First week

Well, this is Sunday, the first day of the first week of the preschool thing. I am getting excited and nervous at the same time. I am going to start doing this without telling our families I'm doing it. I decided that I can't deal with negative criticism at this point. Brian said last night that he's on board if I want to do this but he thinks it won't work because I won't keep up with it. I guess I have to prove him wrong, then, don't I?

So today I'm taking the time to prepare for the upcoming week. I've already organized a binder with information and a calendar breaking down the week and days. If I take a look each day, I will know what I'm supposed to be focused on and that should keep me on track. And if I don't get to really work a lot with her during the day on a particular thing, I can always use the night after Kylie goes home, or spend more time on the weekend before we change the information. The way the program is set up gives you an entire week to really spend time on a subject.

Here's the information for this week, courtesy of letteroftheweek.com :
Theme- Cows (Monday)
Vocabulary- Calf (Monday)
Shape- Square (Tuesday)
Letter- A (Wednesday)
Number- 1 (Thursday)
Nursery Rhyme- Hey Diddle Diddle (Friday)

I also decided to go ahead and buy her a book involving cows since it's a special milestone- the beginning of her schooling! We bought Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin. I have several songs on CD that we can play involving cows and letters/numbers/shapes/colors. I've already cut the pieces needed for a few art projects and have color pages ready to go. I am going to look up videos on youtube of cows being milked, mooing, etc. We will probably play a lot of games involving a hunt for squares, and she has a sticker book where she gets to put the correct number of stickers on a page. That last one I'm a little nervous about trying this week only because she loves stickers and won't appreciate doing only one.

My most pointed effort needs to be getting her out to play with others more often. We hardly have gone out for a few weeks because it's been so cold. I finally got a library card this past weekend and got their monthly schedules for lapsit story time.

Here are a few pictures of the things I've done so far to prepare. I hope to have better pictures once we get more involved in this.


This is a picture of the Learning Poster we made. Each week, every day, we had the week's information. Monday we had pictures of the theme and vocabulary word, Tuesday the Shape or color, Wednesday the Letter, Thursday the number, and Friday the Nursery Rhyme. The poster is now hanging in our living room and is easily visible as a constant reference for her. The pictures stay up a whole week and are only changed when the new theme, shape, number, etc. change.





This is a set of number-matching cards I made for her. The idea is supposed to be for her to count the number of stickers and know the right number written on the other card, but I also read it might take a while for her to actually get it. I figure I will start by showing her what I want her to do, and hope she catches on. I also might start out by only giving her two or three of the cards and asking her to try to count them and match them to a certain number. We shall see. There are a few options for these.



Here is a look at our little 'preschool corner'. I only call it that because it happens to have a few things over there that we will be using. The poster, obviously, and her CDs and Books on CD, and her "Feed the Bunny" game for fine motor skill development. Of course there are some random books, puzzles and blocks over there, too!




I went to the dollar store and got a few things, too. Dollar Store= awesome.

Some posters...







Baskets. For each new color that we learn, I figured I would get a basket or container in that color and use it for a scavenger hunt type game where we collect different objects of that color. The first coming up in two weeks is green.



And although I don't have pictures of it, I made myself a binder to keep myself organized with this stuff. I have several folders in there with coloring pages and art projects ready for the week ahead, as well as future projects. I keep her number matching cards in a zipper pocket with a small book where she will be able to put stickers on pages in the number of the week. I bought a Monthly calender that fits in there and on each day, I've written what I'm supposed to be focusing on with her. I think I'm more than organized at this point, I just hope I stay that way.