book basket. As I read I try to occasionally point out or emphasize the letter we are studying. Two days this week the boys asked for a 'coffee break' which consisted of a small amount of decaf coffee with a considerable amount of milk. We read our books at the kitchen table while drinking coffee which is a variation of poetry tea time that my kids ADORE.
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