planning for preschool at home

reviewing my 1st year, with tips for others!

i am approaching the end of my first year of homeschool preschool. Yay, we made it!! we are just a few short months away from starting kindergarten; and i'm so happy that i decided to do "formal" preschool with my son. i feel like i would have much more anxiety about kindergarten if we hadn't. now, i will say, i don't think it is at all necessary to do anything "formal" for your child to learn lots and lots of important things! i did lots of informal teaching with him from the time he could understand me until we started "big boy" preschool at age 4!

so, i'm gonna give myself, along with all the other moms spending quality time communicating with their kids, an "A+"!! i really don't think it's an area that we can fail in. unless our kids have learned to be self-sufficient because we spend our days zoned into our favorite tv shows, then i promise we're all doing a great job in our own ways! 

i have an infant son now, and i honestly don't know if i would have been able to plan and carry out any sort of actual curriculum with my preschooler if my baby had been born any sooner. but, i do think it is very possible, depending on your family schedule and even just your personality. 

i have about 3 years of previous experience working in early childhood education. it did give me a reference point for the way i could go about a preschool experience with my own child; however, i feel strongly that anyone can be successful with planning preschool at home! it's really about your own child. it's that simple.

i started by taking a day to create a list of the things that i knew my child already knew, and/or, needed work with. i then spent a day creating a list of goals for the preschool year. things that were important to me for my child to learn, or begin learning, along with reviewing the things he already knew. after that, i researched preschool and kindergarten "ready lists" to make sure there weren't things that i hadn't thought of to include in our year. and, of course, there were! so, once my final goal list was complete; i began coming up with ways in which to teach everything. i was on a pretty tight budget! i got lots of things from the dollar store! i did make one trip to my local teacher supply store and invested in a couple things that i just couldn't find elsewhere. and, thankfully, a friend invited me to go with her to a homeschool used materials sale!! i also created a "homeschool" folder on my computer with lots of free printables that i have used and plan to use for the next kid! and, of course, i have made Pinterest my best friend for new ideas.

i recently filled out a preschool assessment form (from confessionsofahomeschooler.com) to put our year into perspective. it gave me an idea of what we have actually accomplished this year, as well as what we still need to work on and can focus more on. i'm glad i did this in addition to reviewing my goal list from the beginning of the year. it gave me the realization that there were areas of development that i hadn't even introduced in my teaching so far! i was happy to mark the areas of success from my own goal list, but even happier to see the things i want to incorporate, over the summer, that i hadn't even thought to include in our learning so far! i will admit that i have focused more on academics and less on practical life skills. so i'd probably only be able to give myself a "C+" if i were grading myself on how well my child is prepared for life at his age! but, i'm happy to be honest about this and begin working with him in different areas.

i'm satisfied with my decision to approach preschool with my child in the formal academic manner that i did. i realize we could have been very successful at learning in a more relaxed, going about normal life, kind of way. i just had to choose the way that best suited my child. if you think planning a curriculum would be best for your child; be encouraged that it won't be the hardest thing you've ever done. it will be a joy when it all comes together! even the things you may think turned out as a failure in attempting, will be giving you a priceless chance to get to know your child even better!